Tasting coffee from Atitlan Guatemala of San Lucas Toliman Juan Ana Coffee

Discuss roast levels and profiles for espresso, equipment for roasting coffee.
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Chert
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#1: Post by Chert »

Background: Mentioned In a few places in the Coffeelands blog and here a few years ago when I did a distro of one of the 50# boxes I buy. The coffee is sourced through a project centered around a parish church in San Lucas where Father Gregory Schaffer served for 40 years. The projects there and his legacy lives on in Friends of San Lucas, continuing projects, sales of goods produced there, coffee purchased at equitable prices and sold stateside to fund mission projects in Guatemala. listed on the website/link.

I made some samples available to the HB community recently and a few took me up on the offer. I decided to open a discussion about the coffee. I would be pleased to hear about others experience of the recent crop.

One of the pieces from the Coffeelands blog from the first link above goes into detail about the processing efforts made at origin. Here is a picture of the resulting excellent prep:



Over the years of roasting this coffee, I have settled on a fairly medium roast like the one I did today.



A roast curve can tell more perhaps than the vagaries of lighting and the skill of an amateur photographer:



I blind cupped it against 3 other recent roasts, Costa Rica Las Lajas natural, Ethiopia Uraga washed and Guatemala Huehuetenango Finca Rosma. At this point distinguishing such different coffees should not be difficult even for my palate, but I was most interested to see if that would also be true for the two Guatemalan coffees in comparison to each other. Such a note like maybe vanilla or extra sweetness is what I sense in the Huehuetenango but not in the Atitlan. I generally use the Coffee Juan Ana for comfort style espresso shot and it is similar as pourover, modest acidity, some sweetness, cocoa very clean, nice body but rarely a pop of any sort of unique flavor. I think it also makes a great base to blend in a little natural process or African origin for an espresso or drip blend. I am glad I can access an 85+ coffee like with confidence that the purchase proceeds really benefit the people who make the great effort to grow and process it.
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yakster
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#2: Post by yakster »

Flint sent me an 8 oz sample which I roasted up in my Aillio Bullet R1 v1.5 on January 6th. I didn't feel entirely in control of the profile, normally roasting from 1 # to 600 gram batches in my Bullet, but felt that the coffee tasted pretty good despite any control issues I may have had. I noted chocolate, caramel, and apricot in the cup and I'm waiting until I try this as espresso to pull the trigger on buying 10 # of greens.

Here's the profile. I pre-heated to 205 C (with the IBTS sensor) roasted 227 grams, noted first crack at 208 C on the IBTS (I usually see it around 211) at 9:11 and the end temperature was 213 C on the IBTS at a roasting time of 10:49.

-Chris

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drgary
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#3: Post by drgary »

I've enjoyed an earlier batch a lot and scored 10# of the latest from Flint. I'm having some trouble roasting it as it is very crashy in my roaster, which lessens the sweetness and leaves a top end of dry baked flavor. Looking at the other two profiles posted above, this may just be me. Letting it rest reduces the baked effect. The roasts I've done so far seem to want a few degrees more development to edge of 2C to mellow the acidity. What I'm tasting so far has good Meyer lemon acidity and some earthy complexity, but I don't think I've gotten the most out of it yet. I'm going to do some much smaller test batches to see if I can overcome the 1C crash, which, again, in my roaster, seems to require a combination of good heat penetration at charge, dialing back power to avoid the pre 1C hump, and increasing power substantially to avoid the crash while using the fan at the end of the roast to head off a flick. These are still quite drinkable. Here are a couple of profiles:



Looking at the next profile, I would want faster ROR exiting dry so that I can back off more before 1C and increase power at anticipated start of 1C to prevent the dip. An alternate approach, looking at Flint's profile, would be to enter 1C with a much lower ROR. This might avoid the crash, as he does. To maximize sweetness I would still charge hotter, as in these profiles. Would the hotter charge develop more acidity to transform into sweetness? I'll let you know.



This coffee comes from Lake Atitlan, a mile high lake surrounded by three volancoes, a place of almost unmatched beauty.
Gary
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What I WOULD do for a good cup of coffee!

crunchybean
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#4: Post by crunchybean »

For Guats with flavor I usually charge the hell out of them and then ride slowly up to 1C then coast and let the ambient heat and insulator effect of the bean carry it to finish. For chocolate and caramels I ride slowly through yellow and then jack it hard through 1C as the beans reach climax I let them bask in the heat, savoring the finish.

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Chert (original poster)
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#5: Post by Chert (original poster) »

yakster wrote:Flint sent me an 8 oz sample which I roasted up in my Aillio Bullet R1 v1.5 on January 6th. I didn't feel entirely in control of the profile, normally roasting from 1 # to 600 gram batches in my Bullet, but felt that the coffee tasted pretty good despite any control issues I may have had. I noted chocolate, caramel, and apricot in the cup and I'm waiting until I try this as espresso to pull the trigger on buying 10 # of greens.


image
Thanks for sharing. I see I need pointers on reading Bullet profiles. It seems you have quite a collection of those developing in the cloud. I had an espresso of my roast this morning. Maybe that little extra lingering subtle note is apricot.
drgary wrote:I've enjoyed an earlier batch a lot and scored 10# of the latest from Flint. I'm having some trouble roasting it as it is very crashy in my roaster, which lessens the sweetness and leaves a top end of dry baked flavor. Looking at the other two profiles posted above, this may just be me. Letting it rest reduces the baked effect. The roasts I've done so far seem to want a few degrees more development to edge of 2C to mellow the acidity. What I'm tasting so far has good Meyer lemon acidity and some earthy complexity, but I don't think I've gotten the most out of it yet. I'm going to do some much smaller test batches to see if I can overcome the 1C crash, which, again, in my roaster, seems to require a combination of good heat penetration at charge, dialing back power to avoid the pre 1C hump, and increasing power substantially to avoid the crash while using the fan at the end of the roast to head off a flick. These are still quite drinkable.
This bean drops a lot from charge to the BT turn, more than the Huehuetenango I've been roasting, and is crashy. I still haven't figured out the best application of heat to avoid crash and flick, but I should study this profile perhaps and replicate it. I have plenty of stored roast curves of this bean with crash and flick.
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yakster
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#6: Post by yakster »

I received 10 lb of this green coffee today, and I'm looking forward to roasting it up. I plan to try roasting this with and without a soak at the beginning of the roast to see what effect this has on this coffee. This will be my first time trying a soak, which gets a lot of mention on the Bullet roasting forums.
-Chris

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Chert (original poster)
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#7: Post by Chert (original poster) replying to yakster »

I'm glad you like it and want to put it through some paces. Not sure if I've done the soak on this bean. Rodrigo of these and Huky forum suggested it for natural process. Here's a go from this afternoon with what I consider a soak. Isn't it application of heat early and delay of airflow? Gas at 30 sec to use conduction to continue heat and no air until about 1.5 min or BT 100C. ET jumps when air starts.





What is soak in Bullet-ese?
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yakster
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#8: Post by yakster »

Basically the Bullet version of soak that I've seen is to pre-heat the roaster, drop in the beans, then cut the power back to 1 for one minute before bringing the power high. The fan and drum speed typically is not changed.

I wasn't aware that soak was primarily used with natural processed coffees. Unfortunately, I made a roasting mistake trying the soak on these coffees by leaving the funnel in for about the first four minutes which resulted in blocking the exhaust vent so my test is not valid and will have to be repeated. Here's the graphs for the soak and the normal roast.



-Chris

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yakster
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#9: Post by yakster »

I'm not noticing much difference in my last two roasts, but haven't put them up head-to-head yet. Maybe this weekend.

I seem to like the 8 oz sample better, which was harder to control during the roast as I normally roast full pounds and more. I'll have to compare roasts and see what I can bring to my next try with this coffee.
-Chris

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Chert (original poster)
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#10: Post by Chert (original poster) »

paraphrased from a recent email exchange about purchasing this coffee:
We sell our Green Oro Bean at $5 a pound and we have packaging of 50lb and 10lb bags. I can also break down the 10lb bag to a 5lb bag if you wanted to start small. The 50lb box would be around $50.00 a case to ship [CONUS]. The more you buy the shipping per box goes down a little. I have shipped smaller packages(4-8lbs) USPS for $13-$15 range ... I won't have an exact until I enter in weight and actual address.
The Friends of San Lucas website listed above has email contacts posted for those interested in purchase of green coffee.

*** Also I still have a 4 8 ounce sample baggies I am willing to ship for cost of shipping. PM me if interested.
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