Ethiopia Dry Process Hambela Goro

Beans: Ethiopia Dry Process Hambela Goro
Varietals: Ethiopian Heirloom
Elevation: ~2000 masl
Process: Natural
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 231 grams
Roast Attempt: 76th
Roast Date/Time: March 20, 2022, 1515 CDT

I doubt you'd notice without me pointing it out, but the "roast attempt" number jumped from 67th to 76th from the last post to this one because I've spent the last month working my way through my sizable backlog of green coffee.  I'm almost there now - it should only take another couple of weekends and then I can actually roast the new coffee I got a couple weeks ago with minimal guilt.  This batch is the last of the really old stuff - I'm pretty sure it came with the roaster, which means it's been sitting around for 15 months, not ideal.  The main reason for this is that when I first roasted it, back on March 1, 2021, I was still pretty green and roasted the beans to a point where they were throwing off a LOT of flaming chaff.  This made me pretty hesitant to try again, even though in hindsight it seems pretty obvious that the main problem was pushing the exhaust temperature all the way to 390, which I would really never do today and especially not with more delicate Ethiopian beans.

Since these aren't washed, I went ahead and started the roaster on P5, 100% power.  I put 20:00 on the timer and started in manual control.

Chamber Temperature

19:00 - 84
18:00 - 129
17:00 - 170
16:00 - 206
15:00 - 235
14:00 - 258
13:00 - 280
12:00 - 262

At 12:30, the exhaust vent opened; I increased the drum speed and lowered the heat to P4 (75% power).

Exhaust Temperature

12:00 - 194
11:00 - 278
10:00 - 314
9:00 - 336
8:00 - 348
7:00 - 356
6:00 - 363
5:00 - 368
4:00 - 374

Yellowing phase seemed to arrive pretty early, 12:00, and there was already a note of acridity in the exhaust around 8:30, although it became much more prominent at 6:30 with the A temp around 360.  At 5:40 I heard the first loud pop, but it was not until 5:00 that first crack began to get moving.  It was not a very robust crack and pretty lengthy and staggered; by the time I sent the roast into the cooling cycle at 3:30, there were still a few isolated pops here and there.  But these beans got overroasted the first time I did them, so I wasn't looking to wait any more than I felt like I had to.  The A temp peaked at 379, fairly common recently, and there was no significant flaming chaff in spite of the fact that this was still a pretty chaffy bean in terms of what was left in the chaff tray.

Complete Roast Time: 16:30
Post-Roast Weight: 198 grams
Loss Percentage: 14.3%

That's a number I like for a nice medium, especially for a bean with a fair amount of chaff.  I definitely don't expect these to have the bitterness of the first go-round, when the loss percentage came in at 15.6%, although their age might reduce the full flavor.

Ethiopia Dry Process Hambela Goro

These were the beans on Friday, five days off roast.  They came out looking pretty nice, I think - a good medium brown, but with some pebbling on the surface that generally indicates not past a medium roast.  I ground 30 grams of beans on the 5/6 (medium-coarse) setting and then brewed them with 500 grams of water in the V60, generating about 15.5 fluid ounces of brewed coffee in about 3:20.

TASTING NOTES: The natural fruitiness was distinctive right away, with big notes of strawberry.  Underneath that were some hints of vanilla and caramel that combined with the fruit to make me think of a strawberry taffy, a lingering acidity that was a bit like grapefruit, and a mild roasty note for balance.  A bit of tannic tea-like flavor also crept in, and the bottom of the cup had a bit of chocolate nuttiness.

VERDICT: Especially when you consider the age of the beans, this was really quite good!  And both the process and outcome show the strides I've made in the last year in terms of knowing how to roast, I think.