This roasting session made me rethink my approach that I've been using for a while now. Almost all the coffees I did in this session were some of the lowest controlled drop temps I've done and they turned out great and not underdeveloped. Previously, +15°F was some of the lowest I was willing to go for a light roast. I also roasted a Mexico (Sierra Madre de Chiapas from Sweet Maria's) which I've struggled through the whole 10lb bag trying to get it to taste any better than drinkable, and was always roasting it like +15-25°F due to its description of being "crowd pleasing". This time I took it only +9°F and 2 minutes and it was very good, sweet and balanced, without being underdeveloped or too acidic

With my Ikawa I played with very light roasts barely above FCs temperatures. I haven't had enough time with the Cormorant to be able to glide just into FC. I'm eager to lower my end temps especially on these very high quality coffees that can be enjoyed there. I remember having a natural Sidamo that was just a whisper above first crack for only 30-45s before dropping that was excellent on the Ikawa.

Thanks for the input. Hoping to roast some more on Monday...I'll try going lighter with a batch.

LBIespresso wrote:What size TC's do you have in there? That's a quick and high TP, higher Dry & FC than I get with my 3.2MM RTD's

Mine has 3.1mm thermocouples

Well, below is my roast of these beans. It went little faster than I expected. I brewed a cup this morning and was pleased with its abundance of blueberry aroma and flavor.



I think Yirgacheffe should be renamed to Yirga-chaff-y since it produces a lot of chaff during roasting.
I'll try again next week with a bit less heat at the beginning and see how it turns out.

Thanks for the detailed comment. I also would like to make lighter coffee.

I bought 20 lbs of this and have roasted it twice. So far, overall impressions are good, but not great. Probably there is room for profile improvement. I also found that in brewing with a v60, it was important to grind sufficiently small to get reasonable residence time. This added significant sweetness and character to the cup, without which it was too thin.

Of the two profiles, the one dropped at 207C was better. But the other was ok too.

There were no notes of blueberries; I would not call it a blueberry bomb. There was an interesting tropical fruit character, maybe linked with the perceived acidity. This was the most interesting feature so far. In addition, there was a general fruity/fermented character that I commonly see in decent Ethiopian DPs.

Plan to play around with this a lot more. It was good enough to keep me interested, but it has not yet blown me away.

Case17 wrote: Of the two profiles, the one dropped at 207C was better. But the other was ok too.

There were no notes of blueberries; I would not call it a blueberry bomb.

What about the rest of roasting curves? Do you have images of it to share?