Roasting Journal: Costa Rican at Preset 2
In order to better keep track of my exploits in roasting coffee beans, I’m going to start posting my settings and experiences to Tumblr.
I’m using the i-Roast2, and this is probably the fifth or sixth batch of beans I’ve roasted with it. Up until now, I’ve used Preset I, which is a straight “10 minutes at 450ºF, 4 minute cool” process. The first time I roasted beans, I did the entire ten minutes, which set off the smoke detectors and resulted in an extremely dark roast. I don’t particularly like dark roast coffee; I generally drink my coffee black and burned beans (such as are often used at Tim Horton’s or Starbucks) make the coffee taste really bitter. A medium roast is not only easier to drink black, but it also contains more caffeine — something to think about next time somebody brags how dark their roast is. At any rate, I generally now manually put my roaster into cool mode with 4:00 to 4:30 remaining in Preset I.
According to my roaster’s manufacturer, Preset II is more graduated, starting at 455ºF for 6 minutes, then moving to 400ºF for 4 minutes, then back to 435ºF for the last 1:30. While lasting 1:30 longer than Preset I, Preset II ultimately gives more lenience to medium and light roasters due to its longer and lower-temp second stage, while giving dark roasters the ability to burn the crap out of their beans with the extra-hot third stage. I decided to give it a whirl today, running some Costa Rican beans through and initializing cooling with 4:45 remaining on the clock (6:45 total roasting time).
While I still managed to set off my smoke detector (even with the roaster running under my stove’s fume hood and the kitchen window open), I don’t think there was as much smoke when I roasted the same beans for ~7:30 on preset I. I’ll probably sample them later today and post the results.
I’ve also been trying to figure out how to set specific roast times — if I only want to roast 6 minutes, I shouldn’t have to manually push “cool”. That said, every time I try to set my own time, it puts like 30 seconds on the clock; something to investigate.
