Papua New Guinea Baroida Morita

Beans: Papua New Guinea Baroida Morita
Varietal: Arusha
Elevation: 1700-2300 masl
Process: Washed
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 231 grams
Roast Attempt: 39th
Roast Date/Time: July 18, 2021, 1030 CDT

I was excited by the sound of this one.  I've said before that East Africa is my favorite region, and it is, but I've had several PNGs in the last year that have been some of my favorite coffees period, due to the variety of flavors appearing in the cup.  The description on the Sweet Maria's website mentioned "vanilla taffy aroma, cup sweetness has palm sugar and molasses, accented by fruited notes of orange, tamarind, and candied lemon, with finishing hints of aromatic tobacco and spice."  That's a ton potentially going on and sounds right up my alley!

As usual, I started the roaster at 18:00 (one-pound setting), P5 (100% power to the heating element), with manual control.

Chamber Temperature

16:00 - 134
14:00 - 206
13:00 - 231
12:00 - 253
11:00 - 273
10:00 - 273

An interesting occurrence with this roast is that once again, the roaster (at least based on the thermistor readings) was even slower to warm up - but it also retained heat slightly better than it had during the last roast.  There was a bit more delay on the yellowing stage - I didn't mark it until about 9:45 on the timer, which is the first time I've ever gone into the single digits before calling it.  This was definitely a lengthier roast on the whole, as will be clear in a second.  In any event, 9:45 was where I increased the drum speed.

Exhaust Temperature

10:00 - 188
9:00 - 267
8:00 - 305
7:00 - 327
6:00 - 341
5:00 - 352
4:00 - 359
3:00 - 368
2:00 - 374

It's not often I've taken a roast that far on the timer and when I have it's usually been a lot hotter.  But first crack didn't start until about 3:30 and then ran for nearly 75 seconds.  I had intended to go to either 15 seconds past taper or an exhaust temperature reading of 380 for cooling; I ended up going with the former, hitting cool just after taking the 2:00 reading.  The A temp peaked at 379, 30 seconds into cooling, so it would have taken a little more to get to 380 on the regular heating cycle, more than was necessary with first crack already finished.

I've noted before that the more slowly rising temperatures seem like they allow me a bit more control over a roast, or at least preclude a runaway roast getting too dark in a hurry, and I do think that's true, but the length of these roasts is starting to get a smidge concerning if only because they seem to get longer each time.  I've only had this roaster for seven months and I like to think I've been caring for it appropriately, nor have I been using it excessively, so I would hope it's not simply diminishing in utility already.  Surely it's mostly an issue with available power, which I probably can't do much about.  The distinctions between temperatures on the Chicago roasts have not been enormous, and some beans do just take longer, but this was a 16-minute roast - that's 30 seconds slower than my previous slowest, the Rwanda Yellow Honey Kanyege, and that was one where I still dropped the temperature to P4 for part of the roast.  At P5 the whole time surely 16:00 is a lot!  One thing to consider is trying to up the drum speed earlier, to get the hot air circulating more quickly.  Might be worth a try.  Either way, I think these beans likely came out just fine, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining so much.  In the end I didn't have to add any time to the roaster and there was basically zero risk of overroasting or chaff fire.  How bad could that be?

Complete Roast Time: 16:00
Post-Roast Weight: 198 grams
Loss Percentage: 14.3%

This is very comparable to the loss percentage I've achieved on my past PNG roasts, so I'm expecting this should be a pretty nice medium.

Papua New Guinea Baroida Morita

These were the beans on Wednesday, three days off roast.  The color looked good for an easy medium - almost medium-light, even, despite the loss percentage.  I ground the beans to a 3/4 coarse in my Capresso grinder and then brewed them in the Chemex pot, with 60 grams of beans and a liter of water producing about 32 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.

TASTING NOTES: As usual, I found a lot to be going on.  The acidic top note was fairly soft - it was a malic acidity that reminded me of a red apple or sweet cherry.  Behind that were several sweet notes - buttery toffee, cocoa powder, and a hint of cinnamon later in the cup (which I've gotten from PNGs several times now, an interesting commonality).  The body was nice and balanced and the drinkability was high.

VERDICT: Another excellent PNG!  It's not as bright as some coffees and the profiles can be so sweet as to be almost disarming, but I love how many different flavors show up and softer acidity can make for an enjoyable cup too.  Most importantly, the changes in how long roasting takes have yet to create real issues with my end product, so that's definitely positive.

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