Kenya Nyeri Ichamama AB

Beans: Kenya Nyeri Ichamama AB
Varietals: SL-28, SL-34, Ruiru-11
Elevation: 1750 masl
Process: Washed
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 247 grams
Roast Attempt: 66th
Roast Date/Time: February 5, 2022, 1230 CST

It's rare that I revisit a batch of beans for this blog, but this is a special case - the first time I roasted these, I wasn't doing the blog yet.  Indeed, my handwritten roast log indicates that the previous roast was almost exactly one year ago - February 7, 2021.  However, I have no record in my tasting spreadsheet of what they were like!  It's possible this was an early roast that I did for someone else - nowadays I would never hand beans to another person unless I felt pretty confident I knew what they tasted like based on a previous roast, but that was the Wild West of roasting for Mahal Roasters (the roast just before this was my infamous, to me, screw-up where I took a Sumatran through second crack by accident, yielding a delicious bunch of oily charcoal).

Anyway, the upshot is that I don't know exactly what I'm getting here.  It's also notable that these beans have been sitting around for a WHILE - fortunately they were a pretty new arrival when Sweet Maria's sent them to me in December 2020 (these were in the initial batch of 8 free pounds that came with the roaster) but ordinarily I would not like to have beans kicking around for more than a year.  It was time to get them out of my personal inventory and hopefully rescue something drinkable.

I started the roaster on manual control, 18:00 on the timer, and the temperature setting at P5 (100% power to the heating element).

Chamber Temperature

17:00 - 78
16:00 - 122
15:00 - 161
14:00 - 197
13:00 - 226
12:00 - 251
11:00 - 273
10:00 - 257

This roast - and you'll see this even more clearly in a minute - put the final nail in the coffin for me in terms of whether I'm getting the same kind of power here in Chicago that I used to get in Kansas City (or more accurately whether my warm-weather roasts were being heavily affected by air conditioning units sapping available power from the grid). The answer is, not even close.  When I roasted these the first time, I used the exact same starting point.  At the 11:00 mark, the chamber temperature was 34 degrees hotter last time compared to now!  The exhaust vent opened at 10:30; I lowered the heat to P4 and sped up the drum.

Exhaust Temperature

10:00 - 188
9:00 - 273
8:00 - 309
7:00 - 329
6:00 - 339
5:00 - 348
4:00 - 354
3:00 - 359
2:00 - 363
1:00 - 368

With 30 seconds remaining and no obvious first crack, I added another minute.

1:00 - 370

Finally, with 30 seconds left again, I hit cool.  I was wary of taking the beans too far and I've had some iffy first cracks lately - usually I wouldn't expect that problem out of high-grown, denser beans, but these had also been sitting around, as mentioned, so I didn't want to push too far.  The tinge of acridity in the exhaust aroma that typically indicates doneness was also appearing.  But this is where you see the really stark difference from the previous Kansas City roast.  I followed the exact same plan - start on P5 at 18:00, switch to P4 and increase drum speed at 10:30, and then let it go.  In Kansas, the 7:00 and 6:00 temperatures were 357 and 372; robust first crack started around 6:45.  This time, the temperatures at those times were 329 and 339 - as with the 11:00 B temp, in the range of 30 degrees lower.  That's a pretty huge difference!  I mean, consider the difference between a temperature reading of 370 and a temperature reading of 400 - that's basically the difference between perfection and charcoal.  So while last time I hit cool at about 5:45, this time the temperature was barely at 340, not even close to done.

The fear with stopping the roaster with an A temp hitting 370 - and even in the cooling cycle it peaked at 375 - and no audible first crack is that the beans simply didn't finish.  Given the amount of time in the roaster and what the temperature usually indicates, I felt like the beans should have gotten there.  The point where the exhaust smell goes from a popcorn aroma to that burnt tinge is usually where you're really hitting first crack, and that did kick in, if more mildly than it often does.  I wanted a light roast anyway, so... let's see.

Complete Roast Time: 18:30
Post-Roast Weight: 217 grams
Loss Percentage: 12.1%

Ordinarily I'd be thrilled to see that number when shooting for a light roast, but these beans also had a LOT of chaff.  Also, even considering they're AB, they continued to look small and tight coming out of the roaster.  The color seemed right, at least.

Kenya Nyeri Ichamama AB

These were the beans on Wednesday, four days off roast.  They definitely did not have the color that I associate with notably underroasted beans, but considering the density it was always possible that you could get a misleading darkening of the outside while the inside didn't get there.  I ground 33 grams of beans and brewed them with 550 grams of water in the V60, yielding just over 17 fluid ounces of brewed coffee in about three minutes.

TASTING NOTES: Sweet Maria's had mentioned grapefruit and that really hit right away, a citric acidity with that slightly bitter tinge that really could not remind you of any other fruit. Once the initial hit faded, I picked up some spice notes, especially clove and a suggestion of cinnamon, and a bittersweet fruit note that made me think of cranberry sauce.  I did feel like there was a mild grassiness to the cup suggestive of slight underroasting.

VERDICT: This definitely was not the worst case scenario for my underroasting fears. I would have to say the hints of it were there - a bit of grass taste in the cup, slightly weaker body - but they didn't ruin the other, more interesting flavors. I still rated this "Very Good" on my extremely subjective tasting scale, so hey.  I'll take it, considering the weird experience.  If I had any more of these I'd know to hang on a little longer, but I don't anyway.