Today's roast

edpiep wrote:Curious to know what the difference was in the cup between your posts with higher charge temps and these last ones with lower charge temps.

Sorry I missed this post. The profiles with the higher charge temps, those posted before today's roast were very thin, almost sharp tasting. I don't think it had anything to do with charge temp as much as the lousy profile.

There's that bump between 7min & 8 min Ill take care of tomorrow

Roasting my day away. 225 g Costa Rican. Am I improving?

I'm seeing the same results on every roast. The RoR is above 50. I think if you watch Randy's video, at Buckeye, of how he roasted a small sample charge like yours you will see that he used a fraction of the energy. It just appears that there is way too much energy being applied to these small charges. I'd look more at what the roaster is actually doing and not get too obsessed with what the profile graph looks like. Cheers.

In other words charge at a lower temp?

The RoR of 50 is not caused by too much burner. He has his burner off til almost 3min point. The high RoR is mostly caused by the charge temp. To lower this peak, simply lower charge temp. Also, with thin probes the RoR peak would be higher than with roasters with thicker probes. I can tell by his TP that he has a thin probe just like mine. That said, after the BT turns and begins the ramp, I see it crosses 200F at slightly less than 1:30. That is pretty quick IMO and a lower charge would lengthen. But it depends on your bean and goals if this change is necessary.

IMO your roasts don't look that bad and should produce pretty tasty coffee depending on the bean. A low grown, less dense and perhap a natural bean may suffer some scorching with your quick start that this profile shows. So if you are tasting some off burnt flavors, this may be the cause. Scorching is not always something you can see when inspecting your beans. Tipping is another indication of too high of heat, but often happens later in the profile and causes similar burnt/ashy flavors.

Your speed into FC is pretty fast and I believe is causing the plateau just before FC and what looks like a crash after FC. You may want to peak your ET curve slightly earlier. And keep gas lower going through FC. So, this recommendation assumes you are targeting a Scott Rao linearly declining RoR which IMO should result in pretty good coffee. But it still requires some tasting and tweaking timing and amount of development.

I haven't heard a lot on this thread about what flavor or taste issues you are trying to solve. I hope you are tasting and making notes of all these roasts. There likely are some tastes, which may be slight, are a result of your profile changes. Do some side-by-side taste comparisons. Tell us what is happening.

Are the gas settings in your profile what you're actually doing? Looks like a 2 1/2 minute soak. If so, it's hard to understand why your peak ROR is so high. Tried a larger batch size with these settings yet?

Thanks for the reply folks. They are appreciated and needed. My probes are 1/16" from Omega. Very sensitive compared to the 5mm units the roaster came with. I turn on gas 1kPa @ 1 minute and slowly ramp up to my max setting. I have tried larger batch sizes but I used higher charge temps thinking I should. Coffee tastes OK, not fabulous.
As far as watching Buckeye video's, I have watched many. Randy doesn't profile his roasts so my information doesn't correlate. probes are different also.

I do believe it is important to cup these roasts with others at lower charge temps. Try charging at 25° less than 400° for two other roasts, keep your settings the same and then cup the results. Then go from there to alter the profile to fit cup characteristics you like.

I don't know the difference in heat/air settings between a BC and my Huky but I think charging lower will be helpful. I charge 100g batches below 350°F consistently and only use about 55% of my gas for a max push coming out of soak. Those results have been better for me (this is just for reference, obvi your settings will probably vary).