Rick,

Thanks for posting that. Added: For a long time we've been pushing the limits on light roasts on Home-Barista. This thread goes the other direction, exploring a darker roasting style. I inspected my Saka Gran Bar Top Selection and found the tipping you did and the cratering. I do not see scorching. But we're looking at different batches and I'm inspecting Top Selection compared to your Gran Bar. Jim Schulman noted in a thread on roasting defects that cratering, aka divots, is not considered a roast defect when the roast level goes into a rolling second crack. Henry Chang writes that tipping occurs with a high roast temperature or when drum rotation is too slow. I wonder if these high heat changes are considered normal at that dark a roast, something we aren't used to trying here? As I've written elsewhere, I'm enjoying this coffee in my rotation by pulling it very cool and ristretto. It's especially good in milk drinks, where it imparts a dark chocolate and rum/anise flavor with an edge of bitterness that cuts through the milk (in our home we use Oatley Oat Milk Barista Blend.)

Coffee Roasting Defects Pictorial

I haven't yet taken my own roasts into rolling 2C but might see similar changes -- and more closely emulate what Saka does by taking a roast into rolling 2C. Here are comparative photos after letting my examples come to room temperature from freezing of Saka Top Selection and my attempt at roasting a Yemen Moca Hawari into the first 10 sec of 2C.

This is the Saka. There were shells in both greens.



And the Yemen. I picked out three quakers and one bean shows scorching, but Yemens are typically very irregular. It's challenging to compare a different bean selection. The Saka is more intense in a way that I like. And I remember it being sweeter. I'll update this post after comparing them. Update: I didn't get a great pull of the Saka, running it too slow and not pulling it right out of the freezer and drinking it a couple of hours after defrosting. (Whenever I open an Italian coffee I put it right into the freezer to avoid staling.) Compared to the Yemen, the Saka was a bit smoother and somewhat bitter. It was fruity when I added a touch of sugar as is often done with these coffees. It had an aftertaste of dark chocolate and incense, but I think that this shot was a bit off.

Here's my earlier post on the best pull I've had of Top Selection:

drgary wrote:I had another delicious shot of Saka Caffe Gran Bar Top Selection this morning on my Cremina, using a Niche Zero grinder. The brew ratio was 17 gm in, 30 gm out. I like this blend the most when I pull it cool, which emphasizes the chocolate/hazelnut/orange sweetness of this coffee, which is wonderfully sweet without adding sugar. Mouthfeel was buttery thick. There's a long aftertaste of chocolate and almond. My probe is located near the back of the group, above the crease, and the start temperature was 185°F. In contrast, if I'm pulling a medium roast where about 202°F is an ideal brew temperature, my starting temperature on the outside of the group is 195°F, so I'm pulling this coffee about 10°F cooler. I will definitely be wanting more if anyone does a group buy. Yum!

When I tried it, I slightly preferred the Gran Bar's taste. It has 20% Robusta and I tasted more anisette. Also it had a creamier mouthfeel. Unfortunately, I don't tolerate Robusta unless it's decaffeinated.

I did get the best pull yet of the Yemen by accident, practically choking the machine and having a shot that lasted more than a minute. The Yemen showed more origin flavors of fig that also had slight astringency and a long aftertaste of very dark chocolate and leather.



Added: Here's the roast profile of the Yemen, trying to follow the suggested S curve style with an odd-sized batch and an aging green. It came out better than expected. A general rule is to do far fewer gas adjustments than this, which is typical when roasting a little-known coffee to a new profile, yet I wonder whether the slight adjustments change the application of heat much when you've got a roaster like mine that holds a lot of retained heat.* A soft crash during 1C reduced its sweetness.



* An expert roaster suggested that I use a steady ET to guide the roast rather than carefully watching ROR and making many adjustments. It's an ongoing learning process.