Today's Roast: Kenya Mchana Lot 405 Peaberry

I've written before about the peaberry phenomenon. Sometimes these beans are discarded as inferior; at other times they demand a premium.

I roasted today's peaberry to a City roast, and I think I nailed the roast this time. The peaberries have a distinct white stripe (well not white but quite light) which would have gone away in a darker roast. Unlike regular beans, peaberries do not have a flat side, but they do have a seam and the white stripe forms along this seam. (The flat sides of regular beans likewise have seems and this is where the strips form on these beans.)

The white stripe is a feature of the milder roasts. I am not a botonist but I think it's caused by a chaff-like substance in the seam. As the bean get roast more this chaff goes away but at lighter roasts it is still visible and noticibly lighter than the rest of the bean. It is not truly white, more of a light tan, but by contrast it seems white and I therefore call it a white stripe.

I set this roast up following my normal roast curve (which I call the Sweet Maria's roast because I stole it off of Sweet Maria's web site). I did however deduct a minute from the 3rd stage. Even so, I ended up stopping the roast at -:30.

The beans look fugly at this roast. Kind of gnarly, with the white strip being a not-so-attractive feature. But they smell great! As I write this they have been resting for about 12 hours, and the smell is just awesome. I am very excited to try this bean in my Chemex, because I now have a very good bean roasted just the way it should be and I will be brewing it following an ideal brewing methodology.