Yup I bought a few pounds of this, won't be here till next week can't wait to roast it. I'll be going at it with a behmor though...

Much more fruity sweetness in this mornings brew. It just keeps improving. I take every Kenyan thru various different (completely different) profiles, based on the acidity levels, and if I note any tomato, and this doesn't even touch on whether they are a peaberry which makes them all the harder. But this bean certainly seems to excel at a fast roast.

Can you elaborate on the "fast" part? I've got a couple pounds coming and was planning on aiming for 4 minutes to dry, 4 more minutes to first crack and then 3 more minutes to drop. Would you recommend faster than that?

does anyone have any authority books, or articles on home coffee roasting? i want to give it a try, but i'm a bit afraid of stinking the house out.

GregR wrote:Can you elaborate on the "fast" part? I've got a couple pounds coming and was planning on aiming for 4 minutes to dry, 4 more minutes to first crack and then 3 more minutes to drop. Would you recommend faster than that?

Will do thorough explanation tonight after work, it will be mostly oriented towards the particularities of the Quest however.

keno wrote:Interesting, I just roasted some Kenyan coffee two days ago, not this one but some Makwa AB and noticed exactly this bad tuna-like aroma post roast. Not exactly a taste I want to experience in my coffee, but fortunately it doesn't really come through in the aroma once ground or in the cup. However I'm sure it can be roasted better.

And that leads to my question. I thought the general strategy with Kenyans was to push them hard, but you are suggesting to slow down the roast during the ramp from a bit past yellow to first crack?

I did roast a few batches trying different profiles and the slower roast had the least of this bad aroma, so that would support what you are saying. So just curious as to what makes for a good Kenyan profile that I can use as a basis for experimenting.

OT: I don't want to muck up this thread further but starting a new thread is not possible without mod privileges.

To conclude the discussion on the tuna fragrance on East African/Yemen beans, I discussed it with two very seasoned roasters (30 years between them). Neither has experienced the tuna fragrance. Destined to remain a mystery.

33 lbs landed on my porch thanks to Mr Brown this afternoon. Sorry, all spoken for.

Will try to squeeze a roast in on Sunday after church/Vikings game and before the party.

I have some Kenya Gakayuni peaberry I'm gonna try tonight. I'll keep the sniffer out for anything fishy.

TomC wrote:Will do thorough explanation tonight after work, it will be mostly oriented towards the particularities of the Quest however.

As a new Quest owner myself, look forward to it Tom! Almost a Roast and Learn.

So, for the quirky shortcomings of the Quest, there are also some very unique perks that balances things out somewhat. And these seem to pay dividends on a coffee like this. One of them namely is being able to follow the aromatic nature of the roast so precisely (due to the fan location) that you can follow that for the keys to how your roast is reacting, easier than others, I'd say. And that gave me a surprising clue that this coffee didn't need the typical longish development time that most Kenyan coffees do (at least IMO). When I profile a new coffee, I generally only have to follow common precepts about freshness, density, elevation, etc and the rest- at least for the first roast, I can leave to my nose and the fan right at the back of the Quest. All of my suggestions need to be viewed thru the reality that I've modified my Quest a lot, with the black drum and wrapping tons of heat insulation around the outer case so it doesn't shed heat as easily or quickly.

So on a coffee like this, knowing that generally Kenyan coffees require more heat energy to roast, especially early on, and even more so with them being peaberries, I charged higher than normal temp and with a reduced charge mass. In this case my BT was reading 375°, when I'm usually not much higher than 350° on that particular probe. And that may not seem like a lot but it is.

With the above in mind, I'm thinking I only went marginally fast, and that remains to be proven, at least, again for the Quest (it's not all that fast given the small charge). I went by aromatic development after a very vigorous 1Cs and was able to retain what seems to be great cultivar traits. And here's where the armchair athlete stuff comes into play; mostly assumptions based on results and by no means certain. But I'm leaning towards the fact that their density and shape has left me with a greater delta of bean surface temp to internal bean temp (and hence lesser internal development) before hitting my ramp and thus carrying more moisture into that phase protecting the coffee from an aggressive loss of aromatic and flavor compounds. When they looked dry on the surface, there was likely a proportionally higher degree of bound moisture, and or lower internal temp than most other coffees. And this isn't even a full throttle roast on the ramp, I started cutting back very quickly. With my Quest, I don't need to push it at max heat on my dial and fan, especially at charges of this size.

Even when roasted lightly, this coffees acidity is wonderful and non-jarring. So on the outset, I didn't fear the need to run a longer development time like I usually would for a more tart, crisp acid bomb (sometimes intensely cranberry) Kenyan. So, that's the reason I cut it when I did. The aromatics were intensely vanilla sugar, I knew I was already in a good spot.

I had some fun dialogue back and forth with Dustin on this coffee in particular, he profiled it a few ways ,the day after I did and he seems to have come to the same conclusion that going long on this coffee isn't doing it any favors. His best roast was fast and short, by what he believes was a large margin. We're getting together Sunday and will brew a few of them.

I'll keep tweaking the profile slightly and seeing how best to maximize it, but my next two will be 1) with a slightly stretched ramp from the one posted above, with a shorter development time, and 2) same everything, but 200g charge, with a matching shorter development time, to compare what the varying levels of time in the ramp give me. I'm eager to see what a 13.0-13.5% weight loss gives me. Mine was 13.7% and was quite impressive. Dustin had one land at 13.6% with a very similar roast time that he's excited about, so I feel confident that I have a good starting point.

I'll be very curious to see if anyone has tried this as espresso yet?

And I'll add that my BT readings shouldn't be critically examined and followed, they need to be viewed thru the prism that is my lower charge mass always gives me readings like this ( higher temp when the beans appear dry and lower 1Cs temp) than a regular charge of 200g for my roaster. This is likely compounded because these beans are so dense, they don't take up as much volume in the drum for a given weight, and since the probes don't move and it's such a tiny roaster, all those value deviations are exponentially dissimilar than if I charged a standard weight.