Mahal Coffee Roast Log Blog

Beans: Sulawesi Gowa Desa Topidi Varietals: Typica, S-795 Elevation: 1300-1500 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Sweet Maria's Pre-Roast Weight: 234 grams Roast Attempt: 21st Roast Date/Time: March 24, 2021, 2000 CDT I feel pretty sure that I've had Sulawesi coffee before... but if I did, it was before I was keeping track, and so I probably didn't really appreciate it anyway.  Either way, the chance to add two new Indonesian islands in the same order was way too much to pass up, so I had ordered a pound of this Sulawesi at the same time that I ordered the Flores Wolo Wio.  Once again, my hesitation in trying Indonesian coffee was removed by the fact that no Robusta genetics were present - mostly Typica and that bit of Liberica from the S-795. At this point the starting information is probably always going to be the same, but for posterity's sake: 18:00, 100% power to the heating element (P5). Chamber Temperature 16:00 - 147 14:00 - 231 12:00 - 287 11:00 - 307 10:00 -...

Beans: Flores Wolo Wio Varietal: Linie-S795 Elevation: 1300-1550 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Sweet Maria's Pre-Roast Weight: 235 grams Roast Attempt: 20th Roast Date/Time: March 23, 2021, 1830 CDT The main problem I have with Sweet Maria's as a site for retail green coffee purchasing is something that is not a problem in any actual sense, except perhaps to my wallet - basically, they never seem to go more than a couple weeks without listing something that I find essentially irresistible.  As an origin collector, Indonesia is particularly intriguing because it has at least five islands that kind of have their own distinct coffee profiles - Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Flores, and Bali.  (And this doesn't even include Borneo, Timor, or New Guinea, where I've seen coffee offered from at various points in the last couple years - but always, that I can recall, from the non-Indonesian parts of said islands.)  Suffice to say, when I saw a Flores offering pop up on Sweet...

Beans: El Salvador Santa Ana Pacamara AAA Lot 2 Varietal: Pacamara Elevation: 1250-1400 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Sweet Maria's Pre-Roast Weight: 236 grams Roast Attempt: 19th Roast Date/Time: March 14, 2021, 1700 CDT One of the things that helped drive my obsession with specialty coffee in the first place was all the different aspects you could "collect" - most especially origins and varietals.  I tried an El Salvadoran coffee fairly recently, but when I saw a Pacamara pop up I had to try it (even at $7.50 a pound green, which is easily the most I've spent to date).  Pacamara is a hybrid of two varietals - Pacas, a natural mutation of Bourbon which is native to El Salvador, and Maragogype, a Typica mutation discovered in Brazil known for its very large beans.  Because Maragogype is a low-yielding varietal, it was crossed with Pacas in the hope of generating a hybrid that would combine the size of Maragogype with the productivity of Pacas.  Pacamara does d...

Beans: Burundi Kazoza N'Ikawa Coop Lot 1 Varietal: Bourbon Elevation: 1700-1800 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Sweet Maria's Pre-Roast Weight: 231 grams Roast Attempt: 18th Roast Date/Time: March 14, 2021, 1330 CDT I started the manual process in the usual way: one pound setting to give me 18:00 on the timer, P5 for 100% power to the heating element.  The roast proceeded as usual to the yellowing phase, although interestingly the chamber wall thermistor read a little hotter this time. Chamber Temperature 16:00 - 147 14:00 - 231 12:00 - 287 11:00 - 309 10:00 - 296 Although exact yellowing times are probably a little bit variable, I've found that by 7:30 into the roast you're where you need to be.  Sometimes the beans are probably a little bit more tan by 7:30; it's hard to do this any way other than visually, and under the light bulb inside the Behmor it's not necessarily an exact science.  At this stage of the roast I think I'd rather let the beans get...

Beans: Peru FTO La Convención Varietals: Bourbon, Caturra, Typica Elevation: 1750-2200 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Sweet Maria's Pre-Roast Weight: 234 grams Roast Attempt: 17th Roast Date/Time: March 13, 2021, 1600 CST Per the instructions on the Behmor, I did the first handful of roasts with 1/4 pound batches and using preset temperature profiles.  Then I pretty quickly learned that that wasn't going to be the best way to use the roaster and had to figure out the manual settings, which aren't really that complicated - and you have to stand there the whole time anyway, so why wouldn't you want to take more control?  I did some research online and most people suggest using the one-pound setting - this is simply to give you more time to play with, so you don't have to worry about adding any.  So the timer starts at 18:00 and counts down; right after you start the roaster, you hit the "P5" button to enter manual mode at the highest heat setting, 100...

I didn't drink coffee at all until my early 30s, but since then I've really been making up for lost time.  I went from drinking pre-ground stuff you buy bagged at the supermarket (loaded with cream and sugar to make it palatable) to drinking specialty coffee roasted just a few days earlier (completely black).  And then this past Christmas, my dad - who has been roasting his own coffee for a while now - decided to help me get into the roasting game by gifting me a Behmor 2000AB Plus roaster for home use. I don't know that I'll ever actually be in the game of selling coffee, but I nevertheless took the liberty of coming up with a roastery name - Mahal Coffee Roasters.  I've been learning Tagalog lately and it's a pun I liked, as "Mahal" can mean both "love" (as in "Mahal kita," I love you) and "expensive" (the language program I was using introduced the phrase "mahal na kape," expensive coffee).  And I do indeed lo...