Chipped beans during home roast?

[tropellor]

Hi There,

I've been slowly getting a grip on my home roasting using the Coretto method. I've noticed a few times that there are a chips taken out of the beans at the end of the roast. I've attached a pic below as a reference.

I've had a look at roasted beans that I've purchased, and rarely see the chips in beans - I was wondering what may be the cause of this and if it's a sign of a bad roast. (I'm automatically assuming it is a bad sign).

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[chokkidog]

They are called divots.

Your heat application is too aggressive at the start of your roast, causing uneven drying. They pop off close to second crack.
Divots will also occur if you take some beans well into second crack, regardless of your early profile.

Use a more gentle early ramp, check out Matt's excellent thread : http://coffeesnobs.com.au/home-roast...justments.html

You could also google 'coffee bean divots' and search 'divots' on this site.

Can you provide more details about your profile? Time between 1st and 2nd crack. Time from load to 1st crack.

The only time I've had a problem with divots was when first roasting a particular peaberry. When I backed off the heat at the start
of the roast (from 100% to 80%) and adjusted the profile to have the same heat curve for the second half....no divots.

[GrahamK]

What Chokkidog said plus:

If you are doing a web search, the other term I've heard used for them are "craters".

Crater: Generally due to too much heat from 1st crack to 2nd crack:

GrahamK

[tropellor]

Fantastic, thanks chokkidog. I've been pulling them straight out after SC, so it must be too hot to start with. I'll check out the thread you've linked.

Thanks for the information, much appreciated.

[ax72]

Thanks for your advice