Ethiopia Dry Process Bogale Deyaso

Beans: Ethiopia Dry Process Bogale Deyaso
Varietal: Ethiopian Heirloom
Elevation: ~2000 masl
Process: Natural
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 236 grams
Roast Attempt: 25th
Roast Date/Time: April 17, 2021, 1530 CDT

This was the third coffee my dad and I picked out for the coffee tasting, and it was also the one I was most nervous about.  I've only tried roasting a natural coffee (also from Ethiopia) once before, and it went... okay at best.  The beans were chaffier than most and gave me the biggest scare regarding potential fire risk that I've had to date, and I also overroasted them a bit, ending up with more of a medium-dark roast.

In an attempt to avoid repeating that, I made a plan for this roast.  I was going to send the roast to cool when the exhaust thermistor ("A Temp") read 380... or at the end of first crack.  This seemed like a solid plan, and then the beans decided to totally confuse me.  Great way to celebrate a quarter-century of roast attempts.

As usual I started on 100% power to the heating element (P5), with 18:00 on the display.

Chamber Temperature

16:00 - 145
14:00 - 231
13:00 - 264
12:00 - 287
11:00 - 307
10:00* - 276

The front window fogged up substantially during this roast.  It could be that natural process beans have a higher moisture content because they were dried in the fruit, or it could be that I'm completely mistaken about what causes that fogging.  In any event, once again the fog dissipated as soon as I increased the drum speed (and lowered the heat to P4, 75% power) when the beans had reached the yellowing phase (which was more difficult to call than usual due to the fog).  I was a little distracted with the fog and didn't do the 10:00 temperature check until 9:45, which isn't that big of a deal really.

Exhaust Temperature 

9:45 - 246
9:00 - 294
8:00 - 332
7:00 - 354
6:00 - 368
5:00 - 379
4:00 - 388

So, you can see what went wrong with my plans here.  At the 6:00 mark the chamber wall thermistor had dropped all the way to 242, but with the A temp still climbing I didn't worry that much about it.  Still, I was starting to get concerned because the heat was nearly at 380 at the 5:00 mark and first crack still had not started!  At least, not as far as I could tell.  I've had beans in the past with little to no audible first crack, so I was ready to jump to the cooling cycle at 380 anyway - but then at 4:45, what sounded like first crack began.  I eventually bailed out at 3:30, with first crack seemingly not quite done, but by this point the A temp was all the way up at 392.  I hit cool, slowed the drum, and opened the front door after 90 seconds to accelerate the process.

Complete Roast Time: 14:30
Post-Roast Weight: 196 grams
Loss Percentage: 16.9%

This was much higher than I would have expected or hoped for.  My previous Ethiopian dry process attempt had just a 15.6% loss, and it tasted like a medium-dark.  The only other loss number I've seen like this (other than the Sumatran I drove into second crack by mistake) was a 17% Sumatran that was definitely medium-dark.  I'm not sure what happened here.  I don't think we were looking at me being fooled by second crack - I looked at the beans afterwards and while they're on the darker side, they don't exhibit the blowouts characteristic of a full second crack (at least, the ones that I saw when I roasted a batch that dark).  They look like a very rich medium or over the line into medium-dark.  I suppose it's possible that the weight loss percentage is just up higher because these beans have a lot of chaff to lose... but that was seemingly the case with my previous natural attempt and it was still well less than this one.  I definitely will have to taste these in advance of the actual tasting session and make sure they're not too dark, but I'm a little unsure how to fix the problem if first crack actually is where it sounded like it was.  Not taking the beans into first crack at all seems like at least as big of a problem as taking them to medium-dark, from a flavor standpoint.

Ethiopia Dry Process Bogale Deyaso

These were the beans on Monday, two days off roast.  The color was pleasantly even, but clearly too rich of a brown to be anything short of medium-dark; I also noticed a few beans with the tell-tale dots of oil on them, although not a huge number.  The aroma was starting to have that slight acridity of an overroasted, oily bean, which was annoying.  If the beans were going to be darker than I wanted to drink, they could at least have just had a nice roasty aroma.  In any event, I brewed 30 grams of beans (ground to medium-coarse) with 500 grams of water, yielding about 16 ounces of brewed coffee via the V60.

TASTING NOTES: Considering that I never drink my coffee this dark by choice, and especially not black, I was actually pleasantly surprised with how it came out.  The acid was lower and the body thinner, as you'd expect, and there was certainly a pronounced bitter, smoky note that I would have wanted to avoid.  But behind that, a lot of the character of the beans still managed to shine through.  There was a bit of chocolate and a lingering berry note to suggest the natural processing, and most notably there was still quite a bit of the forest-like cedar note that I also had noticed prominently in the aroma of the green beans.

VERDICT: It's not saying a ton since I so rarely drink coffee this dark, but this was probably the best darker roast I've ever had.  With that said, I'm going to be trying it again - if this much flavor is hanging around in these beans when they're overroasted, how good can they be at a standard medium or medium-light?  I'll have to be very careful with my planning; I think the smaller bean size may have really shortened up the margin for error at the tail end of the roast.