Costa Rica Dota El Conquistador

Beans: Costa Rica Dota El Conquistador
Varietal: Caturra, Catuai
Elevation: 1200-1900 masl
Process: Washed
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 235 grams
Roast Attempt: 42nd
Roast Date/Time: August 29, 2021, 1030 CDT

These are the first Costa Rican beans I've roasted and only the sixth Central American, with most of those coming from the original sample box that Sweet Maria's sent with my roaster.  I tend to lean towards African beans myself, but this seemed like a good opportunity to experiment a little bit.  The description on the Sweet Maria's website, with a lot of chocolate and nut tasting notes, suggested a bean that would tolerate a darker roast; while I had no intention of going dark, I wanted to see if I could get a rich medium, just on the cusp of medium-dark, to bring out more of a balance with the roasty flavors.

As usual, I started the roaster on the one-pound setting, giving me 18:00 to play with.  Control was manual and the heat was set at P5, 100% power to the heating element.

Chamber Temperature

16:00 - 138
14:00 - 213
13:00 - 240
12:00 - 264
11:00 - 282
10:00 - 273

Pretty normal by recent roast standards.  One thing I learned recently is that I may have been totally wrong about the difference in power - my move to Chicago happened to coincide with the weather getting warmer, and according to something I read from Behmor recently, getting lower power to the roaster and thus longer roast times is common in hot weather because so many people are running air conditioning that there's less available for other appliances.  I'll be curious during the fall to see if temperatures in the roaster start to move back up again as people stop running the AC so much.  Yellowing occurred at about 9:45 on the timer, 8:15 into the roast, which is about as late as I've seen it happen, but similar to the previous roast I did before this one.  I increased the drum speed, but as usual with less power available I kept the temperature at P5.

Exhaust Temperature

10:00 - 194
9:00 - 275
8:00 - 312
7:00 - 334
6:00 - 348
5:00 - 359
4:00 - 368
3:00 - 375

One thing I've noticed looking back over my records is that first crack tends to happen when the exhaust temperature is in the low to mid 360s, varying a bit by bean.  This one waited a bit towards the longer side, only really going into full first crack at 4:05.  First crack was a bit sporadic, but the whole thing seemed to last about a minute.  My plan for these was to try and take the roast a shade darker, as mentioned, so I planned to hit cool 30 seconds after the taper of first crack or when the A temp hit 385.  I let the timer get all the way down to 2:15, more like 45-50 seconds after the taper, with the A temp at 383.  As usual, it spiked a few degrees in the first 30 seconds of cooling, peaking at 388.  I slowed the drum speed and opened the door after 90 seconds to accelerate cooling.

Complete Roast Time: 15:45
Post-Roast Weight: 199 grams
Loss Percentage: 15.3%

Considering these aren't the largest beans, that was slightly higher than I was shooting for, but not by more than a few tenths of a percent.  Hopefully they don't get too dark.

Costa Rica Dota El Conquistador 

 

These were the beans on Wednesday morning, three days off roast.  Color was a bit darker and richer than it sometimes is, but there was a distinct lack of oil specks on any of the beans; even if this was close to a medium-dark roast, the smaller and more even bean size may have kept any of them from tilting over into near second crack.  I ground to 3/4 coarse in the Capresso, then used 60 grams of ground beans and a liter of water in the Chemex.  The water notably bubbled up, suggesting a higher carbon dioxide content which tends to happen in darker roasts.  Brewing time was about 6 minutes to produce 32 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.

 

TASTING NOTES: The darker-roasted bitterness was immediately apparent, it has to be said, but a lot of the flavors you would expect were there - toasted marshmallow, chocolate cookie, brown sugar, almond, and a hint of cinnamon.  There was really no notable fruit and a low acidity.  I virtually always drink my coffee black these days, but I decided to throw a bit of half and half into the latter half of the cup just to see how it would play against the darker roast and it was pretty pleasant.

 

VERDICT: I often get to this point and wonder about taking beans slightly deeper into the roast on the second try, but this is one where it might be interesting to back it off a little - although given that the Sweet Maria's website doesn't mention any fruit flavors, there might not be a whole lot else to pull out of it.  This is why I don't go in for these kinds of coffees as much - I like more delicate profiles, fruit notes, brighter acidity - but Sweet Maria's said "crowd-pleasing" and I do think that's probably right.  This was a profile that I think would read as "coffee" to most people in a way that many of the coffees I like really wouldn't - a little bitter, a little sweet, roasty and chocolatey.  With the half and half it almost tasted like chocolate milk, or coffee ice cream.  It's the kind of thing I'd expect to get if I just walked into a Starbucks and ordered a basic cup of drip coffee - so, not necessarily what I would personally hope for, but perfectly successful as a beverage.