It seems people are talking about "the nordic approach", as a scandinavian/nordic roast-style. The New York Times had an article on this recently,

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011...ore-189913

It is said about this style that the coffee has barely left the first crack, that the last phase can last for about 1.5 to 2 minutes. This is normally the RD for a cupping roast. So what is the secret behind getting a balanced cup roasting this light. Is it a longer drying-phase than normal, or is it the phase before first crack that is longer than normal. Or is it a combination? Do they almost stall the roast entering first crack?

I ordered a bag of Costa Rica Don Mayo from Kaffa in Oslo, just to get a feel of what we are talking about here. I saw the moment I opened the bag that this was a very light roast. When grinding the coffee it surprised me how light the color was, this was by far the lightest coffee ever entering my grinder. I brewed the coffee in a Hario V60, and already when brewing i noticed differences from my normal coffee. The coffee did not bloom as much as fresh coffee usually do, even though the coffee was roasted a few days earlier. It also seemed to choke the filter a bit, making me believe I had ground too fine. Maybe this light roast need adjustments in the brewing compared to darker roasts. I expected an intense coffee, maybe on the limit of being sour. But it was perfectly balanced, and very sweet. Also very fruity, and was not as intense as one should expect.

I have ordered me a back issue of the fresh cup magazine, which has an article about the Nordic Approach, hope it says something specific about how to develop these roasts. Maybe someone here has read the magazine already and can share some info?

http://www.freshcup.com/product.php?id=148&main=2

I have the opportunity to drink coffee from a friend that likes to roast similar to this. Long time to reach first crack (for instance, 12:15) and finish about 3 to 3:30, without too much heat and without too much crack. The beans look ugly and stay dense, it requires updose on the espresso, but it can give a wonderful shots, very sweet and acid. The roaster he uses is a commercial one, Diedrich IR-12.

Interesting is that I've tried some of his coffee another day and it was roasted and bagged back to 8 months. It was not bad and hard to tell that it was old coffee. Maybe without a vigorous crack we can keep the cell walls intact?

What scratches my head is that in general he starts at low temp and it takes about 8 minutes to reach 150°C, so it takes about 4 to 4:30 from dry end to first crack. Unless on the Diedrich the dry phase ends at lower temp, I really don't know.

Márcio.

The Diedrich ir-12 doesnt show low temperaturs as I know, they usally get 1st crack at 195-200 Celsius.

BTW: Here are some videos from this years Nordic Roaster Seminar, some of these videos are interesting. I think the video called "experimental roast & cupping" video was interesting. Shows how the different roasters work very differently.

http://nordicbaristacup.com/2011-seminar/blog-videos/

Thanks for posting. I've been cupping a ton of coffees this year (many from the roasters in your link) and have to admit that my roasts are always inferior when compared to good coffees from Wendelboe or Solberg Hansen. Got some ideas from your link on what to try next - lets see how it works

btw.. I know Tim is in Yirgacheffe at the moment as well. Coincidence?

Here are videos from the barista and roaster seminar.

http://vimeo.com/user5169572/videos

Gismar wrote:BTW: Here are some videos from this years Nordic Roaster Seminar, some of these videos are interesting. I think the video called "experimental roast & cupping" video was interesting. Shows how the different roasters work very differently.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Nordic Roster Event (as one of, I think, two home roasters) and participated in the cupping of this experimental roast. The intention was to examine differences between different roasting machines but in reality as there is no way of specify identical roasting profiles between different machines it ends up being more of a test of each roasters (as in roastery) interpretation of a profile. I think the roast instructions distributed to each roaster is in there somwhere and it is pretty open to personal interpretation.
Nevertheless it was wery interesting, the coffes I would have guessed where roasted on a Smartroast where actually not and vice versa. And I know quite a few of the pro's made the same mistake.

Day two was actually more interesting in pure roasting terms as there was an opportunity to play with a Smartroast (that is, if you had a minimum of 7kg of beans to spare for a batch.. ) Most of those profiles where not too drawn out (as dicussed above), but I am not sure how profiles on the Smartroast translate to a normal drumroaster.

According to the Feshcup magazine article,beans are loaded at a high charge temp. and bought quickly to the tanning stage at which point heat is reduced, increasingly through to the end of the roast...RD ideally 2.5 mins at lower than normal temps.....This seems at odds with some of the earlier posts written above. HOWEVER

For Hottop owners, I'm currently getting some very nice roasts which really bring out bean sweetness in keeping with earlier posts from Gismar and Carneiro....perhaps an accidential Nordic roast???

WARNING it breaks lots of 'rules'

Preheat to 130c-150c Hottop panel ( my variables so far)....100% power

Load 230 grms beans and immediately drop power to 20% or 30% depending on how you want to tweak your profile

Bean temp will bottom out and rise quickly initially before slowing

Maintain only sufficient power to bring bean temp to 115 over a 6-7 minute period (I know.. "its far too slow")
The idea is to coax the bean temp rise using minimum ET.

ET Roaster temps (Hottop Panel) will stabilise between 135c and 140c over a 6 minute period while bean temp slowly rises from 80c to 115c

At 115c (around 7 mins) apply full power 100% right through to180c.

At180c, slow roast down to power 70%, and down again to 50% at 190c, then 10% at first crack.

At first crack, control the roast shooting for 2.5 mins from first to finish with with minimal bean temp rise and little or no heat application relying only on residual heat to finish the RD.

Finish the roast at around 207c bean temp. which will match a lower ET of 203-4c (Hottop panel)

Usually my roasts pulled at this low temp are grassy and bitter in taste...rarely drinkable. Not so, with this profile.

The roasts will take around 18 mins with first crack happening around 15.5 mins....Broken Rools!

Of the three roasts done so far (two types of yemen), the sweetness and balance cupped immediately after roasting and in susequent days matches the descriptions of the abovementioned Nordic roast....well possibly???

This is a different type of mellow coffee with little or no bitterness, and seems to excel in aeropress. I doubt it will appeal to the drinkers of strong espresso.

It will be interesting to see if the taste holds for 7-10 days as is usual for Yemens roasted in a more 'normal' manner.

Worth a try and may just surprise??

Cheers
JL

This is interesting. I'm looking forward to more sharing on the execution of this Nordic profile. Any Quest M3 user can share an Artisan chart or similar thing that could be easily referenced?

endlesscycles wrote:I swear you hottop users have the most uniquely incoherent ramble.

So I'm hearing:
7min: 240F
Fast? to 356F
15.5min 392F
18min 404F

That has little to do with what I've heard elsewhere regarding Wendelroasting, and differs so greatly from the charts here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnordicbaristacup.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F10%2FNR_Experimental_roast.pdf that I don't know what the two have in common.

The charts in the PDF is cupping-roasts, it has nothing to do with Nordic Aproach.

And the Nordic Aproach method mentioned in the article, is probably not used by every light roaster over here - I know that Tim Wendelboe roast his light Kenyas in a very short time, to preserve the fruitiness. So we have to fool around with the methods, and find the the method that works best with the equipment we use. I roast on a Diedrich, and I belive that this roaster can work well with long roasts. When I get the magazine I ordered I will atleast try:-)