So far I've been on both sides of the 9 minute first crack (fc), with an air popper from sweet Maria's I could not get past 5 minutes with fc and last night I roasted in a bread maker w/heatgun and hit fc at 12:00 because I was scared of burning the beans.

The fast roasted coffees have been very "bright" meaning that they have all tasted like lemon juice/green tea mixed with weak coffee.

I haven't tried the 12:00 to fc yet, but it smells really interesting, it reminds me of chocolate flavored kids cereal...

So what flavor are created or released if you roast too slowly???

Also does roasting too fast effect caffeine level? I have been getting a headache around an hour after drinking coffee which goes away if I drink a cup from the local shop...

First I'm not expert, but generally you have development, which is the time from first crack to end of roast, and roast level, which is the final bean temp. So you can undeveloped and undercook your beans, you can underdevelop and overcook your beans, and you can overdevelop and overcook your beans. Generally underdeveloped results in grassy flavors, overdeveloped results in bland flavors (some call it baked, I just call it bland), and overcooked results in burnt flavors. It's more complicated than that, but that's the down and dirty. How that translates into good coffee is highly subjective, and the fun of roasting is figuring out what tastes good to you.

Also time to first crack in of itself doesn't mean much. For example, option 1 get to 1c by hitting 300f bean temp in 5 minutes and then 1c in the next 5 minutes and option 2 get to 350f bean temp in 5 minutes and 1c in next 5 minutes. Gonna taste really different. All that said, in my experience it is highly likely your 12 minute roast will taste better than your 5 minute roasts, simply because 5 minutes will very likely be underdeveloped whereas with 12 minutes you have a good fighting chance

If you don't know where to begin, a good starting profile is to get to a bean temp of 300f in 4-5 minutes, get to 1c in the next 4-5 minutes, and to end of roast in next 90-150 seconds. If you can't read your bean temp, I would start by getting that done, because IMO it will make learning much easier. Experiment, keep reading, and work out from there.

My understanding is roast level doesn't have much effect on caffeine, so maybe just try different beans.

Unrooted wrote:So far I've been on both sides of the 9 minute first crack (fc), with an air popper from sweet Maria's I could not get past 5 minutes with fc and last night I roasted in a bread maker w/heatgun and hit fc at 12:00 because I was scared of burning the beans.

The fast roasted coffees have been very "bright" meaning that they have all tasted like lemon juice/green tea mixed with weak coffee.

I haven't tried the 12:00 to fc yet, but it smells really interesting, it reminds me of chocolate flavored kids cereal...

So what flavor are created or released if you roast too slowly???

Also does roasting too fast effect caffeine level? I have been getting a headache around an hour after drinking coffee which goes away if I drink a cup from the local shop...

You're not "roasting too slowly" going to 1C at 12 minutes. You're giving the beans a chance to properly develop all the way thru.

What you're experiencing with your airpopper 5 minute 1C roasts is severely underdeveloped bean centers. The coffee is weak because it's barely soluble. You'll have a lot more enjoyment with the heat gun and bowl, since you can control things better.

HoldTheOnions wrote:First I'm not expert, but generally you have development, which is the time from first crack to end of roast, and roast level.....

I'm not trying to argue semantics, but technically, if the beans are in a hot roaster, development is happening. It's false to state that development happens from 1C till the end of the roast, even though that's been a common terminology used for a long time. We should work to improve the dialogue of what's actually happening. We all know that Maillard reactions and caramelization all begin at temps lower than 1C, so it would be inaccurate to say "development" is happing after 1C.

I generally describe roasting in 3 simple, but more accurate phrases: yellow, ramp, and finish.

I was one who also regularly would state things like "end of drying" instead of yellow (beans contain moisture up till well into heavy 2C, so they're not technically dry). I describe the "ramp" as my chosen heat application from the time they're yellow till they hit 1C. And my "finishing" phase is just that, how I carry the beans from 1C till I drop them.

TomC wrote:I'm not trying to argue semantics, but technically, if the beans are in a hot roaster, development is happening. It's false to state that development happens from 1C till the end of the roast, even though that's been a common terminology used for a long time. We should work to improve the dialogue of what's actually happening. We all know that Maillard reactions and caramelization all begin at temps lower than 1C, so it would be inaccurate to say "development" is happing after 1C.

I generally describe roasting in 3 simple, but more accurate phrases: yellow, ramp, and finish.

I was one who also regularly would state things like "end of drying" instead of yellow (beans contain moisture up till well into heavy 2C, so they're not technically dry). I describe the "ramp" as my chosen heat application from the time they're yellow till they hit 1C. And my "finishing" phase is just that, how I carry the beans from 1C till I drop them.

Agree absolutely. Since Rao I drop light and it tastes good to me... Sweet with acidity. Obviously "developed" to the cores of the beans, as can be seen by breaking them open.

Tom is right. With better consistent vocab we can avoid misconceptions like "light roasts are grassy and undeveloped" when reality is, undeveloped roasts are grassy but light roasts consistent through the core of beans are sweet and delicious.

I have a heatsnob ordered, so I should be able to know what my beans are up to!

I drank my dogbowl heatgun coffee this morning and it smelled great, the beans were a bit oily and it tasted like a store bought dark roast, or Starbucks blonde...


I'm still confused about why sweet Maria's even sells a popcorn if there isn't really a way to get a decent roast from it, maybe mine just burned extra hot...

TomC wrote: I generally describe roasting in 3 simple, but more accurate phrases: yellow, ramp, and finish.

I like your simple terms but for the yellow phase i think it is not perfectly accurate as it does not apply for example to a decaf bean that does not start green but rather as a light brown color. But it works for cafeinated green coffee. So maybe "Initial stage/phase" or "drying stage/phase" is probably good as this is the portion of the roast where most of the humidity are getting out of the beans.

Unrooted wrote:I have a heatsnob ordered, so I should be able to know what my beans are up to!

I drank my dogbowl heatgun coffee this morning and it smelled great, the beans were a bit oily and it tasted like a store bought dark roast, or Starbucks blonde...


I'm still confused about why sweet Maria's even sells a popcorn if there isn't really a way to get a decent roast from it, maybe mine just burned extra hot...

You can get good roasts from poppers. The trick is not to burn the outside while the inside of the bean is still undeveloped.

Choose wet process coffee that is graded for similar densities to avoid under/overdoses in same batch. And get top grade stuff. Avoid dry process, naturals, and Indonesian to start.

Try different amounts of beans to roast to find sweet spot. Prob about 75-85gm

Separate the wiring of the heater from fan. Hookup the fan to an old laptop power brick 16-24v if it's DC motor. Plug the original power card connected to heaters to a router speed controller and you have control over power/heat.

Always do a quality check on the beans and pitch ones that aren't puffy and brown. It can be tempting to over roast to kill off bad grassy or sour flavours when those flavours come from a few bad beans. Sumatran can be bad for this. Really have to cull bad stuff and suddenly your cups taste great.

TomC wrote:I'm not trying to argue semantics, but technically, if the beans are in a hot roaster, development is happening. It's false to state that development happens from 1C till the end of the roast, even though that's been a common terminology used for a long time. We should work to improve the dialogue of what's actually happening. We all know that Maillard reactions and caramelization all begin at temps lower than 1C, so it would be inaccurate to say "development" is happing after 1C.

I generally describe roasting in 3 simple, but more accurate phrases: yellow, ramp, and finish.

I was one who also regularly would state things like "end of drying" instead of yellow (beans contain moisture up till well into heavy 2C, so they're not technically dry). I describe the "ramp" as my chosen heat application from the time they're yellow till they hit 1C. And my "finishing" phase is just that, how I carry the beans from 1C till I drop them.

I will get into symantics, purposefully said "it's more complicated than that" because I was trying to cut to the heart of his question without writing a 2 page essay on roasting, and from 1c forward is typically referred to as "development time", right or wrong.

I guess I'd like to chime in on this topic by differentiating the long roast+low ROR vs quick+dev time roast, with both ending at the same BT.

Conceptually speaking, a long roast+low ROR vs a quick+dev time roast may likely taste the same. The difference with the quick+dev time roast is that the roaster has the leeway of dev time to trick-out the bean for flavor (i.e., slowly truncating bright acidities for sweetness/caramel, at a desired range of development temperatures), while with the former, the doneness is pretty much set already, so it's a matter of preference of your dump temp.

So, if you're a professional, you'd want to build your roasting ideology and framework around the quick+dev time model since it has more feedback flexiblity and more variables to control, rather than the 12-minute 1C approach, which is however not bad at all if you're getting good cups!

THAT SAID, for me, time at 1C is your chance to (1) choose your development temperatures and (2) decide on the length of time in within that dev temperatures. 1 corresponds to chemical species that you would want to be present in your cup, and 2 corresponds to how much astringency and acids you want to shave off from your coffee, which in turn should correspond to what acidities are inherent in your coffee. Is it citric, malic, nutty, spicy..whatever! It's just that for nutty and spicy coffees, for me, there's not much to "conserve" on the top end aside from grassy flavors, so you're better of shaving them completely off and going for a nice, medium roast that would also do well for espresso.