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I'm curious about this as well, as your choice of beans and roasted matches mine.
FWIW, after watching some videos and general Internet browsing, this is what I tried today on my first roasting attempt:
- Preheat Genecafe to 200C
- Added 200g Colombian Volcan Galeras Supremo beans
- Set temperature to 245C
- After about 11.5 minutes (I think) first crack was done, and reduced the temp to 225C
- Roasted a further 4.5 minutes (total roasting time was 16 minutes)
- Emergency stopped the genecafe, and poured beans into a sieve over an upward pointing fan
The colour seems pretty close the Zest 'Blackbird' roasted beans that I normally buy (perhaps a little darker).
Will have to wait a few days before I try it to see how it went...
I haven't tried it yet, I thought that I was meant to give it a few days to de-gas...? I might sneak one in tomorrow though, just to see. How'd yours go?
mbd it looks ok. I need to wait too. You are right. I really need to work on dropping the heat after first crack. Do you know how necessary is that? Also I really struggle to hear the first crack. What’s do you advise for that? Cheers mate
FWIW I have been testing flavor from medium and dark roasts over 56 roasts so far. I wanted to find when the flavor was best developed. So far, the best flavor is from 14 - 23 days post roast. I'm quite surprised by that. I've had one that was great after 8 days but even more developed a handful of days later.
I'd jump in straight away! Normally I wait 12-24 hours (roast in the evening and sometimes try them the next morning). But I usually find they are a bit 'flat' for the first few days and by 7 days they have rested long enough. Probably at their best somewhere between 7-14 days, maybe even up to 21 days.
Yes kind of like a wine cellar where bottles stay for about a week. To get around that I roast 800g batches, store them as per normal in a bag with zip seal and one way valve. I sample them every few days and once i reckon that a batch has hit full flavor I then vacuum seal them into 18g doses and freeze them. Locks in peak flavor as judged by my taste buds. When I want an espresso then I snip open a packet and grind frozen. Works well. But it's definitely a lot more work so it's not a method that most will think is worthwhile. (I enjoy grabbing a bag and grinding without weighing too).
I tried the beans that I roasted yesterday afternoon this morning, just to see what it was like. I noticed that the crema was pretty thin, and there was a significant after taste of bitterness. I'm new at this, so am unsure if I did a bad roast, or was just too impatient, trying to make a coffee out of it < 24 hours after roasting. I'll give it a few more days and try again to see.
Possible it might be due to age. But normally I find it tastes a little 'flat' for the first few days. I don't normally find it to be significantly more bitter.
Also I usually find quite the opposite in crema - normally within 24 hours they are a crema monster as the CO2 is still purging out of the beans. Then by day 7 it's settled down to it's 'normal' level.
Haven't had these beans for a couple years now but last time I had them I found them to be generally lower bitterness (but a lot of that has to do with roast depth). From the photos yours look dark ish, but not outrageously so and photos can be hard to gauge roast depth. What sort of dose + extraction ratio did you get?
Roast will have more body & flavour after 7 days. Crema, probably not. Generally becomes less once degassing occurs in the first few days.
But resting 7 days certainly it won't make a 'bad' roast taste sensational.
mbd - I would try extending the time to first crack a little bit, maybe a few minutes and then drop the heat a little bit but keep that 4-5 minute time post first crack. Aim for a bean that is maybe slightly lighter than those zest ones you had in your pic?
Then try both roasts (the previous one) and the lighter roasted side by side. See what you like about each one - ie darker roast more chocolate, lighter roast better acidity etc etc.
When roasting it is very important to keep notes so you can replicate the roast or just tinker with little bits here and there.
Nothing special. Just ebay or Amazon and search for "kraft paper coffee bags with zip and one way valve". Or something like a fellows or airscape container.
Not sure this is needed.
I preheat my commercial roaster but it has 40-50kg of steel in the drum so it needs to build residual heat before getting consistent.
Typically preheating domestic roasters just means you start from a more random temperature as 200C preheat might be 200C,180C,150C when you put beans in. Starting from an ambient 20C-25C temperature will have a much narrower difference.
Mostly the "you must pre-heat" comes from the USA where 110-120v is random and they might be in knee-deep snow.
Rather than preheating, for small home roasters it may be useful to run at a lower air inlet temperature early in the roast so everything has time to equilibrate before the real action starts.
I found things got more predictable when I did this: I now generally run an air inlet temp ~100 oC lower than my usual "start of roast" temperature until the bean mass hits 60 odd degrees then I turn it up to the start temperature and run the profile starting at 80 oC.
Since I roast in an 18th century building with 600mm thick granite walls and no heating, the ambient temp in winter is a good 20 degrees below that in summer but now there is very little difference between profiles.
We sell 'em at cost as a service to home roasters, only worthwhile grabbing when you have extra freight space in an existing order.
Makes no real difference to us where you get them except we didn't have to pack or count them
Tried my first roast beans again today and the crema was much better. The bitter aftertaste was almost entirely gone too, though the overall flavour was still not as good as the roast beans I normally buy - I think I overdid them, so will try and experiment with a lower temp next time, and perhaps not pre-heating.
'though the overall flavour was still not as good as the roast beans I normally buy' - just wondering are the roasts you normally buy single origin Colombian Volcan Galeras Supremo? Hard to get a similar flavour if you start with different beans. One suggestion is buy Colombian Volcan Galeras Supremo roasted from Beanbay next time you purchase. Then you can compare how the bean tastes from a pro drum system versus your own. I have done this a few times and while I wouldn't expect them to taste the same due to roaster differences, nice to see if they are in the same ballpark.
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