Uganda Mount Elgon Budadiri Town

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 only had Ugandan coffee once before, and certainly I've never roasted it.  So this will be different.

Switching back to a more conventional African batch (even if it was one assembled from six different varietals, including several names I haven't seen before), I expected to have a more predictable roast than I had gotten from the softer island coffees, so I started the roaster at 18:00, 100% power to the heating element (P5), and of course with manual control.

Chamber Temperature

17:00 - 84
16:00 - 127
15:00 - 170
14:00 - 206
13:00 - 235
12:00 - 258
11:00 - 278
10:00 - 262

Even on P5, the temperatures are still running significantly cooler than they did in Kansas - in this case, roughly 30 degrees cooler than most roasts at the 11:00 mark, the last timestamp before the vent opens and the chamber temperature goes back down.  Feels like the air conditioning theory might be fully dead, given the near-freezing temperatures today.  Nevertheless, this was a pretty standard P5 profile to this point.  I called the yellowing stage at 10:30 and increased the drum speed, lowering the heat to P4 (75% power) as well.

Exhaust Temperature

10:00 - 190
9:00 - 276
8:00 - 314
7:00 - 334
6:00 - 347
5:00 - 354
4:00 - 359
3:00 - 365
2:00 - 370
1:00 - 374

In some past roasts, the lowering of the chamber temperature (which went all the way down to 215) and relatively shallow exhaust curve have led me to increase the heat back to P5, but this time I decided to ride it out.  First crack held off until all the way at 2:00, though temperature-wise that was pretty normal; there had been isolated pops for maybe 20 seconds before the start of the robust crack.  It ran for about a minute; I checked the 1:00 temperature and then immediately went to cool.  The A temp peaked at 381 - reassuringly lower than some recent spikes - and there was a bit of smoke and a few chaff embers, but not much.

Complete Roast Time: 17:00
Post-Roast Weight: 200 grams
Loss Percentage: 14.5%

This was slightly higher than I was expecting, but the beans were a bit on the chaffy side.  The look of the beans out of the roaster was notably pebbled, so they definitely didn't go too far - if anything, they had a medium-light look over even a full medium.  I expect this will be just where I want them to get those origin flavors developed and highlighted.

Uganda Mount Elgon Budadiri Town

These were the beans on Tuesday morning, three days off roast.  You can really see the pebbling on the bean surface here, clearly indicative of a roast that did not go beyond medium and might even qualify as medium-light, as I noted above.  Given the high number of different varietals, it's fairly impressive how consistent the batch managed to look overall.  I ground 33 grams on the 5/6 medium-coarse setting and then used 550 grams of water to brew them in the V60, generating just under 17 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.

TASTING NOTES: Super chocolatey lead.  Underneath that there was a kind of rustic sweetness like unprocessed sugar and some mild spicing and herbaceousness.  Aside from the lingering chocolate, it started to taste a bit more like brewed tea.  Not much notable acidity or fruit notes.

VERDICT: Although somewhat unusual for its region, this was quite a nice cup of coffee.  I do tend to like a little more brightness but recently I've found myself tending to enjoy coffees that have somewhat tea-like characters.  You won't be fooled into thinking this actually is tea with the punch of chocolate right up front, though!  A well-rounded cup of coffee overall.

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