Papua New Guinea Kainantu Urara

Beans: Papua New Guinea Kainantu Urara
Varietals: Arusha, Bourbon, Typica
Elevation: 1700 masl
Process: Washed
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 233 grams
Roast Attempt: 23rd
Roast Date/Time: April 13, 2021, 1700 CDT

A few months ago, my dad organized a Zoom-based coffee tasting with three coffees he roasted and sent out to the participants.  As I've spent a lot of time in the past couple years diving deep into coffee, he brought me on to serve as the "expert" to discuss the history of coffee and some of the finer points.  It went well enough that he decided to do it again this month, and this time I thought it might be interesting if I got the same beans he was using and roasted them myself, for comparative purposes (and to make it easier for me to work out the tasting notes in advance).  This does mean I have to try and roast the coffee in a comparable fashion to what he did, but it should be reasonably close as long as I don't screw up.

As usual, I operated the roaster on manual, starting at P5 (100% power to the heating element) and with 18:00 on the timer.

Chamber Temperature

16:00 - 147
14:00 - 233
13:00 - 264
12:00 - 287
11:00 - 309
10:00 - 291

The process proceeded to the yellowing phase in a similar fashion to what had happened with the Congo roast last time out, notably with the front window getting fairly fogged up before I increased the drum speed at 10:30 on the display (7:30 into the roast) when I called the yellowing phase.  I had found the green beans surprisingly pungent when I was shaking the drum over the sink to remove some excess chaff, so once again it seemed like the moisture levels might have been a bit higher.  At the yellowing phase, I increased the drum speed as mentioned, and also lowered the heating element to 75% power (P4).

Exhaust Temperature

10:00 - 210
9:00 - 298
8:00 - 338
7:00 - 359
6:00 - 375
5:00 - 384 

The temperature proceeded pretty much identically to the Congo beans.  The chamber wall temperature dropped slightly lower than in some recent roasts, getting as low as 246, but that temperature reading isn't really super meaningful in the latter half of the roast when the exhaust temperature is still rising (unless it really plummeted, I suppose).  First crack started at about 6:10 on the display, 11:50 into the roast.  It was one of the shorter first cracks I've seen recently, as it was basically done within a minute.  I hit cool right at the five-minute mark after one last temperature reading.  Getting into the mid-380s should be good for a solid medium roast, based on past roasts, though of course you can't treat every bean exactly the same.  I slowed the drum right after hitting cool, and opened the front door of the roaster after 90 seconds to accelerate the cooling process.

Complete Roast Time: 13:00
Post-Roast Weight: 199 grams
Loss Percentage: 14.6%

This was basically exactly the same as what happened with the Congo beans.  I would have been worried before - indeed if you read that entry you can see that I was somewhat concerned about that being too high of a loss percentage - but having seen it once with a bean that also appeared like it had a higher moisture level, and having it turn out fine, I don't feel that worried.  The beans looked like an easy medium out of the roaster, so I'm hoping that's what we got.

Papua New Guinea Kainantu Urara

These were the beans on Friday, three days off roast.  The color was a little mixed across the entire batch, but overall consistent with a medium roast - certainly nothing to indicate medium-dark, so once again I think the loss percentage was a bit of a mirage.  I brewed 35 grams of beans, ground at medium-coarse (5/6 in the Capresso grinder), with 583 grams of water in the V60 pourover.  The final cup yield was just a hair under 19 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.

TASTING NOTES: One of the best coffees I've ever had was a PNG roasted by Doma in Idaho, and while I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say this was comparable to that, I did think of it as I examined the shifting flavors of this cup.  It started with a pleasant and balanced acidity that made me think of a lime, but a little sweeter; it had that slightly bitter edge of lime zest, though.  I'm not really familiar enough with what bergamot tastes like to cite it, but based on the description of it (and how often I've seen it crop up in tasting notes for various coffees) it's possible it could apply to the acidity here.  In any event, that yielded to a nice medium body and a variety of flavors in the cup.  My initial thought was of rich toffee, then of a more raw sugar; not unlike my previous PNG experience, notes of apple and cinnamon arrived towards the bottom of the cup.  In between there was a hint of fresh cream, more in the flavor than in the body itself.  All told this is the kind of coffee I particularly like, a real melting pot of flavors that gives you a lot to think about.

VERDICT: I would have to consider this a pretty big success.  It delivered what I want from a good PNG coffee, and I don't think I could have roasted it much better with the equipment that I have.  Whether it's near enough equivalent to how my dad roasted his batch I don't know, but I would guess with the same input it will be close enough for discussion purposes.  Now I just have to roast a Guatemalan and an Ethiopian without screwing those up either!