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TomC wrote:Sweet Maria's has what appears to be description wise, a beautiful Brazilian that I roasted last night along with about 14 other coffees. My plan is to use the Brazilian along with either this Hassan Natural or the new Tej from Royal. I didn't take either quite as far, but just FC.

The idea of cocoa notes, banana chips, strawberries and all that nice sounding stuff just from the Brazilian, it might not need much of the Ethiopians, but it'll be fun to play with.

Other than my espresso blend that has only 15% Ethiopia, I have never been able to successfully blend a Brazil with a significant amount of an Ethiopia.

One of my most successful blends is a 60/40 Sumatra/Ethiopia. Go figure.

Finally got through my older greens and pulled some of this out of the freezer. Just finished the first roast and was struck by the fruity aromatics evident right out of the roaster. Never had such an obvious nose-ful of fruits (blueberry and stone fruits) in the cooling tray. Looking forward to cupping in a few days.

I haven't had time to fix my North yet, but I decided to jump right in since I'm starting to get good control of my HGBM. Dry cupping out of the cooling tray tasted nectar sweet, with blueberry and ultra sweet strawberry and a touch of bitter distillate at the top end in the aftertaste. I'm looking forward to trying this once it rests a bit.



Added: 1st cupping 2 days out shows this is sweet and well developed with balancing acidity. It has medium body and some silky taste. Fruit and florals start appear in aftertaste as it cools. I can only fully taste this at room temperature when acidity, berries and hint of florals show themselves. I think it just needs more time to open up because there's a bitterness that doesn't taste baked.

Now that's a nice kind of curve I find to be really nice on Ethiopians.

Thanks! Practice, practice.

I've figured out the sweet spot for my HGBM is about 325 to 350 gm. This lets the bean mass absorb heat fast enough without running away. Also I've got to keep the heat gun dialed pretty high to have enough momentum going into 1C, at least 22°F ROR or a bit more. From the start of 1C I don't touch its setting for about 35 sec. Just when I see the ROR decline start to ease up I dial the heat back, and then I'm smelling the roast while feathering the heat until the drop.

These greens are very dense, which made it easier to control the drying phase and enter maillard with momentum.

Nice, how would you try and land this if you were going for those darker notes and finish with something like chocolate and fruit? Is that an option, thinking where you are going to land? Or do you let the roast take you and you decide to drop where is best?

With this contraption I would head into 1C with more momentum in order to continue a declining ROR until a later drop. My North roaster is another story because it's more controllable and has more radiant and conductive heat already in the roast chamber.

I'm a bit late to the party. I got some of this in the mail yesterday and roasted it today. Big thanks to JohnnyLSU for sharing a few pounds of his supply.

I started roasting on an Ikawa Home a few weeks ago, and I've only done around 15-20 roasts on it. That said, it seems possible to extrapolate my old approaches from my Quest M3 if I treat MET and inlet temperature as roughly analogous. (After all, inlet temp should be approximately the maximum temperature that a coffee seed would see.)

My general approach to roasting coffee is:
1) Start with plenty of momentum. Charge as hot or nearly as hot as possible without tipping. (This starts development early and helps ensure evenness of roast and good development of the inner bean.)
2) Roast quickly to preserve acidity. (But not so fast as to prevent development or aromatics.)
3) Spend at least ~18% of the roast in development to maximize solubility and development at lighter roast levels.

For high quality dry-processed Ethiopian coffees, I approach them pretty much as I would a washed coffee, and that was the case here. I don't find they burn terribly easily. I'm still adjusting to the Ikawa, and not having a BT measurement is definitely strange. But it's not as bad as you might suspect.

Roast (1) was designed to spend a little bit longer in the drying phase and speed through ramp to maximize acidity and keep any bready flavors minimal. (The downside of a quick ramp with an Ethiopian coffee, in my experience, is potentially reduced florality.)

Charged at 0:30s, total roast time 5:50
Development ~25-26% (* hard to say since 1C onset is debatable with such a tiny batch)
11.8% WL



Roast (2) was meant to impart even more early heat and reach development a bit faster, to maximize sweetness.

Charged at 0:30s, total roast time 5:50
Development ~1:30, ~25%
13.4% WL



Tasted as a 12:210 v60-01, immediately after roasting (rested 10 minutes after grinding)

(1) sweet and juicy. strawberry, rapsberry, lemon curd, earl grey. good acidity. tastes somewhere between a high-quality washed Ethiopian coffee and a more stereotypical DP Ethiopia, which is good and typical of high quality naturals
(2) Sweetness is slightly more prominent and is extremely lingering. flavor clarity a bit lower. Was slightly bitter when hot but just sweet on cooling. Curious to try this as espresso.

I didn't get any onion flavors in either

Will taste again on Sunday and then pull one shot of each.

P.S.: if someone feels like selling 2-3 pounds of the Royal Tej process, please message me.