cmapes wrote:I'd describe it as a "more intense and refined version of the sidama kebele keramo" from Sweet Marias early in the summer. More sweetness and maybe more well rounded. If you're very into wild fruit bombs then this is up your alley. I'm very very happy with a Yemen/Sidama Keramo blend I made the other day. It made for a spectacular cup of drip (which normally isn't my forte)

Although i liked the keramo of last year, this year's kebele keramo i'm not as crazy about. I agree with your statement about it being more cranberry than strawberry... that particular taste doesn't seem to appeal to me. I have roasted it light (city) and city+/fullcity... prefer the latter. The lighter are dominated by the cranberry that I'm not crazy about. Probably I need to explore city+ more. I have maybe 15 lbs left and would sell some of it if anyone really wants it.

I do like the strawberry aspect of the 2019 keramo.

The Kebele is very unique, but the cranberry is piercing to the point where your brain almost has to figure out whether it's a fermented-ish flavor or not. It works best in drip/pourover even though shots are still tasty. Keramo Niguse Gemeda has a similar flavor note but it's better integrated, sweeter, and more rounded. It comes across as more "strawberry" even though there are a lot of complex fruit flavors below the surface.

Here's my latest attempt. After fighting underdeveloped light roasts for a while, I'm approaching this bean from the darker side. I cut the post-FC development by 15 seconds and got the weight loss down to 13.5%, but this roast still tastes a little overcooked. Some of that might be due to the nasty little bump at about 7:00?



Any suggestions for changes to lighten up the next roast? Get to FC quicker? Shorter post-FC development time and/or temperature rise?

bradm wrote: Any suggestions for changes to lighten up the next roast? Get to FC quicker? Shorter post-FC development time and/or temperature rise?

I was very happy with the roast using a very similar profile to the one you show. However, one thing I've noticed with the Ethiopians roasted on the Bullet is there is more crisp acidity and layered flavors in my shorter, hotter roasts even if the ROR curves are really flawed. I'm just now getting through Rao's "best practices" and its pretty eye opening regarding roast flaws and fixing them. If you can both get to first crack closer to 7' then 8' and shorten development to 90-120 seconds keeping it in 1C I think the Ethiopians will shine. Then I can "borrow" your profile - Happy Thanksgiving!

As a follow up to this, I pulled a shot today of a new batch I made in a rush the other day. It was roasted on my modded SR540 (the automated Kaldi is still offline, waiting on parts). I did a 160g batch which is smaller than my usual 180g batch and it allowed me to progress through drying faster than normal without really needing to push the beans, I was concerned it might have moved too quickly actually. Beans were dropped around 394F about 45 seconds into first crack. Moisture loss was 13.2% which is much more in line with how I like my Ethiopian naturals for espresso.

I think I botched the profile a bit because there's a tiny bit of roastiness in the cup, I almost stalled for a sec around ~350F which probably did it. But man is it nice ignoring that detail. It's only 3 days post-roast so that roast defect may disappear if the bag survives long enough . Instead of the Sidama "cranberry" flavor I mentioned before, it's now a very pronounced "ripe/sweet strawberry" flavor with a pinch of that "cranberry" flavor as a backdrop. Say 80% ripe strawberry/20% cranberry are the main "top" notes. Mouthfeel is silky smooth and refined, creamy middle note and a nice milk chocolate style finish. Little flourishes of tropical fruit somewhere in there, like mango and papaya. This is some good stuff. The roasted bean scent is also delightful.

So to anyone else who's working on a profile for this, I strongly suggest going hot and pushing through drying and the first part of Maillard faster than you normally would. Try to end up with 13-13.5% moisture loss. Going darker mutes the sweet strawberry flavor. I'll be playing with this for a while so eventually I'll have my automated Kaldi online and be able to get proper data logging worked out to provide a more tangible profile.

I roasted my first batch of this, purchased as a Crown Jewel box from Royal, so figured I would post my thoughts. Wow! I mean... WOW! This is one of the best Ethiopian naturals I have tasted -- and my roast was plainly subpar. The dominant note is a tart fruitiness, which I suspect is what others interpret as cranberry, but it doesn't land that way for me. Instead, I see it as tropical: passion fruit, mango, pineapple, that sort of thing. There's a hint of sweet strawberry in it and a touch of perfumey florals, but those elements are less pronounced than the tropical notes. The body lands just shy of syrupy, but the thing that really makes this coffee spectacular is the density of flavor. If you could somehow assign a numerical value to flavor, this coffee would have a higher number per sip than most coffees have per cup. Anyway, the Cup of Excellence performance makes sense to me. Very glad I snagged this one!