Denis wrote:BTW, regarding Tim, in his last coffee subscription video (posted today) he is announcing he just got a Ethiopia Natural, after 6 years of no naturals in his shop. Maybe I should give it a try.

I actually just watched his tasting video for this month. I get that some roasters use low quality naturals as an excuse to charge high prices to the unassuming, but I will never understand the natural process hate. I've had terrible stone fruit sourness from a washed Kenyan, fermentation defects from washed colombians, and peanutty dryness from washed guatemalans. Quakers have nothing to do with the fermentation process as well, very odd to hear him imply that. I think a lot of big roasters (Rao is another) who hate on naturals are just subconciously (or not) making that distinction because natural processing is cheap and easy, making it attractive for poor, unexperienced, or uneducated farmers who no doubt produce a lower quality of coffee on average. I don't think it's unfair to assume that the farmers Wendelboe and Rao mostly visit/cup are some of the best and most knowledgable in their area, and if Wendelboe is buying your coffee you're probably better off financially than your peers which enables you to invest in your business and produce a better product.

Or maybe naturals don't excel in lighter roasts. Not to mention that there's an added degree of difficulty in getting a natural roasted lightly without any sort of underdevelopment issues.

There is some interesting conversation here. I thought natural process is better. My family use the wash process and ferment for 3 days before sundry. When I visited this past December, I told them to use honey process. Break the cherry then sundry without ferment phase. We hardly do natural because it is harder to remove the shell/outer layer.

devlin2427 wrote:Or maybe naturals don't excel in lighter roasts. Not to mention that there's an added degree of difficulty in getting a natural roasted lightly without any sort of underdevelopment issues.

Is that your untested opinion? Or maybe you are coming to a conclusion by someone else's experience?

I think Naturals can be as good light or dark as you can make them. And certainly are much easier for me to develop the sour acid into juice at lighter roasts than a WP with my air roaster.

Speaking of naturals, here is my Panama Emporium natural roasted by Doubleshot CZ.
A lovely 25.6 % EY shot.

Sayonara.

Original question remains unresolved it seems.

I just want to say that threads like this have changed my roasting. I drop 45s to 1:10 after onset 1c for African grown arabica now, something the Rao 20-25% dictum would have kept me from doing. The fruity tastes are really nice in these roasts. So what's light roast, not sure. 11-14% development can be really good that I know.

I don't think there can be a conclusive answer. I drop my beans anywhere from 5-15s after the first pop of first crack. (You read that right) What metric alone do you think can really sum up a roast by itself: bean color, development time(the worst metric*), crema color, moisture loss? Possibly an accumulation of all the variables assessed by the roaster. If you say it's a light roast I'll believe you, and if you say it tastes good, I'll take your word for it too.


*DTR is a terrible marker for determining roast level because a good profile is based on total heat application and (imho) if you just roast the beans longer it speaks nothing to how you navigated the heat setting during the cracks. Although it is a metric as part of looking at the whole roast.

devlin2427 wrote:Or maybe naturals don't excel in lighter roasts. Not to mention that there's an added degree of difficulty in getting a natural roasted lightly without any sort of underdevelopment issues.

I'm not quite sure I agree with that either

crunchybean wrote:Is that your untested opinion? Or maybe you are coming to a conclusion by someone else's experience?

I think Naturals can be as good light or dark as you can make them. And certainly are much easier for me to develop the sour acid into juice at lighter roasts than a WP with my air roaster.

Maybe you have access to better naturals than I had. Or maybe your roaster is better suited for lighter roasts.

In general, I avoid naturals simply because I've had underwhelming results roasting them light.

I get my naturals from SM. I do a very thorough sorting out for defects (very important) and as per the norm, every varietal and processing is going to have a particular roast profile preference. And as per the Rob Hoos article to support my argument the roaster doesn't matter. Only the roasters ability to roast on the roaster roasts the roast well.