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Baked Beans - Not What You Think
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Lots of good points above and a lot of people have alluded to the fact that ‘baked’ is not something that happens in isolation. Most other roast defects can happen on their own, but ‘baked’ doesn’t. Baked can and does happen at every roast level of both poorly developed and otherwise well developed roasts. The perfect vehicle to explain this is the Behmor 1600+ and the way I’ve been using it for years based on most of what I read online as well as my own experiments. I recently modified it and can monitor bean temp now and it’s been a real eye opener. What I’ve found is that the standard approach that I was taking of cutting the burner power right down at first crack was completely stalling each roast. And I mean completely stalling. I always wondered why even with really light fast roasts I would always struggle to get a really bright and flavoursome filter roast on the Behmor. Espresso roasts weren’t a problem, but attempts at filter roasts have been virtually all lackluster no matter what green coffee I used. That to me is the main trait of a baked roast (one that’s stalled around first crack anyway)- blandness. The roast depth and other factors will then just decide what other negative flavours you get at the same time. A lighter baked roast could have some grassy, green hints for example. And then the stage of the roast at which it baked will affect things as well. If what I’m seeing in my Behmor is a truthful representation of what’s going on then I’d say that baked roasts are very common and as long as they’re not too light they’re perfectly drinkable in many situations and as Luca said they’re what many people will be accustomed to.
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This is a fascinating topic and worth making a few observations.
First up, "baked" is definitely a quality imposed by roasting conditions that you can taste. I've tried multiple roast development kits. It's hard to describe. Bready is not bad; I think the best description I've heard is probably what you taste when you taste those boiled coffee candies. In this sense, you can see why people say that "baked" is surprisingly common. To many, "baked" is the flavour of coffee. If you've heard someone use the phrase "I want coffee that tastes like coffee", they are probably asking for "baked" coffee.
The aroma and flavour of "baked" coffee is definitely an important aspect, but that fails to describe the entirety of it. Usually "baked" coffee suppresses the unique and distinctive aromas that the coffee could show, so it deprives the coffee of its potential, in some senses. There's some good news in this, though, since if you like or are used to "baked" coffee, it could be hiding green defects that you might otherwise notice and not like. Baked coffee also has a longer, rougher aftertaste that I personally find pretty unpleasant. It doesn't leave you with a clean feeling mouth, or a sensation of juiciness. It also tends to increase astringency.
It's a topic that gets peoples' hackles up because not only is it poorly explained, but it has value judgments in it about how coffee should taste, and people have a wide variety of taste preferences. I agree with Andy - try a bunch of different things and pick what you like. It also inflames passions because people on the interwebs are such children when it comes to discussing their preferences. Coffee is (mostly) a tradeoff and if you make coffee more to your liking in one way, it will often be at the cost of making it less to your liking in another way. But people seldom acknowledge and discuss the tradeoffs; they usually talk about the good aspects and bury their head in the sand about the things in their subjective preferences that others might not like. For example, I'll put my cards on the table and say that my personal preference is quite light roasts that emphasise the distinctiveness of different coffees. They definitely have more acidity and often less body than darker or longer in time roasts (unusually in the world of coffee, acidity is a variable can be addressed independently to some extent by adding carbonate). What is often less spoken about is that there are many different ways that light roasts can be screwed up that might all be described as underdeveloped; drastic underdevelopment isn't even vegetal, it's just bland and malty, for example.
Finally, I'd observe that all of this stuff about ROR and temperature graphs and all of that is not necessarily wrong, but usually it gets dumbed down to "Scott Rao wrote that I should have a straight line declining ROR and that is what this graph shows". Well those rules of thumb are applicable to a particular set of variables, and people often seem to ignore that. A pro trying to do that will be using a bean temp reading, probably off a 3mm k-type probe in a drum roaster, and well-submerged in a very large bean mass. If you have something like a kaffelogic, the conditions are totally different - it's a bead probe that is exposed to a dramatically higher airflow, and is probably more reflective of something like the the lowest environment temperature in a drum roaster than it is of the bean temperature. But nothing is going to stop the flood of people taking any old probe reading from any point and trying to get a straight line declining ROR profile, then scratching their heads about it.
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This short clip summarises this thread verly clearly
https://youtu.be/J6VjPM5CeWs
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I guess it just reinforces the need to monitor your roast profiles via the results you observe in the cup and update one's roast profiles based on this. Nothing else really matters...
Mal.
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Clearly quite a divisive 'defect'. Huge thanks to everyone for pitching in.
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I was asking more about flavour profile, I couldn't tell from your response to Yochiya which you were talking about.Originally posted by Andy View Post
Baked = time.
Over roasted = roast depth
You can't bake in a short time, you can over roast in a short or long time and you can over roast past the point that specific coffee shines.
That being said I agree with Steve, I can certainly produce a baked coffee in less time than the same bean would normally take to produce a good coffee. I had this happen just last week: since I fixed the accuracy issue with the Heatsnob I've had to rejig all my roast profiles and I mucked up a Limmu roast and got awful baked coffee in double quick time.
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Baked = time.what is the difference between "baked" and "over roasted"?
Over roasted = roast depth
You can't bake in a short time, you can over roast in a short or long time and you can over roast past the point that specific coffee shines.
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Baked is a pretty loaded word with many different interpretations. If i remember correctly Rob Hoos lays out all the different ways to bake quite well in the Loring roast defect tutorial.
Personally through regular weekly or more blind cupping over last couple of years i have found baked defect has nothing to do with length of roast or what end roast colour (depth) one prefers.
Most attributes inherent to the green selection show well through a range of roast depths if the roast is on point. Intentionally baking something to try and shoe horn it into a customer preference is a bit pointless.
Really baked roast has a stink about it that hangs around in aroma, bags, persistent aftertaste, Ive done it 1000s of times....ive bought loads of really baked commercial roasts that smell pretty bad.
The worst for me is airflow that is too high where by temperatures rise, beans crack and turn brown but a large portion of the "bake" say from yellow onwards is spent with a falling roasting Environment Temp and / or it was never hot enough in the first place.
I roasted 1000s on the KL and maybe hit a handful of roasts that were not baked. I came to the conclusion that as is, its window for a good roast is very small / a bit of one trick pony, all the altitude profiles are marketing BS.
Will be interesting to read what the modifications were to win the brewers cup, however.
Declining ROR on its own is no guarantee of no bake. Speaking from drum roaster perspective you can over manipulate gas to get a good looking line on the screen and end up with undrinkable, severely under developed and baked coffee that stinks like burnt boiled vegetables (onions, broccoli, beans) rolled in dirt.
It (declining ROR) needs a combination of excellent agitation (correct drum RPM) for the drums diameter and batch size coupled with just the right amount of airflow to allow the seeds to spend enough time in that hot air. All the while hitting correct Environment Temps for roasting coffee which are pretty well established, roughly 235 - 260C. The more that roasting environment is tuned for convection with lots of agitation, the faster your roasts can be at lower Environment Temperature. Depending on how big the drum (or no drum / beer can popcorn chamber) is dictates how soon / quickly you can wind back heat input to finish roast with a declining ROR, but also a steady Environment Temp which bends down towards meeting rising BT somewhere after peak of first crack - end of first crack onwards until hitting desired end temperature.
Most roasting systems / machines bought or made probably have an ideal
"profile" for a given batch size, appropriate ET and end roast level which is just a by product of its design / quirks and getting the best roast out of that particular system for whoever is drinking the coffee.
In my experience its possible to get a cusp of / just starting 2nd crack without "technically" baking the roast and if using the appropriate green (sth / central American and some Indonesian) it can have all goopy body and chocolates anyone can want without introducing roast defects from over manipulating " roast profiles".
Thats just my current understanding of things.
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Thanks for sharing this Andy. I sometimes wish I could clone myself in order to cup more in the persuit of learning more and gaining more tasting experience.
In the absence of a cloning machine, I try and leverage whatever information I can access! I'm working on finding other references, the best I've found is this forum, some podcasts and chatting to my favourite local roasters.
To confirm my understanding of your response. Baked is more subjective than objective and very much related to a consumer's preference.
The idea of a baked roast defect is less a result of ROR crashes or stalling and more related to over or under development and roast level based on the drinkers preference.
Thanks again for chiming in.
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