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Beans of the devil

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  • Beans of the devil

    I received my monthly fix of greenies last Friday with the rest of the Melbourne crowd, and eagerly set to roasting on Saturday morning as soon as I had liberated myself from bed and the papers. I tried some of the newly acquired Ethiopian, and noticed that it was strangely absent of both smoke and chaff. Although this was odd, it isnt unheard of so I proceeded to the end of the roast, where I dumped the beans and cooled them.

    It was at this point I noticed that they were particularly small compared to the Africans from which I have become accustomed to. This is where I started to doubt that the coffee had actually roasted correctly.The beans were small, extremely dense and pretty mottley looking. Having pulled an extremely unsuccessful shot from them on Monday, I moved onto the Sihereni from the poll a couple of months ago that was roasted in the same sitting as the Limu. As a result, it was Wednesday before I looked at the Ethiopian roast again. Feeling slightly peeved at what seemed to me a wasted roast or a really, really bad coffee I bit a bean in half to see if it was infact coffee. And this is where the world stopped.... THE CENTRE 1/2 WAS STILL GREEN!

    What the hell happened? Did I bake me some coffee? Was my humble little popper too weak/strong for the fabled mighty aroma of the Limu?

  • #2
    Re: Beans of the devil

    Sounds like you didnt get to 1st crack. Not enough heat perhaps.

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    • #3
      Re: Beans of the devil

      Poppers are really dependent on ambient temperature. When the mercury starts to dip, increase your batch size to compensate. Its more than likely that the beans got nowhere near to 1st crack.

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      • #4
        Re: Beans of the devil

        Originally posted by nunu link=1147858080/0#2 date=1147873799
        Poppers are really dependent on ambient temperature. When the mercury starts to dip, increase your batch size to compensate. Its more than likely that the beans got nowhere near to 1st crack.
        Although Im aware that poppers are quite temperature dependant, Im not sure if that really explains it fully. Ive roasted (granted not the identical beans) in far lower ambient temperatures before, with no problem. The outer layers of the bean were reaching temperatures high enough to darken. How could this happen while the insides clearly remained green?

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        • #5
          Re: Beans of the devil

          Gday DG,

          Regardless of the cause, one would have to concur with what the other chaps have already suggested, i.e. the roast temperature was too low. To achieve successful roasts from a popper, you really need the bean mass temperature to reach 205-215 deg C or you are not going to get anywhere near 1st Crack, to say nothing of 2nd Crack.

          If you can borrow a DMM with t/c probe then you will be able to check this out properly and try to determine how best to deal with it. You can always just suck it and see I spose, keep adding more beans until you achieve a definite 1st Crack and the 2nd shortly thereafter. I prefer the scientific method myself though then at least youll have idea of whats going on. All the best,

          Mal.

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          • #6
            Re: Beans of the devil

            Could also be an indication of one of the two heating elements going. The primary elemnt might be sus. At 20 bucks a pop, poppers are almost disposable.

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