Papua New Guinea Kuta Waghi

Beans: Papua New Guinea Kuta Waghi
Varietals: Arusha, Bourbon, Typica
Elevation: 1600 masl
Process: Washed
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 230 grams
Roast Attempt: 83rd
Roast Date/Time: May 1, 2022, 1015 CDT

After finally getting almost all the way through my backlog of green coffee, I finally cracked into one of the batches I bought most recently (two months ago at this point).  Although it was beans from Laos that spurred this most recent order, I decided to start with a batch from PNG that my dad also purchased and had been raving about.  As usual, I started the roaster on P5, 100% power to the heating element, with manual control and 20:00 on the timer.

Chamber Temperature

19:00 - 87
18:00 - 129
17:00 - 168
16:00 - 204
15:00 - 231
14:00 - 255
13:00 - 275
12:00 - 258

Back when I used to get hotter temperatures, I would generally change settings when the beans hit the yellowing phase.  Nowadays I've been doing it at 12:30 on the timer, when the exhaust vent opens (if you start on 20:00).  I increased the drum speed and lowered the heat to P4; yellowing was reached about a minute later at 11:30.

Exhaust Temperature

12:00 - 190
11:00 - 273
10:00 - 307
9:00 - 325
8:00 - 338
7:00 - 345
6:00 - 350
5:00 - 356
4:00 - 359
3:00 - 365
2:00 - 368
1:00 - 370

The first notes of acridity in the exhaust arrived around 6:30, with an increase around 4:30 and a strong acridity around 3:30, with the A temp hitting 360.  Still, first crack had not arrived.  The first pops were audible around 3:00 and a few more arrived at 2:15, but a rolling crack did not begin, at least not audibly.  At 1:30 I raised the heat back to P5 to try and push into full first crack... but it still didn't happen, and the A temp wasn't exactly soaring.  With 20 seconds left before the roaster would send itself to cool, I took the rare step of hitting the C button to buy myself another 3:10 to play with.  But within 30 seconds it was pretty obvious that there wasn't going to be a noisy first crack, and I sent the roaster to cool.  The A temp peaked at 383, a little high for a lighter roast but hardly excessive.

Complete Roast Time: 20:10
Post-Roast Weight: 195 grams
Loss Percentage: 15.2%

That's not really what I like to see.  It's possible these could still be a rich medium - they were a bit on the larger side and seemed moderately moist based on the light window fog before the exhaust vent opened, but they also weren't that chaffy so I don't even know.  Above 15% has almost always meant medium-dark in terms of flavor profile, sadly, although even with that in mind I have had some okay results in this range recently.  We'll see.

Papua New Guinea Kuta Waghi

These were the beans on Wednesday morning, three days off roast.  My initial thought was that the color looked okay for a full medium, and the broad lack of visible oil spots was promising.  The aroma of the whole beans also lacked the distinct acridity of roast... but after a trip through the grinder, the obvious roast smell was immediately there.  I brewed 34 grams of beans with 567 grams of water in the V60, and the foam coming off the grounds when the water hit them was also telltale for a darker batch.  I got a little less than 18 ounces of brewed coffee, which I split into two mugs so I could add half and half to one of them.

TASTING NOTES: The roast flavor was obvious, and one unfortunate thing for me is that I have a very hard time tasting beyond it, especially these days when almost all the coffee I drink is roasted light to medium.  On the bright side, it wasn't completely overpowering, and because PNG usually has so many notes to find there were at least still some remaining.  There was some chocolate, toasted nut, burnt sugar, and a kind of stone fruit note I described as black plum.  Not a bad cup of coffee if you like your coffee darker... but I don't.

VERDICT: I tried adding some half and half to see if that would mellow the darker flavors and generate some balance, but I wouldn't say it improved it.  On the whole, this was at least drinkable, and I would have been more or less satisfied to get this in most second-wave coffee shops, but it certainly was not what I was going for.  I probably need to work on using all the cues better - listening for the crack clearly didn't work on this one, although if I had treated the initial pops as an on-ramp and shot for about 90 seconds after that to end the roast, I think we would have been fine.  Similarly, once the exhaust smell had reached clear acridity I should probably have been looking to go another minute or two tops.  I'll have to try to do better with the second batch and come around again, because I'm sure these beans have a lot more to offer than what I managed to do with them.