Two of the talks at Beanology that I found really informative and personally useful were the ones by Joseph and Mark - coffee chemistry and roasting.
I did a couple of trial roasts of the KJM blend on return with some tweaks to investigate how playing around with the 150C to 160C times change the roast.
This isnt particularly easy with the Gene, and Ill certainly return to this when I finish the new (more controllable) roaster. But the results are very interesting.
The reference roast was my normal profile - which for the Gene is basically flat out with FC happening at between 10 and 10.5 minutes. The other profile has a bit of a pause (the slope of the ramp reduced) from 150C to 160C. The extra time between these two points would have been about 30seconds, but it is not really possible to be definitive. FC for this batch came on at 11:12.
The taste difference? Well, huge. Both batches are (as far as I can tell) the same roast depth, but the slowed batch has a bit more mouthfeel, a heck of a lot less acidity (with all due respect to Joseph) and a much more muted flavour profile.
As an espresso, the slowed roast seems to be preferred by a couple of my informal "tasters". In a latté it is (IMHO) just plain dull and boring.
So a marginal increase in the Maillard reaction zone for this roast mix has a pretty spectacular effect. When I am able to do a beefier roast, Ill play with reducing the Maillard time.
But interesting anyway. Full kudos to Mark for his pretty full on talk about this stuff.
/Kevin
I did a couple of trial roasts of the KJM blend on return with some tweaks to investigate how playing around with the 150C to 160C times change the roast.
This isnt particularly easy with the Gene, and Ill certainly return to this when I finish the new (more controllable) roaster. But the results are very interesting.
The reference roast was my normal profile - which for the Gene is basically flat out with FC happening at between 10 and 10.5 minutes. The other profile has a bit of a pause (the slope of the ramp reduced) from 150C to 160C. The extra time between these two points would have been about 30seconds, but it is not really possible to be definitive. FC for this batch came on at 11:12.
The taste difference? Well, huge. Both batches are (as far as I can tell) the same roast depth, but the slowed batch has a bit more mouthfeel, a heck of a lot less acidity (with all due respect to Joseph) and a much more muted flavour profile.
As an espresso, the slowed roast seems to be preferred by a couple of my informal "tasters". In a latté it is (IMHO) just plain dull and boring.
So a marginal increase in the Maillard reaction zone for this roast mix has a pretty spectacular effect. When I am able to do a beefier roast, Ill play with reducing the Maillard time.
But interesting anyway. Full kudos to Mark for his pretty full on talk about this stuff.
/Kevin


One of which is a fully trained and paid-up winemaker. His palate is pretty hard to fox!
Comment