Addertooth,

Thanks so much for this advice on roasting with the Gene Cafe. I usually do the same procedure as you except my temps are slighty lower for the first five minutes and slightly higher elsewhere. I will try your temps and see what happens.

Thanks!

Not a problem. Glad to help. One again I caution the information given is only for the Gene Cafe roaster. The charge (pre-heat/dehydrate) temperature would be much too high for a classical drum roaster, but is spot on for the Gene Cafe. For fruity/floral beans a major goal is to get to full yellow and first crack quickly. This seems to preserve those notes better than a more gentle initial roasting profile.

The secondary challenge is maintaining a positive rate of rise post-first-crack. The temperature must be set high enough on the Gene to achieve this, while still roasting slow enough to achieve a desired amount of Development time.

addertooth wrote:Case17 asked:

How tricky is this one to roast? It seems that the CBC Misty Valley is pretty reliable for blueberry?


It is a dense high-altitude Ethiopian bean. This makes it one of the easiest to roast. Like most dense beans, it requires a harder/faster roast to build up to first crack... but it can take it. And, a faster roast tends to preserve the fruit flavors much better than slower and more gentle roasts.

And yes, both it and the Durato Bombe listed above are easy to pull off. I would offer you my roasting method, but it is tuned for a Gene Cafe roaster, which relates rather poorly with other roasters.

Thanks!
When you say hard/fast, do you know what time your first crack starts at? And is that the first snaps, or when it begins to roll?

I have an Aillio Bullet. So i figure time to FC is the best way to correlate. Does the GeneCafe preheat before beans are added?

**EDIT** Sorry, hadnt seen your other replies.

It looks like the Gene Cafe has low thermal mass and this is why you need to preheat it so high. It actually seems to me that your roast profile is comparatively slow. Usually, FC at ~10 min is slow, I thought. Therefore, maybe on a more conventional drum roaster, the trick is a slower roast?

addertooth wrote:Coffee bean corral has another good "blueberry performer from Ethiopia".
It is the Ethiopia Durato Bombe Sidamo bean.
I roasted it last weekend. In my opinion it is an even better blueberry flavor than the Misty Valley type (although the Misty Valley is pretty outstanding in blueberry flavor).

I got Durato Bombe from Happy Mug in 2020 and was blown away by blueberry, maybe that was my novice palate after recently getting into roasting. In 2021, I got it from Happy Mug again and thought it had some blueberry but it was more of a mash of natural Ethiopian fruity flavors. This year, Happy Mug described it with watermelon, pineapple, strawberry. I bought a roasted bag from them and I do agree with those tasting notes. I've also seen other roasters, including one local to me, selling bags of Durato Bombe that don't list blueberry.

I don't know if CBC has a different lot with more blueberry, if it's last year's harvest, or what, but I'm hesitant to buy Durato Bombe this year if I'm expecting blueberry.

I ordered the Durato Bombe AFTER receiving notification it was "back in stock" via an E-Mail Alert (two weeks ago).
This would lead me to believe it is a different batch from last year.

The Blueberry in this batch is very clearly present. And yes, you point out one of the hazards of green beans.
*There is frequently a big year-to-year variation in the crop". This may be weather, or which farms in the co-op provided beans, or even changes in the drying/processing which can happen year to year.

This year's crop, which is sold through coffeebeancorral appears to be a winner, for those who want Blueberry.
I realize next year may have a different flavor.

Trjelenc wrote: I got Durato Bombe from Happy Mug in 2020 and was blown away by blueberry, maybe that was my novice palate after recently getting into roasting. In 2021, I got it from Happy Mug again and thought it had some blueberry but it was more of a mash of natural Ethiopian fruity flavors. This year, Happy Mug described it with watermelon, pineapple, strawberry. I bought a roasted bag from them and I do agree with those tasting notes. I've also seen other roasters, including one local to me, selling bags of Durato Bombe that don't list blueberry.

I don't know if CBC has a different lot with more blueberry, if it's last year's harvest, or what, but I'm hesitant to buy Durato Bombe this year if I'm expecting blueberry.

This was a whole thing, if I recall correctly. There was an initial HM batch, and then a later one that didn't have the blueberry.
And then Captain's Coffee sold a lot of it, which unfortunately I bought, and it ended up being one of the worst Ethiopian DPs I've had (it had a ton of quakers); it took me 20 lbs of roasting to get it to a quasi-acceptable roast.

Honestly, I was never very successful in coaxing any blueberry out of the past couple years' offerings for either Misty Valley or Darata Bombe. Maybe it was lot-specific, but I remember talk of those two much like what I'm seeing in this thread (lots of blueberry), and I only found it in my roasts in fleeting moments (e.g. only on day 5 post-roast once for Bombe).

It sounds like it's more of a sure thing with these. If true, I haven't seen that since 2019 with any beans I've received.

EDIT: I really really want to believe and my cursor is hovering over "buy"!!