Thanks to Rich and Chris for these excellent, detailed notes! Lots of ideas to play with here.

My first 2 attempts:
Brazil Minas Gerais Murilo Neiva Junqueiro
West Bend Poppery with separate heat and fan control
Roasted 10/20
150g charge
Full city
I will do a preliminary cupping tomorrow and report here.
#1, 7 minutes after 1Cs

#2, 7:20 after 1Cs, first few snaps 2C


10/22. I brewed these as pour-over, using melitta cones with v60 paper filters. As others have noted, the standout feature is sweetness, with very little acidity. I got a little sweet cherry fruit in the fragrance, but aroma was all brown sugar and a little vanilla. Second roast -- the darker one -- was more complex, but the roast flavors were a bit woody. I prefer the first one even though it is simpler. My next attempt will be similar to my #1 but I will shoot for shorter development time.

10/25. 5th day after roast; same brew method as above. There is a deep raisiny character in the fragrance of both roasts that is less pronounced in the aroma and did not persist in the cup. The sweetness of both is diminished and both have a slight woodiness on the palate. There seems to be less difference between the two roasts than there was at 2-day rest.

I updated my post with a second roast. Please do feel free to critique or offer suggestions for improvement. In particular, I'm curious how to speed up ramp on this coffee without scorching it.

Jan, I think you are right to be cautious about pushing too much heat into this coffee. Have you thought of dropping down your charge mass a bit? I don't know what the lower limits of the Quest are in terms of how little you can roast without losing the ability to monitor your BT, but if I was trying to get a coffee to move faster without increasing MET in my own roaster, that's what I'd do. Hopefully someone with a Quest can chime in with more guidance.

Thanks for the suggestion. That's definitely a possibility. I'm using 150.0 g and know some use more, but I believe the BT probe may work with charges as low as 120-130 g? I might as well try with this coffee, since it's not really a coffee I'd buy aside from participating in this thread. (I just prefer dense, washed coffees.)

I know TomC uses METs quite a bit higher as well as larger batches, but perhaps his MET probe is placed differently. Mine is a standard EricS adapter with Omega thermocouples and tends to fall right in line with the numbers of other Quest users.

Roaster: Hottop

1st Attempt:
Charge weight: 215g
Charge temp: 310F BT
Yield: 187g, 13.1 % moisture loss
Dry time: 4.5 min
1st C: 8:39 min
Dev. time: 2 min
Total Time: 10 min

Will taste tomorrow and provide update....

*Update 10/15/14:

Roughly 12 hours after roast:
Melitta pour over: 21g coffee, 201F water
Smooth and rather naturally sweet, as the cup cooled the sweetness really came out. Tones of chocolate and roast. I can't pick out any spices or nuts, either way I enjoyed this cup.

Roughly 58 hours after roast:
Melitta pour over: 21g coffee, 201F water
Not so enjoyable cup, it was rather sour and tasted 'green'. Most likely mispreped this cup, it was 530 am... maybe my blurry morning vision misread my temp and the water was too cool.

Few hours later: I same method, cup tasted like my first, nothing different to report.





Open to any suggestions for 2nd attempt. This is my first R&L, looking forward to further participation!

IntrepidQ3 wrote:Open to any suggestions for 2nd attempt. This is my first R&L, looking forward to further participation!

Look at Chris's article, An Approach to Roasting Brazilians, at Coffee Shrub.

To enhance the it's inherent sweeteness and treat any pulp left on the bean as a result of natural processing, slow down your interval from Charge to EOD ("end of drying") from 4:30 to around 6:00. This means a lower charge temp, and less heat all the way until Ramp.

Make sure you have enough airflow in the roaster to maintain "negative pressure" in the drum throughout the entire roast period. If you want to "profile" airflow for deep and cleanly flavor, figure on just enough airflow for negative pressure through Drying, and near maximum -- say 75% fan -- for Development. Ramp can be lowish, or somewhere in the middle.

Ramp is generally pretty forgiving as long as you hit 1stCs at an appropriate time. At least up until you approach 1stCs when pyrolisis adds heat energy. The key to a controlled Development is anticipation. Anticipate 1stCs by about 20F by lowering power and increasing airflow, with an eye to getting an RoR of something in the neighborhood of 10F when pyrolisis ends about halfway through rolling 1stC.

Try and keep Development time proportional to finish. That is, a bare "C" level finish gets less Development than an FC/FC+.

As a sort of generic recommendation for roasting a 200g Charge in a HotTop, you might try a 13:00 roast -- 6:00, 4:00, 3:00 -- to FC (about 5F short of 2dCs).

The most basic things aren't so much recipe as discipline, self-honesty and good technique -- all of which add up to roasting on purpose instead of letting the bean or your roaster drag you along. Now that you know the temperatures for the roast milestones of 1stCs, 1stCe and 2dCs, plot a roast -- in writing, so you don't BS yourself -- with specific time intervals to the milestones, and try your best to stick it.

It's more important to make things perform according to a good plan than lucking into the perfect roast. Twice true when working with new equipment.

Rich

seacliff dweller wrote:Chris:" and at 3:30 I put the air full in"
I think you meant fully closed?

Yes, air fully closed.

I finally had a chance to do a Huky roast last night.
Roast Data
Roaster: Huky 500
Bean : Brazil Minas Gerais Murilo Neiva Junqueiro
Charge weight: 16 oz., charge temp: 518f (bean temp thermocouple)
1cs: 9:41, 395f
Finish: BT 420f
I had EOD at 4:30 - too fast, so my standard preheat was too much for this bean. You can maybe see that I tried to slow down the roast and, interestingly, that resulted in a delayed 1cs. Normally on this roaster I get 1cs around 385 to 390. Anyhow, I still like the looks of this roast. Tomorrow, I'll taste it and maybe try another roast with a slower start.
Here's the profile:


Tasting
10/25/2014 - 25 grams in Kalita Wave, 400 grams 200F water. Unremarkable. Dry grounds smelled of cedar and, if I tried real hard, maybe a little chocolate. Add the water and not much more. In the cup, pleasant, almost tea like. Maybe I ground too coarse. I'll try again tomorrow and I'll try another roast right now, but I expect I'll donate this roast to a Monday night meeting I attend. It'll be far superior to the Folgers they sometimes drink.

10/26/2014 - I got rid of that tea like characteristic that I dislike in coffee. Here's what I did today. Ground 28 grams coarse - like FP. Put that in my Impress with 400 grams 200f water for 4 minutes. Scooped off most of the grounds, then plunged. Ended with a mouth watering cup, somewhat like cocoa and with a fruitiness I couldn't identify. Maybe sugar cane juice? Very nice cup.

Added a note to my post of 10/21.