I roasted my first batch of this on my gasser last night. Todays brew shows a ton more potential, balance and developed sweetness. I'm definitely getting a lot of honey and ripe pomelo sugary sweetness. I'm in the process of simply switching my TC4C board over to my gas roaster instead of trying to figure a work around on the Phidgets setup that requires a lot more tech savvy software knowledge (for now). My BT probe is well placed, but I need to route a better positioned Environmental Temp probe, so my profile isn't very useful to anyone buy me at the moment.

Taste notes for my two roasts so far:

Roast #1 - 14% development
- Very light, no roast flavor
- Not grassy or astringent
- Acidic, but less than expected
- Very sweet, like white sugar
- Short finish
- Brothy, stewed vegetable flavor. Pretty gross.

Well Tom, I get your comments. If I'm being totally honest, I'm pretty excited I was able to make a good coffee suck so badly. It demonstrates I'm able to exercise a far more dynamic set of techniques. They may not always work, but they're in my toolkit, and now learning when and where to apply them will become paramount.

Roast #2 - 17% development
- Very light, no roast flavor
- Not grassy or astringent
- Defined acidity in the mid-palate
- Very long finish
- Good sweetness, not as bluntly simple as in roast 1
- Defined fruit and floral flavors, but not clear what fruit yet
- Slight brothiness but not nearly as gross

I think both of these roasts will benefit from more rest. Regardless, I've roasted, and now I've learned . . . not to under-roast Kenyas because they end up super gross. Lesson learned.

My next set of roasts on this bean will be into the 20-22% development range, probably hot charge, FSSF style roast more typical of what everyone else is doing.

jalpert wrote:Taste notes for my two roasts so far:

Roast #1 - 14% development
- Very light, no roast flavor
- Not grassy or astringent
- Acidic, but less than expected
- Very sweet, like white sugar
- Short finish
- Brothy, stewed vegetable flavor. Pretty gross.

Well Tom, I get your comments. If I'm being totally honest, I'm pretty excited I was able to make a good coffee suck so badly. It demonstrates I'm able to exercise a far more dynamic set of techniques. They may not always work, but they're in my toolkit, and now learning when and where to apply them will become paramount.

I've made lots of good coffee suck badly. Most important thing is to not build a love affair with a coffee. Aim higher, do better, don't focus on the ones that flop. If I wasn't the main coffee consumer in my home, I'd be maybe slightly less inclined to toss em and move on, but that's what I do.

jalpert wrote:Roast #2 - 17% development
- Very light, no roast flavor
- Not grassy or astringent
- Defined acidity in the mid-palate
- Very long finish
- Good sweetness, not as bluntly simple as in roast 1
- Defined fruit and floral flavors, but not clear what fruit yet
- Slight brothiness but not nearly as gross

I think both of these roasts will benefit from more rest. Regardless, I've roasted, and now I've learned . . . not to under-roast Kenyas because they end up super gross. Lesson learned.

My next set of roasts on this bean will be into the 20-22% development range, probably hot charge, FSSF style roast more typical of what everyone else is doing.

Just taking a glance at your profiles, and bearing in mind that you can't taste a profile (so take it with a grain of salt), consider trying to increase the delta temp from your first crack to your finish temp. All that time, and little increase in bean temp is likely giving you that lackluster short finish and flatness. With dense Kenyan's that generally means hitting them harder going into first crack for an aggressive start. You should be able to tweak your profile (yellow-ramp-finish) accordingly to still land at a reasonable total roast time and development without ending in full city or picking up too much of a roast note.

I'd stay on your first roast profile results another day or two though, it might have a lot of potential. Sweet is always good, especially if you've avoided grainy-grassy notes. You've probably preserved a bit more acidity in your first profile. That should move the cup forward a bit, in my opinion.

TomC wrote:Just taking a glance at your profiles, and bearing in mind that you can't taste a profile (so take it with a grain of salt), consider trying to increase the delta temp from your first crack to your finish temp. All that time, and little increase in bean temp is likely giving you that lackluster short finish and flatness.

Totally agree, I think I nearly stalled it during first crack.

TomC wrote:I'd stay on your first roast profile results another day or two though, it might have a lot of potential. Sweet is always good, especially if you've avoided grainy-grassy notes. You've probably preserved a bit more acidity in your first profile. That should move the cup forward a bit, in my opinion.

Well, I'm at a factory in China for the next two weeks, so it's either A) keep drinking my Kenyas, or B) dump them and start drinking the instant junk they've got here. Kenyas it is!

In other news, I did a batch of FOTR Colombia using a similar technique to the two Kenyas above. I get hints of rose, great balance of caramel and acid, and overall a fantastic clean, light coffee with no astringency. My submission was very good; this coffee is fantastic. Not surprising considering I basically purloined your curve from FOTR.

I've been stuck in a rut for ~a year. I've used this coffee to really get outside of my normal roasting method to try and break out of that rut. That is to say, I've ruined a lot of the 5# I purchased. However, my most recent roast is actually quite good. I finally have sparkling acidity, clear citrus (mild pomelo/grapefruit, like oro blanco maybe), maybe a bit of a vanilla-like sweet floral on the aromatics. Needs rest but the flavor is already clearly so much better than my previous roasts. I achieved this by basically reversing my typical heat application on my Huky 500 (starting with high heat and decreasing, rather than starting with lower heat and increasing). This is actually how I used to roast about 2 years ago, but was plagued by scorching, and a few other defects from using hurricane-like air flow.

Anyway, this profile goes a little something like this:
# 300g charge
# 225*C charge temp
# Tan around 4:30
# 1CS around 8:30
# Push a bit with heat through the beginning of first crack, trailing off until dropping it significantly to finish



Definitely not a perfect roast, but this at least gives me a good starting point for further exploration.

Updated notes from my first 2 roasts. (updated on my post with the graphs)

Profile 1....Excellent! Sweet, tea like body with balanced acidity. Fully developed although my next round I'll probably try 25% dev just to see what happens.

Profile 2...Grassy, underdeveloped. Not good at all.

I plan to approach it much slower my next round to see what happens and also mimick profile 1 but with longer development. We shall see!

What a great coffee! Here are the notes from my first roast:

--

Roasting Info:

Bean: Kenya Kirinyaga Karimikui AA
Roaster: USRC Sample Roaster
Charge Mass: 400g
Charge Temp: 385F
Dry/Ramp/Development: 3:30/3:40/2:40
FC-start temp: 372F
Finish Temp: 392F
Overall Roast Time: 9:50
Moisture Loss: 14%

Profile Plot:



[BT=Red, Exhaust=Green, Gas=Blue, Fan=Yellow]

Cupping Notes:

Rest: 1 day
Brewer: V60
Grinder: Mini-Bunnzilla
Water: 300mL, 207F
Coffee: 20g

Tastify Plot:



Overall Impression: I took a pretty moderate approach to this, similar to what has worked well for me with Kenyans in the past. I was seeking a roast that could work well for both brewing and espresso. This had a really classic Kenya aroma, with lots of fruit and spices, and just a hint of sundried tomato. The cup was rich and bright, with lavender dominating among the floral tones, lime/pineapple/cherry acidity, and notes of cloves and nutmeg underneath. The finish was drying, but not unduly astringent, and the high notes lingered on the tongue in a pleasant way. I look forward to seeing if this roast also works well as a SO espresso.

My next roast will probably be faster & lighter, along the lines of what some of you have been posting in this thread. But I'm very pleased with how much character this roast maintained while going a bit longer and deeper, and I expect that the increased solubility will translate well when I start trying to pull shots with it.

---

Updated to add (6/9 at 4PM): I just pulled my first Caravel single of this and it was delightful. It was richly floral, with sweet mandarin orange acidity, some subtler spice notes, and undertones of bittersweet chocolate. Pull temp was around 205F, brew ratio was about 85%, and I ground fine enough to make it a slow, steady pull.

I want to shoot for your exact profile next. Maybe drop 20 or so seconds earlier.

Cool! Let us know how it goes. I just updated the post above with some espresso tasting notes. This roast works so well for that that I expect to go through most of it pulling shots.

I roasted again tonight.. For some reason my profiles didn't sync with Dropbox from my roast house to my house. Maybe I lost Internet back there. Will check it out and post tomorrow. Both batches smell absolutely amazing.