I have noticed a rather unpleasant chicory (?) like flavor that I get with some of my Sumatra home roasts. I have noticed this with Mandheling and Blue Batak coffees. I did not notice it with any Lake Tawar coffees.

I don't like it and I want to avoid it in the future. I was looking at my roast notes and was curious if one of the following could be magnifying this flavor: 1) a weak 1C or 2) an excessively long 1C to 2C time frame or 3) excessive total roast time. I would like to mute this flavor. During my last roast, I tried with marginal success, to reach 1C with a little more momentum. This seemed to help a little. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Michael

You might try letting the coffee rest for 5-10 days. You might be surprised. I've roasted Sumatras that were undrinkable for the first week or so and then suddenly became very very good.

Sumatra has an aggressive taste, and needs to be mellowed by fully extracting -- gind very fine and keep the doses low. This will properly balance the roast tastes in caramels.

If you still don't like the coffee, consider a slow start/ fast finish roast profile, taking time to get to the first crack, then upping the heat and finishing fast -- this works well on many Sumatras.

I've noticed it with some roasts and not with others, so I'm guessing it's not a brew/extraction issue. I don't have the best control of my Behmor roasts, but I'll keep trying to speed up the finish. Thanks for the feedback. I'll report back after the next Sumatra roast.

Michael

Resting a bit longer, say 2-4+ days over what you normally rest, can also help

I finally roasted another batch of Sumatra Grade 1 Mandheling from SM and thought I should follow up.

I managed to carry more momentum into 1st crack and decreased the time between 1C and the onset of 2C (still about 4 min) and the result was great. No more wierd, unpleasant hickory smell, flavor. I even found it very enjoyable as brewed coffee. It was better with rest, but this was unrelated to the unwanted flavor note.

Michael