Ethiopia Dry Process Bogale Deyaso - Take 2

Beans: Ethiopia Dry Process Bogale Deyaso
Varietal: Ethiopian Heirloom
Elevation: ~2000 masl
Process: Natural
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 223 grams
Roast Attempt: 28th
Roast Date/Time: April 19, 2021, 1800 CDT

Well, that was fun.

The reason this is roast attempt #28 when the last post was roast attempt #25 is because I did two batches in between; I didn't make entries for them because they're beans I've already done entries on and I roasted them for other people (meaning that there was no need to taste them myself, unless I was worried I screwed up, which I wasn't).  So here we are, back at the Bogale Deyaso that so confounded me on the first attempt.

I wouldn't exactly say things went worse this time, but they went weird in a different way.  Rather so.  Once again, I tried planning the roast in advance.  I mean, I always do that, but I was trying to be pretty meticulous about when I was going to stop the roast, since last time I backed away from my plan and seemingly got burned by it.  I also was suspicious that dropping the heat to P4 at the yellowing phase wasn't the right thing for these beans, so I decided to skip that in this case (I also looked back through my log and found a previous instance of an Ethiopian that had come out quite well which I ran on P5 the whole time).  So my plan was: P5 the whole time, go to cool at 386 on the exhaust thermistor no matter what was happening.

Chamber Temperature

16:00 - 147
14:00 - 231
13:00 - 262
12:00 - 284
11:00 - 303
10:00 - 291

This was all pretty comparable to the first roast, right down to the notable fogging of the front window from the 13:00 mark down to when I sped the drum up at 10:30 due to the reaching of the yellowing phase.  Note that the 10:00 temperature is a good bit higher than the 10:00 temperature of the last roast because I did not lower the heat to P4 on this run.

Exhaust Temperature

10:00 - 204
9:00 - 298
8:00 - 341
7:00 - 366
6:00 - 384

And you can see how quickly the exhaust temperature rose in comparison to the last batch, when the 8:00 temp was 332, the 7:00 temp was 354, and the 6:00 temp was 368.  A few pops started at about 6:40, and then a robust first crack started noisily at 6:30.  I was keeping a close eye on the temperature and as soon as it got to 386, just a couple seconds past 6:00, I sent the roaster into the cooling cycle.

Which was when all hell kind of broke loose.  The first ever natural process coffee that I tried roasting had been the roast where I was most nervous about a fire based on the amount of flaming chaff inside the roaster, but when that didn't repeat on the first Bogale Deyaso attempt I relaxed a little.  Clearly, the increased heat meant I shouldn't have.  As soon as I hit cool, smoke started seeping around the edges of the door - I've barely ever seen visible smoke with this roaster, not even when I accidentally roasted a Sumatran into deep second crack - and as much flaming chaff as I've ever seen was whirling around the chamber.  To add insult to injury, the apartment's smoke detectors went off (the only other time that's happened during a roast was a time I forgot to run the vent hood above the stove, so essentially it's never happened when I've been doing things correctly).  I opened the windows and the detectors shut back off after less than 30 seconds, so clearly the smoke concern was never that high, but you don't want to be the person setting off smoke alarms if you can help it.

I intended to slow the drum at the time of starting the cooling cycle, like usual, but I forgot to do it in the semi-chaos, which might have exacerbated the chaff whipping around.  At any rate, within a few minutes the roaster was just going through the regular cooling motions and I could relax... until I took the beans out and they looked, well, not that different from the first time.

Complete Roast Time: 12:05
Post-Roast Weight: 188 grams
Loss Percentage: 15.7%

...agh.  Though notably better than the first attempt with these specific beans, this is basically the same loss percentage as my first attempt at an Ethiopian dry process and that one was definitely a medium-dark when I tasted it.  The beans looked slightly lighter than the first batch, but certainly not enough to be a medium-light or anything like that.  Based on my past experience roasting Ethiopian beans on a similar time and temperature schedule, this shouldn't really have happened - I have to think that there must be something going on with the higher amount of chaff creating a bunch of excess heat.  But the beans hadn't even finished audible first crack when I hit cool!  It seems crazy to think that you could have so much extra heat in there that a bean could go from the middle of first crack to well past it in that 90 seconds before the door was opened, a time span that usually (in my obviously limited experience) does not push the beans too far.

I will say, there were a couple beans that got caught in the drum and so didn't count towards the weight.  If you add a couple grams back, maybe the entire batch only lost about 14.8%, which is still a bit higher than I would have liked but potentially is a robust medium and not totally a medium-dark.  But I'm not sure I'll get that lucky.  It looks like I might be stuck with a medium-dark on this bean, since I'm out of Bogale Deyaso at this point and won't have a chance to order more before this weekend (and frankly at this point I'm not sure I feel super compelled to revisit natural process beans any time soon).  The good news is at least I know it's drinkable at that level, but I wish I could have figured it out.  I guess a third time might have been the charm (hit cool the second first crack starts?).

Ethiopia Dry Process Bogale Deyaso

These were the beans on Friday, four days off roast.  I had been checking in with the beans regularly in the days since roasting and there were a couple of encouraging signs - the color had remained a little lighter than the first batch, the bean surface was not overly smooth or shiny (there were a few oil droplets here and there, but more isolated than consistent), and most notably the aroma was much more like a rich medium than like a medium-dark.  Certainly the aroma did not have that slightly acrid smell that darker roasted, more oily beans will start to develop.  The beans smelled good!  I managed to get up early enough on Friday to have the time to make a full V60 pourover, using 30 grams of ground beans (on my usual 5/6 medium-coarse grind setting) and 500 grams of water to generate a bit more than 16 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.

TASTING NOTES: What struck me right away was the body.  While the body of the first batch was clearly on the thinner side, this time it was definitely medium, with a striking creaminess to the mouthfeel.  Similarly, while the acid had been lower the first time (especially when you're talking about a high-grown Ethiopian), this time it was bright and fairly clean, with a note of fresh citrus, lemon leaning a bit toward grapefruit.  Several of the notes I had picked up on last time were still present - the bitter chocolate was there, and the suggestion of dark berry, but there was also a notable hit of marzipan that had not been there the first time.  Still quite prominent was the aromatic evergreen, maybe leaning slightly more pine than cedar this time, but it had that evocation of a crisp walk through a mountain forest that I had gotten the first time, and a little bit fresher without being weighed down by some of the heavier roast notes.

VERDICT: This really is an amazing coffee - and surprisingly resistant to amateur screwups!  I overdid it once and it was still fairly good (and probably even better if you actually like darker roasts); I nearly blew it again, probably only missing doing so by 30 seconds or so in the roaster, but instead ended up with an incredible medium roast that is easily among the best things I've roasted.  My hope immediately post-roast that I had managed to hit a rich medium turned out be correct, and as it happens I don't know that roasting this any lighter - which might have risked hitting full first crack - could have come out much better.  Obviously this isn't the exact same roast that my dad achieved and sent out to the participants in the coffee group, but assuming what they got is even close to what I managed, we're all going to have some real nice stuff to talk about tomorrow.