Mahal Coffee Roast Log Blog

Beans: Uganda Mount Elgon Budadiri Town Varietals: SL-14, SL-28, SL-34, KP-142, KP-630, Nyasaland Elevation: 1500-1850 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Sweet Maria's Pre-Roast Weight: 234 grams Roast Attempt: 60th Roast Date/Time: November 13, 2021, 1400 CST One problem I have with green coffee is that I will very quickly get excited about the next thing and ignore the significant backlog of green coffee that I have.  Green coffee keeps for a while and most of what I have is only a few months old at most, but it's a risk for something to get overlooked.  This Ugandan was the fourth bag from an order I made two and a half months ago that included the Cameroonian, Zambian, and Mexican beans I've already roasted, but I didn't get to this one before I put in the next order that included the two washed Ethiopians, or the next order from another retailer that included a bunch of new origins.  But this origin is also pretty new - to the best of my records, I've onl...

Beans: Maui Ka'anapali Estate Washed Yellow Caturra Varietal: Yellow Caturra Elevation: 100-600 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Burman Coffee Traders Pre-Roast Weight: 231 grams Roast Attempt: 59th Roast Date/Time: November 7, 2021, 1030 CST Two of the beans I bought from Burman were significantly more expensive per pound than anything I've purchased before, due to their locations.  This was the less expensive of the two - I'm trying to feel as confident as possible with the island coffees before I take the risk of screwing up a $25/pound coffee... more on that when we get to it later.  Earlier in the morning when I roasted these, I tried the second half of the Dominican beans using the same approach I had taken with the Haitian beans... and they just came out medium-dark again.  So with these beans, which I expected to be even softer due to their extremely low altitude, I tried to take an even gentler approach - P4 heat the entire time, with no increase . I starte...

Beans: Haiti Baptiste High Altitude CAB Co-op Varietals: Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Catimor Elevation: 900-1300 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Burman Coffee Traders Pre-Roast Weight: 229 grams Roast Attempt: 57th Roast Date/Time: October 30, 2021, 1500 CDT It's funny to see beans grown at 900-1300 meters above sea level be described as "high altitude," but that's island coffee for you.  Most Hawaiian coffee, for example, is grown at more like 900-1300 feet above sea level!  Anyway, this was another origin that I simply could not resist and indeed had been circling for a while ever since I discovered that there was still a coffee export business out of Haiti.  Haiti was at one point a massive producer of the crop, as were many French colonies - in the 1780s, half the world's coffee was grown there!  But, of course, that relied a lot on slave labor, and so when Haiti revolted and became independent in the early 1800s, coffee production entered a dry spell....