johnny4lsu wrote:Any chance that you can post your graphs if you have them? Would help tremendously for those of us trying to learn.

Will definitely post graphs and lots of other information after the cupping this weekend. I don't think the graphs are useful without the cupping data to correlate.

Side note for those who are interested: 5 averaged samples measured in the Moisture-Mac show a green bean moisture content of 12.6%.

Here's my first roast with the Yemen Mokha Ismaili.

Roaster: Poppery 1, Heat on router speed control and fan on dimmer. Arduino + TC4 for BT readings.
Charge: 125g



Ignore the the FCe, that was an accidental button push. My graph isn't too smooth due to working the heat dial as I was trying to hit certain targets.

At 3-4 days out the beans smelled fruity. Day 3 in a CCD what I was most surprised about was how sweet it tasted, very sugary sweet. Day 5 as I'm drinking right now the sweetness is mostly gone and I'm have a tough time finding notes to write about. Not bad but only ok.

My second roast actually went 6min/4min/3min to the same drop temp as this roast but I lost my artisan connection for some reason right around 1C and my graph bottomed out so I won't post about that one.

Looking forward to seeing others' reports on this coffee.

Roasting at two levels for melange work. Tom recommends 1/3 C+ and 2/3 FC to FC+ for melanges (http://www.sweetmarias.com/store/coffee ... maili.html)

Bean: Greens smell like musty Concord grapes. Size variance - all over the place. Prep - Ugly with capital "U." I will attach a photo for those who don't have the greens.
DP
Elevation: unavailable

Roast 1: Gene Cafe, 226g charge, 119.0v, 464* setting
• 1C: 11.00 (very, very muted 1st)
• Turn down time/temp, 12.00, 456*
• Pull: 14:15
• Ended with FC, right on cusp of 2nd

Observations:
1. Heavy smoker. Unusual amount of smoke poured out 30 seconds prior to 1st. Time is normal but smoke seemed high.
2. High chaff.
3. Bean is tight. Needs more heat (both variac voltage setting and temp setting).

Roast 2: 226g, 119.7v, 467* setting
• 1C: 10.40 (again, very muted)
• Turn down time/time, 11.40, 460*
• Pull 13:20
• Ended in a City +

Observations:
1. Soft cracks irritate me. Never know with a noisy Gene on muted cracks if I caught the crack or the "sloshing" of beans in the hopper.

I will cup in about 5 days (Tom says it needs 48 hours rest but my experience w/Yemens shows greater approachability at longer rests). Once cupped, I will play with mixing the two roasts.

Eye Cupping. Bit OT but appropriate for learning.

As a distributor of greens, I am very conscious of visual appearance of greens. I see the whole gamut: terrible to stellar preps. Yemens and Dominicans are the worst visually. Homeroasters are rightly suspect of the ugly ones and I hesitate to distribute greens that don't "eye cup" well, even if the cup is OK. It is a tough decision at times because I too like to "eye cup" and bad appearing preps set my "critical meter" at high before I even cup them.

This Yemen Ismali is not pretty. The pic belows doesn't do the ugliness justice. The seeming mustiness/grape of the prep would send shivers down my spine if I were to distribute it. However, I have never had a bad bean from Sweetmarias and this bean will probably teach me once and for all to be less wary of the ugly champs.

Time will tell.

These are stinky greens. First profile. I did my first roast of this Yemen Mokha Ismaili today. A perfect day for roasting on my 4 pound RK drum in my Weber 36000 Btu, 3 burner gas grill. 70 degrees and no wind. I have a K type thermocouple that gives me a pretty reliable bean temperature with 2 pound charges, but, especially to try for melange blends, I did 2 1 pound roasts today - shooting for a City+ and a Full City+. I think I did pretty good.
Roast 1: 319BT at 4 minutes, audible 1cs at 8:20 stopped roast at 9:23.
audible 1cs came at a 15 degree higher temp than I would normally expect and was short lived. This is my City+ roast. I should add, this roast looks like a melange all by itself.

Roast 2: 328 BT at 4 minutes, audible 1cs at 7:40, stopped roast at 10 minute mark, got some 2cs in the cooler. This audible 1cs came 7 degrees higher than expected, but 2cs came just about right on the mark. This is my Full City+. Also a quick and quiet first crack.

Surprisingly, both roasts were 16.25% weight loss even though roast 2 was longer, hotter and obviously darker.

July 8 - I was anxious so I put together a melange of 1/3 City + and 2/3 Full City+. Interestingly, despite the longer roasting time for the Full City+ roast these beans both look like Full City+ as the weight loss seems to indicate. They smell delicious just as whole beans and as ground. Lots of fruitiness. I drew a shot of 2 ounces onto 2 ounces of hot water for an Americano. I get that cherry tobacco flavor with some pine, vanilla and dark chocolate. I like this coffee a lot. I plan a pourover of this melange on Thursday.

Aha! I do have just such a Guatemalan. I'll be sure to try these that way.

Here's my first post (ever) of curves, results, cupping, etc. Please let me know if I can improve on the post. My approach was to roast five 1lb batches to 5 different levels, cup each roast individually and then create a melange based on the cupping notes. I then brewed the melange using the Cona as well as the Chemex to compare results.

Lot's of information so here goes:

Yemen Mokha Ismaili - Roasted 6/30/2014 - Green Bean Moisture Content: 12.6%

Roast #1 - Shooting for City
Drying: 5:50
Ramp: 3:35
1st Crack: 1:43
Dropped a few seconds later - Total Roast Time 11:12
Moisture Loss: 16.8%

Cupping notes:
Aroma - Sweet, bark, woody, earthy and jammy. Smokey, rustic with hints of leather and sandalwood on the break.
Taste - Sweet, mellow, syrupy with hint of leather.
Body - Medium to Med-Heavy.
Acidity - Very low.
Finish - Lingering and a little buzzy.

Score: 87.5


Roast #2 - Shooting for City+
Drying: 4:55
Ramp: 3:46
1st Crack: 1:35
Dropped 37sec after end of 1C - Total Roast Time 10:53
Moisture Loss: 18%

Cupping notes:
Aroma - Sweet, woody, fruity, mild spice, pungent. Smoky, leathery on the break.
Taste - Sweet, caramel, stewed fruit, tea, smoky.
Body - Medium and nice.
Acidity - More expressive but low.
Finish - Lingering round and smooth.

Score: 89


Roast #3 - Shooting for Full City
Drying: 4:35
Ramp: 4:08
1st Crack: 1:43
Dropped 1:16 after end of 1C - Total Roast Time 11:42
Moisture Loss: 18.5%

Cupping notes:
Aroma - Woody, hints of sugar, stewed fruits and cooked peaches. Lightly salty with leather turning sweet. Cedar on the break.
Taste - Sweet, balanced and toasty.
Body - Fuller body.
Acidity - Subtle.
Finish - Tongue buzz.

Score: 90.25


Roast #4 - Shooting for Full City+
Drying: 4:45
Ramp: 4:19
1st Crack: 1:33
Dropped 1:37 after end of 1C (first snaps of 2C) - Total Roast Time 12:14
Moisture Loss: 18.8%

Cupping notes:
Aroma - Woody, bark, spices, dark sugars, wet peat, cedar. Warm wood on the break.
Taste - Moderate sweet, rustic, smokey, burnt caramel
Body - no notes
Acidity - no notes
Finish - no notes

Score: 88.25


Roast #5 - Shooting for Vienna
Drying: 4:50
Ramp: 4:13
1st Crack: 1:45
Interval: 1:16
2nd Crack: 0:21
Dropped after 21sec in 2C - Total Roast Time 12:25
Moisture Loss: 19.3%

Cupping notes:
Aroma - Very woody, hints of sweet bark & subtle smokey incense. Stewed plums/peaches on the break.
Taste - Pungent, lightly burnt, over powering "roast" flavor
Body - no notes
Acidity - no notes
Finish - no notes

Score: 85.75


Some notes:
The roasts were all done on our San Franciscan 1lb sample roaster with the addition of an air damper as well as environment and bean temp probes connected to phidgets devices sending data wirelessly to the Roastmaster app on our ipad. The green curve is environmental temp (f), the red curve is bean temp (f), the blue curve is air flow adjustments (0=0%, .5=50%, 1=100%) and the orange curve is heat adjustments (measured from 1-15).

I measure the moisture content of all my green beans prior to roasting (almost exclusively Sweet Marias and Coffee Shrub) and they are often in the 9-10% range so the high moisture loss was not surprising to me given the starting moisture content of this particular bean.

The green beans were not pretty and I definitely pulled some small stones.

The cupping was done with my wife who does not care for many of the "wild" flavors found in Yemen coffees yet she scored this one higher than others that we have tried. I tend to like some of those flavors so I think our scores trend higher than average.

The Melange:
Based on our cupping notes I decided on a melange as follows:
City: 15%
City+: 20%
Full City: 40%
Full City+: 20%
Vienna: 5%

We tried it first in the Cona thinking the bolstered body while keeping the cup clean would be a nice method. It was muted, sweet and pleasant but the notes were not well defined.
Score: 88

Then we tried it in the Chemex to see if we could bring back the definition and it worked well.
Score: 90

Ultimately our first melange did not outscore our favorite roast level of Full City but it was close. Will try some more in the next day or two if I have time. Also connected with another forum member who is more of an espresso person and gave him all 5 roasts, unlabeled, so that he could blind test and post his thoughts on using this for espresso.

Cheers,
Erik

[EDIT]
Just received excellent espresso tasting notes from the_trystero (thanks!) who noted that my roast levels actually ranged from City to Full City+ so it looks like I wasn't quite able to bring myself to roast to Vienna (and also that I am still learning about roast level). On a personal note I just don't get dark roasts - anything past Full City starts to taste burnt to me and I wonder if it's possible to roast darker and get better results?

Notes pasted below with a minor edit: he tasted them blind so I've included the actual roast numbers for reference.

Espresso Notes provided by the_trystero:

My shot parameters were:

.9 bar boiler pressure
10 sec pre-infusion
40 sec total shot time
17.5 gm in, 23 and 22 gm out for #1 and #2
16.8 gm in, 20 to 22 gm out for #3, #4, and #5

Very consistent eye cupping considering it's a Yemen, no oil on #1 and #2, very few spots of oil on #3, more spots of oil on #4 and #5.

#1 city
dry fragrance apricot
flavor underripe apricot,
body thin
held up really well cool

#2 city +
dry fragrance apricot/sweet cherry
flavor tart cherry, very slight sweet tobacco, good acidity
body definitely tongue coating
my favorite, and was amazing cool

#3 city ++
dry fragrance cherry preserves
flavor very sweet, cherry flavored tobacco, very little acidity
body thick and luscious
too sweet for me (although the shot pulled very strangely, need to revisit)

#4 full city
dry fragrance sweet bbq
flavor molasses and tobacco, very little acidity
body thick and luscious
hot to warm it was a very nice comfort shot, after it cooled down it was a bit ashy

#5 full city +
dry fragrance sweet bbq with a little smoke
flavor tobacco and burnt sugar
body thick and luscious
hot to warm it was a very nice comfort shot, after it cooled down it was a bit ashy


I'll try another shot of #3, and for a melange the first thing I'm going to try is 2/3 of #2 and 1/3 of #4.

These were all rock solid as espresso. I haven't tried any as brew yet.

End of espresso notes

Loved the cupping notes and enjoyed reading the entire post, Mr PW.