day wrote:Have you find this to be hard and fast or to have some exceptions?

Very little I do with roasting is hard and fast. Every day is a new dawn.

day wrote:Have you find this to be hard and fast or to have some exceptions?

I have never once found that quakers lend anything desirable to a cup. In fact, we (Counter Culture) have done cuppings where quakers have been removed from a sample by hand and then reintroduced at varying levels (No quakers, 1 quaker per cup, 5 per cup, etc.) and when tasted blind, the cups with even one quaker fall in score by multiple points.

Now that is really incredible information. Thank you so much for posting! I will be much more cautious and pay closer attention the next time I pick up a really fruity Ethiopian (the one time I, personally, would consider leaving them as is).

Boldjava wrote:Very little I do with roasting is hard and fast. Every day is a new dawn.

I hope you don't mind me asking for elaboration. Would you, then, generally leave them in for the first cup just to see how it plays out, and then roast without them again to see if that makes a difference. Or do you generally default to removing and then consider leaving them if you feel something is missing?

Thanks for the replies. Quaker is a new term for me, and it does seem to be part of the issue. As you can (hopefully) see in the pic below, there also appears to be large variations in the roast itself, from light to about a french roast. The roaster lists the beans as pulped natural Brazilian and washed Ethiopian. I believe they need to rest a bit more, so the hint of harshness and lack of complexity that I've experienced so far may not be a fair criticism.



Considering the wide range of coloration and the excellent reputation of the roaster, would it be right to assume that this might just have been a bad batch, or would there be another reason for the roaster to do this? I can't imagine it would be for added complexity, as the varying roast levels would require some pretty big variations in the brewing process for optimized flavor.

Thanks again.

day wrote:I hope you don't mind me asking for elaboration. Would you, then, generally leave them in for the first cup just to see how it plays out, and then roast without them again to see if that makes a difference. Or do you generally default to removing and then consider leaving them if you feel something is missing?

No. I roast small batches, 1K. They would get groomed out on WPs.

Naturals are a bit more difficult. You can groom them to death, depending on the roast, and still have a few quakers.

Hey guys! I have to say, I'm very confident that's us and this is Full Cycle.

We only post-roast blend, so the color variation should be expected. That said, I'm surprised by the range in color from that photo--while the Brazil is roasted to a darker level than the Ethiopian (~425 vs ~410; I'd need to chat with Rob to confirm), that appears more contrasted than I'm used to seeing. Do you know the roast date? I could check our logs to ensure it was an in-spec roast. Hopefully it's just the way the photo is turning out.

We also search for Quakers and remove them as we see them (Rob once saved a full cupping's worth of them and had the rest of the office blindly taste--we all thoroughly enjoyed the taste of socks that day), but there's no science to this process and removing 100% is not a goal--though we would recommend doing this at home if you find one in your dose.

I suppose my only other question would be reiterating what others have said: ignoring the visual, does it taste off?

I was afraid the description might give it away I was trying to keep from calling anyone out unfairly, but yeah, it's FC, and I appreciate you chiming in. Though it may not be the best batch I've gotten from you, over a week post roast and I've been able to pull some pretty decent shots with a little meddling. Despite the range of color, the beans seem to be very forgiving, so I'm still a happy customer.

The excellent reputation that proceeds your company, and this roast in particular, was the reason I originally posted. Every roaster experiences a less than optimal batch sometimes, but I didn't want to complain, only to find out that a gap in my limited knowledge could explain the variations.

Thanks again for all the excellent responses from everyone. I feel a bit wiser now.