orwa wrote:However, I would like to discuss more about why would the baking of beans be generally undesirable. If we defined baking coffee as intentionally roasting it in temperatures between 300F and 390F then beyond the development of the nutty/woody flavours and depleting some of the sugars, why would this be considered generally undesirable?

Sigh. Some thoroughly traditional things, like dying in famines, are not worth adopting

The Italian tradition of baking coffee comes from the world wars and depression, when nothing but triage coffee adulterated with grain was available. The best recipes used toasted oats, like the Postum brand. There are lots of people who prefer the taste of Postum to coffee; but my suggestion is that they drink Postum and stop coming up with new ways of destroying perfectly good coffee (toddy brewers, white coffee, double roasting, etc etc)

A US home roasting "tradition" is to come up with ever more appalling roast practices in response to using lousy coffee, never cupped or even brewed, for espresso. This is another tradition worth avoiding.

I presumably "cupped" the thing and my question is now the following: is there such a thing as "ashy bitterness that is caused by the fines suspended in the liquor"? If there weren't such a thing then the liquor I got should have been bitter, otherwise I don't think that the liquor has been either inherently bitter, sour or anything else, i.e., I think that it had a presumably "clean" taste. A brief summary of the situation is that I am not being able to interpret what I have tasted (either positive or negative) due to me lacking any experience in "cupping". Note that I am totally neutral and unbiased to either conclusion. I also tasted the coffee next to pineapples and found the taste acceptable except for the ashy bitterness. I tried both of my Zassenhaus Turkish grinder and the other hand grinder for the cupping and noticed that the ashy bitterness may be resulting from the fines. I have another hand grinder that doesn't produce any fines but the problem with it is that the grind is very coarse (maximum particle diameter around 5mm, average around 1.5mm, very coarse), which I have not used. Using this grinder I am usually able to produce a liquor that is light in colour (tea-like) with a clean taste, but I did not use it this time because I depleted all of the 15 grams I roasted using the other two grinders (using 8 grams for 245 ml of water at a time). I am sorry if I am providing an excessive amount of detail but obviously it's because I have no experience and happens to be in a position where I need to carry on a test that I don't know how to conduct.

I am a little embarrassed to add that I went through another horrible roast in which I stayed at 180C for 10 minutes before ramping up to 200C and staying there for some time, then ramping up to 205C and ending the roast. I would like to confirm that the beans don't pop in such circumstances and that the acrid, ammonia-like acidity gets removed completely with no choking aftertaste in this case (this roast was 26 minutes in total). Note that I used a fan speed of "2" for the length of the ten minutes I spent at 180C. The interesting observation at this time was that the droplets of condensed roasting vapour had an intense, ammonia-like acidic smell that matches very well the defect that I have been trying to eliminate in the taste (same smell I used to experience upon opening the door of the oven when I was roasting using ovens). I think that this means that the substances responsible of the acrid acidity have been dissolved and carried away by the confined, moist roasting vapours. Of course, I do not want to be a lousy roaster and be proud of it, but I cannot resist proposing the following theory: Could it be that the chlorogenic acids (melting point: 206C-210C, some are soluble in hot water) are getting hydrolysed due to the circulating, moist roasting vapours resulting in quinic acid (melting point: 166C-168C, water soluble) which is then being dissolved and carried by the moist vapours -thus getting removed from the beans? (quote: "Quinic acid is also implicated in the perceived acidity of coffee", says Wikipedia). Now assuming this fairy tale was correct, then an extended drying phase at 338F (or maybe less) with a moist roasting environment may do the trick. In either case, I did not succeed in removing the acidity in temperatures below 300F and so I would like to humbly state that I don't think that the removal of the acrid acidity is correlated with raising the temperature beyond 390F or prolonged drying below 300F (not having these as direct cause). My speculations of the underlying transformations are probably incorrect, but this must not be confused with the fact that I am having great success eliminating the acrid acidity using some baking-based methods.

another_jim wrote:A US home roasting "tradition" is to come up with ever more appalling roast practices in response to using lousy coffee, never cupped or even brewed, for espresso. This is another tradition worth avoiding.

Not anymore! It seems as if it were a Saudi-Arabian tradition as well .

another_jim wrote:
If the coffee does pass the espresso test, I have a few tentative suggestions that may get the right roast.

• 220C is the absolute minimum for an espresso roast, and 225C is pretty light. Lower than that, the coffee will always taste acidic. The oily liquid you observed does not disqualify the coffee; for espresso roasts you will always burn some surface oils
• There are two sorts of acrid. The effect of chlorogenic acids from a too fast warmup is grassy bitterness at the tip of the tongue and bleach/ammonia aromas. On most drum roasters, this simply does noit happen; the warm up is never too fast. The effect of acridity from an overly dried, too slowly roasteds, or past crop coffee is an acrid, choking effect at the back of the throat. This is often an issue in drum roasters, especialy when a beginner is roasting. If the coffee is good and your upping roast is good, knock off a minute drying and a minute during the first crack and go 5C darker. That may do the trick.

225!

I was trying to do an Italian roast some time ago... The problem is that I get bitter notes, ashy and not mellow like Italian blends. Anyway, I don't understand how can I reach 220C, 225 or more... With 218C the beans look very very dark with burned oils.

I'm doing some new-style-light-roasts, which tastes pretty good, however I have no idea how to do an Italian roast. Should I follow the same profile as light roasts? (~3 1/2 minutes dry, ~3 1/2 ramp up and ~3 1/2 finish) but with more end temperature? Seems to doesn't work.