Flores Wolo Wio

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 Maria's, I had to jump at it.

The one catch is that I haven't really been loving Indonesian coffees lately - specifically Sumatran, to be clear.  When I first started getting really into coffee I would have told you that Indonesian coffees were my favorite, but these days it's East Africa going away - and those coffees are kind of everything Sumatran coffees aren't.  They're high-grown and (besides the Ethiopian heirloom varietals) tend to have Bourbon genetics.  By comparison, Indonesian coffees are generally Typica-derived and often have a lot of Robusta cross-bred into them.  I understand the appeal of adding Robusta genetics to Arabica - the hope being to get a plant that combines some of Robusta's natural disease resistance with Arabica's far superior flavor - but in my experience to date you're lucky if the best that happens with a Robusta hybrid is that the taste is merely flat.  I've had two Sumatrans from Sweet Maria's since getting the roaster and both times they clearly possessed the tell-tale Robusta taste - think of extremely mediocre motel breakfast buffet coffee and you've pretty much got it.

As it happens, however, this Flores selection is a fairly unusual varietal called S795, or sometimes Linie S.  It originated in India as a hybrid of Kent (a selection of Typica) and a different species entirely, C. Liberica, which I've tried before on its own and which, while not as outstanding flavor-wise as Arabica, seems like it would be far less problematic than Robusta as far as what it might contribute to the taste of a hybrid plant.  This eased my concerns about getting another Indonesian coffee (and indeed the prospect of tasting a new varietal is virtually always tantalizing).

For the roast, as usual I started at 18:00 and with 100% power to the heating element (P5).

Chamber Temperature

16:00 - 147
14:00 - 235
12:00 - 293
11:00 - 314
10:00 - 287

So far, so mostly normal - though I do note that the 314-degree reading at 11:00 is the highest I've recorded to date (although not by much; I hit 312 there on an Ethiopian back on February 6).  I think the beans themselves are likely playing some role here - I noticed that the window on the front of the roaster was fogged up a bit around this point in the roasting, which I've seen a handful of times before.  My speculation has been that this has something to do with variable moisture content in the beans - the Flores are pretty new (February 2021 arrival) and come from a more humid region, so I wouldn't be shocked if their moisture content were a little higher.  If that's the case, it could be that a bit more steam than usual is being produced as the coffee heats up, creating a little more heat inside the chamber.  I'm obviously not a scientist so that may be off base, and as noted in a previous entry it's not a huge difference in that 11:00 temperature so it could be semi-random fluctuations too.  But it did seem notable.

In any event, yellowing occurred in the same general window, although the beans looked a little paler than usual at 10:30 so I gave it another 15 seconds and officially called it at 7:45 into the roast.  I increased the drum speed by hitting D, and lowered the heating element to 75% (P4).

Exhaust Temperature

10:00 - 203
9:00 - 293
8:00 - 332
7:00 - 356
6:00 - 370
5:00 - 381
4:00 - 392

I didn't know how prominent first crack was going to be, because previous Indonesian coffees had been pretty subtle.  But this one (after one or two early "false start" pops) got going prominently at about 5:20 on the display, or 12:40 into the roast.  My plan had been to wait either two minutes after the start of first crack or 30 seconds past the end of the taper, whichever was longer, since I was looking to take this one to the edge of medium-dark.  As it happened, I ended up sending the roast into the cooling cycle at 3:30 on the display, 14:30 into the roast - so about ten seconds earlier than planned.  There were two reasons for this.  One, the A temp was now pushing towards the mid 390s and I simply didn't want to take it that high.  (The only other time I took a coffee over 390 on the A temp, it didn't end well.)  Two... well, admittedly, under pressure I kinda biffed the math.  It's my fault for being precious - even though the display only counts down, I insist on writing the yellowing and first crack start times in my notes as how far they are into the roast, but that left me trying to juggle the start time of first crack (12:40 into the roast) with the current display time (at that moment, 4:00 heading down to 3:30) and the idea that I should be waiting either two minutes after the start of first crack or 30 seconds after the end of it... yeah.  So I ended up hitting it ten seconds early, worrying as I did so that I might be hitting it 20 or 30 seconds too late.  I think, ultimately, that will do.  As usual, I opened the door after 90 seconds to expedite cooling.  There was a notably low level of chaff from this coffee, which has been common with the Indonesian coffees I've roasted so far.

Complete Roast Time: 14:30
Post-Roast Weight: 200 grams
Loss Percentage: 14.9%

I dare say this is right about where I wanted to be.  It's definitely pushing towards medium-dark, but not aggressively so.  I've roasted two successful medium-dark coffees prior to this, and one came in at 15.6% loss and one at 17% loss.  So this isn't as dark as that, most likely, but it's also a greater loss than any of my successful medium roasts.  The proof of the pudding will certainly be in the eating.

Flores Wolo Wio

These were the beans this morning, four days off roast.  The color looked like a fairly consistent, richer brown, but not over-roasted by any stretch.  I noticed oil droplets on a couple of beans, but overall it seemed like a deep medium to me based on sight alone, maybe just into medium-dark.

I used the usual process to brew the coffee - 5/6 setting in the Capresso burr grinder to get a medium-coarse grind for the V60 pourover.  The brew was a little on the faster side - including the bloom, it only took about two and a half minutes (though I let it drip for the full three anyway).  30 grams of ground coffee and 500 grams of water produced 16.3 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.

TASTING NOTES: The brewed aroma had an interesting berry note that put me in mind of the coffee's Liberica genetics.  Unfortunately, the coffee as a whole was pretty one-note on flavor, and that flavor was pretty much just "roast."  This could be at least partly my fault for taking it too far, but I think the lower elevation and partially non-Arabica genetics are definitely playing a role.  Indeed, if this was a coffee that needed to be roasted darker because it didn't have a lot of big flavor, perhaps I didn't take it far enough.  The acid was mild and lacked a strong character - if pressed, I would go with something light like a melon - and even the body was kind of on the thin side of medium.  There were some dark chocolate notes in there, and something herbaceous like a sweet basil, but on the whole I just found it to be a pretty standard darker roast.

VERDICT: Ultimately I think this coffee would be just fine for people who like their coffee on the darker side.  I think it roasted properly, and I was trying to get it to medium-dark so I think I pretty much hit it.  That's just not really how I like my coffee personally (though I might try brewing this in the Moka pot and seeing if it makes a solid milk drink).  But I'm glad I got to try Flores coffee once, at least!