Thursday, May 25, 2006

Today's Roast: Sumatra Mandheling Grade 1 Toba

Today's roast is Sumatran, which I want to roast right up to the 2nd crack. The only problem is I don't know how you are supposed to roast a bean to "just before the 2nd crack", since how do you know the crack is about to happen until it just has? Sure you can go through your journal but unless you can control every variable you cannot be guaranteed that two roasts will produce the same results. If you're good at roasting then I guess you go by sight, sound, and smell, but what if you're a newbie like me? Well, fortunately this coffee is supposed to also be good darker so if you accidentally make it to the second crack you will still get a great cup of coffee!


Sumatran is an Indonesian coffee and, like most Indonesian coffees, the green beans are quite dark compared to coffees from other parts of the world. Now, at this point you might be thinking "Yo yo yo, don't all green beans look pretty much the same?" Well, no, they don't.

Check out this photo:




this is an audio post - click to play


Notice how the beans start out dark on the bottom left and, working your way clockwise, gradually get lighter? The progression is not steady, however; the shades are clumped, with the Indonesian beans (along with Papua New Guinea and perhaps even the Huehuetenango) clustered together on the dark side, a number of beans at the top of the arc clustered in the middle color range, and then more clustered on the light side. The Indonesian beans are thus all so close in color that you could argue that either of them is darkest, or that none are as dark as the Papua New Guinea (which is right next to Indonesia and whose coffee beans look strkingingly similar).


If you're curious, the recording below the picture will recite each bean in order, but for today's roast we're just interested in the Sumatran, which is the darkest.


Today's beans were roasted as follows: 1/2 cup at preset 1 with the time turned down to a total of 6:00 cook time. I heard the 1st crack at -2:13 and did not hear the 2nd (but I'm sure I would have heard it if I had roasted these beans for one or two more seconds ha ha).


For those of you who aren't in the know, here is the default (unadjusted) preset 1 roast curve:


StageTempDuration
Stage 1385F3:00
Stage 2425F4:00
Stage 3455F2:00
Total9:00

Now the thing about Indonesian coffees is that they always look like they are a roast level or two behind where they actually are, which results in a tendency to overroast them. So with this roast I stopped even though they didn't seem ready. The roast came out a light to medium brown. (When I say light I mean light for a roasted coffee bean, not necessarily light for a shade of brown!)


One thing that I have read about this bean is that it will not win any beauty contests, and I can certainly see why. Some of the beans are gravel sized, others are "normal", others in between. The roast is not an even color either. This is supposed to be normal for this bean so I won't worry about it. And I'll cup it first thing tomorrow! :-)

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