The Nordic Roasters Forum is going on now. Here is a lecture and a Q&A with John Laird on profiling and some test roasts. Using Cropster for the graphs. Check out the youtube library for more videos as they upload them. There are also 2 videos with Trish Rothgeb uploaded.

Here's the link to the NRF 2013 site

click on youtube on the screen below to access the NRF library

That's awesome! John is such a great guy. He sold me a grinder 2 years ago, and brought over tons of Verve Coffee, just for the hell of it. Didn't know he was super into roasting. I know he owned and ran some great cafes in the east bay many years ago.

Had many shots of espresso at his Pacific Bay Roastery back when my wife and I use to live in the Pleasanton/Dublin area. They were the only decent roaster out in that area at the time.

Thanks for posting the videos Ed. I always enjoy viewing the videos from the NRF. Great content as usual

Great video! Going to experiment a bit with the profiles on the Costa Rican beans I have.

Edit:
Here is my first test, 12 minute roast with a 2.5 minute developing time.
500g batch of Costa Rica.

Ben Kaminsky talks quite a bit about roasting in his presentation, with more focus around min. 57

I just finished watching Kaminsky's first video there. Pretty captivating stuff. I think it's interesting that it was Trish Rothgeb in the crowd who questioned Ben's argument of roasting individual coffees then blending them post roast, for espresso blends, according to their own profile, in order to normalize extraction ratios. The reason being, it was and apparently still is, her contention that all the arguments for post roasting blending never held up under scrutiny. I'm all for advancements in the field of roasting (and think there have been many), but it's gotta be a hard argument to mount, against someone like Trish with her roasting resume.

I don't think truth needs to be argued hard.
Her coffee is roasty/bakey IMO.

Attending the RGR this year felt like I was going back in time about 5 years. At least, the NRF is presenting for debate what folks have been exploring in roasting more recently.

endlesscycles wrote:I don't think truth needs to be argued hard.
Her coffee is roasty/bakey IMO.

Its myopic to claim any single approach as "right" or "truth" when it comes to coffee roasting. For example, I had your espresso coffee, I could not finish a bag, it just wasn't good tasting to me... But that does not mean everyone will find the same and I am sure some people love it.

My point being is that roasting is very wide spectrum precisely because of its result being reflected in the eye of beholder.

For me, what I like, continues to evolve. My first cup was M.House instant and I liked it