Today I roasted a Central American bean, Guatemala's
Huehuetenango - La Miravilla
from Sweet Maria's.
Sweet Maria recommends a City Plus roast, and using a modified version of their favorite roasting curve I think I achieved that roast.
The roasting curve I used was: 2:00/350, 3:00/400, and 4:00/460 for one cup of green beans. However, I stopped the roast at -1:00 so that last stage was more like 3:00/460.
The first crack started coming in around -3:30, and the second at around -2:05. As noted above I stopped the roast (actually I started the cool down cycle) at -1:00.
This bean roasted differently from any other I've seen and almost caused me to wig out. For one thing, most of the lighter colors of the roast were skipped, and replaced with this gray-on-black color that I associate with stale dark chocolate. There was also a lot of chaff, so the gray may have been coming from that somehow.
By the time we got into the 1st crack, that grayness had faded into black then brown, following a sort of reverse progression from what I'd expect. (Silly me, I always thought beans would start out green and gradually darken!) By now I was convinced that the excess chaff was causing the color phenomenon, which seemed to abate as the chaff was shaken off the beans and collected in the chaff collector.
At this point the roast continued normally, although I did find the beans appeared to be roasting inconsistently. I noticed the same thing on May 1, 2006, which is the only other time I tried Sweet Maria's roast curve. On that occasion I was roasting the El Salvador Finca El Carmen.
When I stopped the roast, the beans had evened out in color somewhat. They were a dark brown but not oily. I stopped the roast primarily because I was afraid they were burning. The combination of unusual color progression and unusually smokey aroma (caused by the chaff maybe?) had me worried. As it turns out, I think I got an almost perfect City Plus roast, mostly due to luck.
I can't wait to try this coffee tomorrow!
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