Do soft(er) beans call for the use of less heat(MET), and therefore longer roast times and/or smaller loads? What about baking? How about bready taste as a result of a slow ramp to 1st? Someone please share some insight!

For a hard bean, my starting profile would be to dry for ~5mins, get to 1st crack in another 3+mins, then dump after 4+mins. Total roast time: 12mins or so. Now, I'd have to use high heat(MET) during some part of this roast to maintain said profile; I imagine that you'd have to do so on most roasters with an avg load.

My attempts to apply the above to soft(er) beans have been mostly no good; just doesn't seem to work.

I understand that island coffees should be roasted with mid-low/low heat. So, I'm thinking, you either extend the roast times significantly or reduce the load significantly, or both! But I'm not very attracted to doing 50g batches on my HT-B, and I can't imagine most people are, so the answer got to be longer roasting times.

So, how do you do soft(er) beans? Do they take longer times? How much longer than hard beans? Do you roast less at a time? Both?

You definitely need to keep the Met lower for low grown beans. I don't think there's a problem dropping them in at high temperatures -- the beans still have water early, so they won't tip or char -- which means you still should get to the first fairly fast.

The place to watch out is finishing roasts, especially medium or darker ones, where it's easy to get ashy. My guess in a drum, you'd start it hot and keep the heat fairly steady. I avoid METS over 465F-470F at the end of the roast for Brasils, YMMV.

Ah, so it's high charge temps for drums, not longer times or smaller batches. . .thanks!

It's very low growns I'm really worried about. I get the impression they have more moister %, no? How do you do them on your P1? Any time changes?

H-Bers, please share your roasting style for soft beans; sharing is loving .

coffee.me wrote:So, how do you do soft(er) beans? Do they take longer times? How much longer than hard beans? Do you roast less at a time? Both?

coffee.me wrote:H-Bers, please share your roasting style for soft beans; sharing is loving .

Ummm, can't understand the silence on this thread! Even with VERY generic Google searches such as "soft beans" and "low grown beans", a link to this thread is shown on the first page of hits. . . . but no "sharing" of roasting profiles is actually happening here.

Do fellow H-Bers even roast soft beans? One fine & wise gentleman, who shall remain nameless, once told me: "maybe learning to roast well is like being abducted by aliens or seeing God: once it happens you don't want to talk about it too much".

There's not much to say. Keep the Mets lower, and therefore finish the roast a little slower and/or at a lower bean temperature. If the coffee tastes ashy, the met was too high, if it isn't, it wasn't.

Max, Your quote got my laugh....
I don't have any soft beans in my stash! Even the couple Brazils I have are fairly high grown bourbons.
I treat Decaf as a 'soft bean', but maybe roast only 1lb decaf to 50lb hard beans. Decaf though is different than a soft bean, everything seems to happen about 10F lower temps than my 'regular' bean roasts.

I have been working the roast speed by thinking in terms of the difference between MET and BT at any given point in the roast. A softer bean does not conduct heat so well as the hard bean, so the temperature gradient (from MET to BT) should be kept lower or the outside of the bean will roast much more quickly than the inside. ie;uneven roast. The particular numbers will be different for the roaster.
During the drying, I just keep the MET 325 to 350F. For ramp to first a slow ramp (decaf/soft bean)would have MET 50-60F ahead of BT. A fast ramp would have this MET-BT margin 70-80F ahead. (100F is too much for even hard beans in my roaster here. Have to push the limit, watch the beans to find out )
As the MET reaches a temp to achieve & sustain first crack (for me 450-460F) I hold this temp range until first crack is about completed, then finish based on desired degree. For my taste, I haven't done much of anything above a 475F finish MET. Usually around 465F. MET follows BT, BT follows MET.
(Edit; I should add BT finish temps usually 430-435F at 3.5-4 minute post first crack with finish MET 465F ... at least in the summer.)

I have had my best results for soft beans in the HT B by dropping in at 250 (HT sensor) and then getting close to first crack with a power level of 7-8.

Jim & Rob, thanks for CPR-ing this thread, and Gary, thanks for generously donating some blood .

This was such a basic question one would think it's already in the FAQs. Ok, it's not there, so once I asked I thought all the home roasters would jump on it; just like they do when discussions about tamping, dosing or steaming come up; let alone questions about buying a tamper, a basket or a pitcher!

Oh, well, I'll hopefully do the Hottop-B here, but regardless of your roaster (i.e. even if it's this or this), do share your thoughts; this is after all a discussion board and not a scientific journal or a lawyers' meeting.





All in the hope of turning this into a rich thread covering this class of greens.

I like your quote! I had so much trouble with soft beans and was about to give up thinking I just didn't like them (though I have had many cups I enjoyed from pro roasters) or the HT wasn't up to the task. Then I got the advice to drop in at a higher temp to shorten the overall roast time, but that was it, lol. Willem Boot's article Ruling the Roast I has great info on bean densities but it is written for big bad roasting machines so the low to medium heat translated into baked beans for my HT with 22 minute roasts for 228g batch. My HT sensor reads slower then my TC so when the HT sensor reads 250 the TC is 280-290f, I have not tried a higher drop say the 400f that pro roasting machines seem to like. I figure with the larger batch size in a big roaster the beans drop the 400f down lower then I would get from my HT, still I think I will try it.