TomC wrote:competitors seemed to grasp lighter "cupping " roasts this time around.

lol.. yeah i bet

It's true I roast professionally, but I absolutely believe most home roasters are more qualified than most pros, so I knew the competition was going to be tough.

Closed Brewing: Rwanda Jomba Vunga

I bought two batches worth, one for brewed and one for espresso. I roasted the espresso first to see if there were any funny dynamics at first in a context that gave me time to work with it. The espresso roast went smooth and as planned. The brewed roast was going great, but I let my attention waver and didn't foresee a stall leading into first. The baked comment comes as no surprise as a result. It didn't loose temperature, but didn't gain it, either for about thirty seconds.

The profile was basically this:
Get to first crack around 8:30, 392F and finish at 11:00, 410F. Honestly, I do my best to not mess with the roast until first crack, and I try to be subtle with my adjustments. I don't use software, just a really nice Fluke thermometer that doubles as a stopwatch.
I went with a profile I thought would maximize the fruit and spice I was hoping to see in this coffee. After tasting it, I think I would have been a little lighter on it. Too much cocoa and spice for my liking.


Open Brewing: Ethiopia Kochere Teklu Dembel

I've had this coffee for a month or so, and knew it was competition material with it's exotic flavors and great sweetness. It's spent most of its time this summer as a fruit-punchy iced coffee.
The roast went faster than planned, and hit first at 7:30, 392F, finishing at 10:00, 400F. Slow and low; which I think earned it the "well contained" comment. Faster would have brighter at that temperature. Slower would have been an outright stall.

I submitted dry processed Ethiopian Gedeo Worka for both the espresso and brew coffee. Load 300g.

The brew coffee was charged at 160C, turning point 1:30 99C with first crack at 10:20 at 192C, then dropped at 12:20 at 211.5C. To increase acidity, the drum rotation was tad faster at 70rpm.

For espresso, charge temperature 160C, turning point 1:30 at 98.5C, first crack 11:00 at 192C, then dropped at 13:30, 2:30 minutes past start of first crack, and drum rotation slower at 65rpm, to gain more body for espresso. Hopefully Jim and Sherman would enjoy the coffee.

My wife and I enjoy dry processed coffee, so this is what I roasted for the competition.

Marshall's roast was very unique. The dry fragrance was floral with jasmin and tearose, and wet fragrance was ginger. It had a nice snappy acidity.

I was very appreciative to taste all the competitors' coffee. Clean, acidic coffees probably will score higher; although acidity will be helpful, the roast has to be developed.

Done with the first round tasting of 11 open and 12 closed espresso entries. Sherman and I will be judging the best five from each group tomorrow.

In the last two years, I did the first round shots unblinded, and then did the finals blind. This year, I rebagged all the coffee entries and am staying blind from beginning to end. So I don't know even who made the finals. We'll open all the envelopes at the end.

I prefer this method, since it has less distractions; but if people prefer interim reports, I'll go back to the old style.

Thanks Jim, Henry, and all the others for volunteering your time again this year- its much appreciated.

Here's my brain dump from my 1st place in closed brew and 7th place in open brew entries.

The 7th place open brew entry did better than I expected. I made a series of mistakes and just didn't have the will to change course. The first of these mistakes was believing I could stop beans from aging by using an ordinary freezer (subject to defrost cycles) and minimal air contact. This was the oldest/longest attempt at doing so, and it was a clear failure. The bean as submitted was a shadow of its former self when fresh. The second mistake was botching the first and only trial run I could do, having only 1lb to work with. I thought I had premeasured the batch sizes prior to freezing, but they were slightly heavier to displace more air in the containers. This extended the roast, and I assumed its deficiencies were due to a roast 2 minutes longer than ideal. And the nail in the coffin was submitting the entry essentially untasted. Once I 'cupped' the entry, ~8 hours after mailing the entry, I knew it wasn't special. Honestly I'm a bit relieved to see the placement and comments because it confirms my palate. So there's that.

The 1st place closed brew entry followed essentially the same roast profile as my last year's winning entries, and the same profile I use for pretty much everything: ~20F/min to start 1st crack, slow down to ~5F/min as quickly as possible after 1st crack begins (for my Hottop, this mean cutting the heat in ADVANCE of reaching 1c), and maintain that rate until the desired roast is obtained, a minimum of 3 minutes and typically not more than 4 minutes.

Here are my roast notes, translation, and the profile. (Thanks again JimG for the excellent TC4 project!)

"7.9oz drop in 119.5 volts, 225bt, 290et. 1c 8:30/332bt/383et. eject 12:15/350bt/382et."

7.9oz: 8 oz batches are possible on the Hottop without scorching, but I needed to add extra drum fins to get there. This isn't just about laziness and wanting to roast the biggest batch size possible. The extra bean mass makes for a more predictable temperature rate of chance. Since I roast manually (no PID), this is important.

119.5 volts: I don't bother with a Variac, instead I adjust the batch sizes based on the voltage the Kill-a-Watt reports. Typically I roast in the 7.5-8.0oz range depending on what the grid is giving me at the time.

225bt/290et: yes, my temperatures are off, but they're consistent. Use my first crack start time to correlate these to your temps.

eject 12:15/350bt/382et: as you can see this was 3:45 minutes post start of 1c, yet only an 18F gain in Bean Temp, and a slight dip in Environmental Temp.

That's about it. Hope it helps...

I assume most folks won't care to hear the detail on my roast profile for the 6th place Open Category Burundi (Prestige Cup #1 Kiryama) so I'll focus on the roast profile for my 2nd place PNG Smallholders in the Closed Brew Category.

I have been playing around with higher charge temps (north of 380-390) recently and I went that route with the PNG entry. In hindsight (seeing the judges comments of over-extended drying phase on the Burundi) it may have been the way to go with the Burundi, but I only had 1 lbs of the Burundi so I couldn't play around much with different profiles. It was pretty much a one shot deal with the Burundi based on my limitations.
I prefer to keep my roasts fairly light (City to City+) so I typically procure greens (mainly Centrals and Africans) that excel at that roast level. The vast majority of my brew roasts have a 2:30-3:00 1C-EOR development, but on the PNG it wasn't working for me so I decided to extend the 1C-EOR to 3:15-3:30 and it seemed to make a big difference.

Anyway, on to the roast....
Hottop B2 w/ larger drum fins (courtesy of JohnB)
Roasted on 7/2 (227 g Charge)
Rested Beans for 3 days before Vacpacking
Voltage (116.8-117V per Kill-a-Watt) was horrible on 7/2 as it was a hot day here in Denver. With Normal 119-121V I would reach 300BT in less than 4:00 (assuming 227g charge @ 390-400BT) so I would normally need to cut power a bit at turn to reach a 4:30 300BT. Due to the lower voltage I kept the Hottop at Full power/no fan up to 300BT

Hottop Notes....
P10/F0 through 300BT
P10/F2 at 300BT
P5/F3 at 352BT
P4/F3 at 375BT

392BT Charge
202BT Turn @ 1:15
300BT @ 4:30
390BT - 1C @ 9:02
408BT - EOR @ 12:32

rama wrote:the same profile I use for pretty much everything: ~20F/min to start 1st crack, slow down to ~5F/min as quickly as possible after 1st crack begins

This is the type of straightforward tip that is why I read every post in Home Roasting. Once a new roaster learns the nuances of their machine and starts hitting a profile close to this they can soon start seeing excellent results.

farmroast wrote:"cupping" roasts? roast free?

I'm not sure what wasn't clear by the statement. But basically, they felt that this years submissions by and large, were lighter, pre-second crack roasts, that allowed the beans native varietal character to shine thru, compared to last years submissions that were apparently darker.

Perhaps instead of separating the words by quotations, I should have used a comma or a forward slash. I was typing on my cell. Does lighter, cupping roasts work better?

So in an effort to critique my own espressos ahead of the results: I submitted Guatemala injerto for the open and a blend of Rwanda jomba vunga and the java kopi Sunda for the closed.

For the guat injerto: I just roasted one quick batch of this to my standard espresso profile. I wasn't planning on entering the open competition until the day of. I cupped it and I mailed it out. The cupping tasted decent. Maybe slightly under-developed, but not to the degree of my brewing submission. I had just enough beans left over to pull one shot of this at seven days post roast. I don't remember too much actually, except that it was somewhat complex. I'll have to roast another batch to the same profile to re-taste after the judges remarks.

My 66% kopi Sunda and 33% jomba vunga blend I put a good bit of work into. I've never blended before. But the jomba vunga as a SO was just a bracing apple/sugar shot that needed to be tamed. Surprisingly, I felt like the kopi Sunda, being a clean coffee, had decent apple malt besides the usual brown sugar. My first blends of 50/50 were still very bright and I didn't get enough base notes. So I roasted the kopi Sunda to a 210 finish and increased the percentage of it.

Since this was a blend, I had about 3 shots worth of espresso to try myself. On day 5-6, I felt they were hitting their peak. It was a nice juicy sugar apple with a touch of cinnamon. However, by day seven, the body was beginning to fall apart. I don't know why, either. Is it my storage? (cheap ziplock bags). I think it's gotta be my profile. I've never optimized for body because rarely does a coffee make it past 7 days. I usually start using it at day 3 and then am done with it by 6-7. The crema production during those days usually masks anything else wrong with the body.

The favors were still good, although I took the kopi Sunda a tad too dark for my tastes and it had a hint of bitters/ash.

I think the favors were still there but I expect to see some low body scores unless Jim froze my submission upon receipt (3 days post). I didn't include any instructions to do so because I was thinking "sweet, without me drinking it this coffee will get some proper rest.". Anyway, I know what I'm gonna be focusing on next with my roasts.

I might have looked for a third component but those were the only closed coffees I had on hand. I'll post my profiles after the results.

Dear HBers,

I regret to inform you that results are delayed. It appears our judges got confused and thought they were supposed be having shots of tequila, not espresso. This resulted in further confusion, and, well, you know how it goes.

Edit: sources are now reporting that the judges may have tasted the delicious wine like qualities of my espresso, and decided to compare it to actual wine.