Rwanda Milles Collines Peaberry

Beans: Rwanda Milles Collines Peaberry
Varietal: Bourbon
Elevation: ~2000 masl
Process: Washed
Retailer: Sweet Maria's
Pre-Roast Weight: 230 grams
Roast Attempt: 84th
Roast Date/Time: May 14, 2022, 1630 CDT

For a while I had been running way ahead on coffee.  Then all of a sudden I was nearly out - I roasted only one batch for myself in the previous month-plus, and I had gone through the coffee I'd brought back from a trip to Hawaii.  Fortunately, I had three full bags of green coffee that I could finally get around to roasting.  Less fortunately, this did mean that I would have to turn around and drink one of them the day after roasting it, which is sub-optimal.  This was the first of three roasts I did on May 14, so it was also the first one I brewed, on May 15.  I started the roast with 20:00 on the timer, manual control, and on the P5 setting (100% power to the heating element).

Chamber Temperature

19:00 - 93
18:00 - 132
17:00 - 172
16:00 - 204
15:00 - 231
14:00 - 255
13:00 - 275
12:00 - 260

Although I never got all the way back to the kinds of early-roast chamber temperatures I saw in Kansas City during the winter months in Chicago, perhaps the AC theory isn't totally dead, because 275 at the 13:00 mark is fairly low for a P5 roast, even by Chicago standards.  It's variable, though; more so than you might expect.  At 12:30 the vent opened; I increased the drum speed and lowered the heat to P4 (75%).

Exhaust Temperature

12:00 - 194
11:00 - 275
10:00 - 309
9:00 - 329
8:00 - 339
7:00 - 348
6:00 - 356
5:00 - 361
4:00 - 365
3:00 - 368

This roast was somewhat remarkable for being pretty quiet.  After the yellowing phase was reached around 11:45, the only way to really know what was going on was the change in smell.  Mild hints of acridity were creeping into the exhaust around 7:30; by 6:00 they were more prominent and by 4:45 it was pushing towards legit smokiness.  Yet the temperature wasn't that high, still in the low 360s, and I hadn't heard a single pop!  I let the roast keep rolling for a bit, but by 3:00 it seemed fairly clear that there was enough strength in the smell to call it, even if first crack wasn't coming.  The last peaberry batch I did, a Kenyan, had some isolated pops but nothing resembling a clear first crack, so I wonder if that bean type is just less likely to give you a clear auditory indication of what's going on.  I sent the roast to cool just after the 3:00 temperature check; peak A temp was 374.

Complete Roast Time: 17:00
Post-Roast Weight: 199 grams
Loss Percentage: 13.5%

That's certainly the kind of number I'm looking for, especially when I'm not feeling confident in the roast stopping point.

Rwanda Milles Collines Peaberry

These were the beans on Sunday morning, 18 hours off roast.  (By the way, I don't know why the new iPhone 13 takes such lousy close-up pictures.  I think it must be something with the way the position of the lenses is optimized for portraits or depth of field or something, but I've been really annoyed with how bad my last couple bean pictures have looked, and presumably how bad they're going to look going forward unless I can figure out something with the settings.  Sigh.)  The beans were on the smaller side and still had a fair amount of chaff attached, which is potentially suggestive of less than a full first crack, but sometimes you just get beans like this so I wasn't too concerned.  I brewed 60 grams of beans in the Chemex with 1000 grams of water, yielding a bit less than 31 fluid ounces of brewed coffee.

TASTING NOTES: Right up front I got a kind of mix of citric and stone fruit acidity, which I compared to lemon and peach, and then a prominent honey taste. Lingering spice notes hung on the palate, and a bit of marzipan crept in later in the cup.

VERDICT: Especially given the quick brewing turnaround and low degassing time, I was quite happy with how these came out from a flavor standpoint!  A solid medium roast, which is always where I want to be (unless I want it lighter).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold

Image
Beans: India Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold Varietals: Cauvery, Kent, S795, S9 Elevation: 1200-1350 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Burman Coffee Traders Pre-Roast Weight: 230 grams Roast Attempt: 63rd Roast Date/Time: January 22, 2022, 1500 CST I've officially been roasting coffee for over a year - my first roast was on December 22, 2020, so my last roast prior to this one was before the year mark, although then I went so long without roasting that this one came at 13 months on the day.  No matter.  It's been a fun experience so far and I look forward to continuing it for many years to come!  This was the last new roast out of my Burman order from October, and it's an origin that looms large in the history of coffee - according to legend, at least, the first person to bring coffee out of Yemen was a Sufi Muslim pilgrim from India who snuck a handful of beans back to his homeland.  And indeed, said pilgrim was from Karnataka state on the southwest coast of India, fr...
Read more

Ethiopia Dry Process Hambela Goro

Image
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 cha...
Read more

Ethiopia Bensa Asefa Qonqana

Image
Beans: Ethiopia Bensa Asefa Qonqana Varietals: Ethiopian Heirloom Elevation: ~2000 masl Process: Washed Retailer: Sweet Maria's Pre-Roast Weight: 227 grams Roast Attempt: 86th Roast Date/Time: May 14, 2022, 1900 CDT Going back to a washed Ethiopian, I decided to once again try the Sweet Maria's suggestion for how to roast them light - instead of hot and fast, start the beans off lower and slower, like you would for a low-altitude coffee, and then punch them into first crack by pushing to peak heat late in the roast.  The first time I tried this it didn't quite work; the second time I pretty much nailed it.  But was that luck?  How easy is this process to achieve for any given batch of beans? I started things on P4, 75% power, with 20:00 on the timer and of course manual control in place. Chamber Temperature 19:00 - 93 18:00 - 122 17:00 - 150 16:00 - 177 15:00 - 199 14:00 - 219 13:00 - 233 12:00 - 222 When the vent opened at 12:30, I increased the drum speed but le...
Read more