Puerto Rico Hacienda Las Nubes Washed
Beans: Puerto Rico Hacienda Las Nubes Washed
Varietal: Caturra
Elevation: ~600-800 masl (?)
Process: Washed
Retailer: Burman Coffee Traders
Pre-Roast Weight: 234 grams
Roast Attempt: 61st
Roast Date/Time: December 18, 2021, 1530 CST
This was the coffee that led me to bite the bullet and order from a retailer other than Sweet Maria's, and you can see why. Puerto Rico! Not an origin I've ever encountered in the wild before, and there are a number of reasons for that. Per Burman, this particular farm was ravaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and has only just gotten back up to producing coffee (with coffee trees generally taking 3 years to begin fruiting). Coming from a US territory and such a small producer, this was the most I've spent on a pound of green coffee to date - $24.99 - but I'm more than happy to support a small farm that is trying to get back on its feet after a disaster, and rare origins are catnip to me, so who's complaining?
I hadn't roasted in over a month and decided to break into these, which was probably a risk, especially since after some of my more mediocre results with previous island coffees (in particular the Dominican Republic batches) I decided to try something a little novel. As you can see above, I'm not too sure about the elevation at which these beans were grown - Burman refers to them as "high altitude" but topographic maps suggest maybe not so much - but either way they're an island coffee so I was expecting a softer bean that could be easy to overroast. As such, I attempted a new approach - starting the roaster on P3, a mere 50% power to the heating element, and bringing the beans up slowly. I upped the timer to 20:00 and got things rolling in manual.
Chamber Temperature
19:00 - 69
18:00 - 89
17:00 - 109
16:00 - 129
15:00 - 147
14:00 - 161
13:00 - 176
12:00 - 170
You can already notice a pretty stark difference. At the 7:00 mark into the roast cycle, the chamber thermistor was reading a full 100 degrees cooler than my last P5 roast. When the exhaust vent opened at 12:30 on the display, the temperature dropped even further! Normally I would wait until the yellowing phase to start changing things, but with relatively little heat in the system I needed to add some energy, and the opening of the vent (which in a P5 roast tends to roughly coincide with the yellowing) seemed like a good time to do that. So at 12:00 on the display, I increased the drum speed and raised the heat to P4, 75% power to the heating element.
Exhaust Temperature
12:00 - 159
11:00 - 231
10:00 - 267
9:00 - 289
8:00 - 305
7:00 - 318
At 7:00, with the beans still very light in color, I raised the heat to P5. With only about a third of the roast left and the beans really not even starting to suggest brown, this is the point where you start to get a little concerned that your tactics might have been misguided!
6:00 - 327
5:00 - 339
4:00 - 350
3:00 - 361
2:00 - 370
By this point the beans were definitely nearing the right color, and the aroma out of the exhaust vent was starting to take on that acrid tinge of burned chaff that tends to indicate doneness, so I lowered the heat back to P4.
1:00 - 379
At 1:00, first crack finally started. It wasn't especially noisy or robust, but it was at least trackable (unlike, say, the Maui beans). I lowered the heat to P3 for the final minute; with only a minute left anyway and most first cracks about that length, I just let the roast run out and flip itself into the cooling cycle. I slowed the drum right away; the A temp peaked at 384, which isn't bad, and then dropped again. When I opened the door after 90 seconds I was pretty surprised by just how low-chaff a bean this was (though the Burman website, looking back, does say that).
Complete Roast Time: 20:00
Post-Roast Weight: 203 grams
Loss Percentage: 13.2%
Pretty much exactly where I wanted to be, a medium-light maybe pushing to the easy side of medium. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating...
These were the beans on Monday, two days off roast. (You can tell it's been a while since I roasted because I forgot that I normally do these pictures in landscape!) I think you can probably see (certainly if you compare them to past pictures) that this roast ended up on the lighter side. There's a "matte" appearance to the beans; had I not heard first crack I would almost have been worried that they might have been underroasted, but I think this is the effect of applying less dramatic heat across much of the roast and thus not darkening the exteriors too heavily. I ground 33 grams of the beans and brewed them with 550 grams of water in the V60, generating about 16.5 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.
TASTING NOTES: Perhaps the altitude was higher than I assumed, because I was actually surprised by the acid pop. It was more of a malic character, though, making me think of blackberry. Underneath that, traditional island notes appeared - nuts, toasted grain, bitter chocolate. There was a bit of a grassy note lingering as well - not in an unpleasant way, but it did suggest that the beans could have been developed slightly more. A slightly smoky bass note (which I noted in the aroma while brewing but had not otherwise tasted) suddenly appeared at the bottom of the cup, to finish things off on an interesting note.
VERDICT: On the whole, I think this came out quite well, especially considering I was trying a new roasting tactic on beans from a completely new origin! Though a touch grassy, the cup did not have a tell-tale underroasted flavor to me - it definitely tasted finished, even if I could have pushed it slightly further. I have another half pound to work with, so I'll have to think about that - I don't really have any more time in the roaster to add, but maybe something as simple as going to P5 30 seconds earlier and/or not switching to P3 for the last minute. I'd rather end up with this result again than overroast the beans, for sure - all told, it was pretty much what I expect out of a solid island coffee, and for an origin just getting back on its feet after a hurricane that's pretty impressive.
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