Hi,
@braca19452f9m
With recent roast examples by Andrew Coe showing us P9 and F5, it is something to look and see what other’s opinions are having tried out similar “coffee mind” style techniques.
Barca, I see you had a Colombian coffee not too long ago, and saw you used P8 on a 550g batch, and how did it taste with an F5 setting?
Whenever I see Colombia Nariño area, I tend to think rather dense beans, but I could be wrong.
This thread is for all discussions around density, weight, power (heat application), and not limited to this one roast, this one just stuck out to me as a segway into this topic.
Thanks!
It tasted as it’s supposed to. Although, even the other roast, with a very different profile, was very close. Not much between them. The point is that you can achieve the same roast with many different approaches. I never really have a roast that doesn’t taste like the bean is supposed to taste. Those days are long gone. Do not think that there some magic setting for fan or something like that. If you touch that, you must follow with other things so you can achieve what you’re aiming for. The advantage of a higher fan setting is way less chaff in the cooling box, but you can achieve the same taste with many different settings. Kind of repeating what Münchow says in his course. The roast is about what you want to get out of the bean, not how you do it. If you’re not getting what you’re looking for, you did it wrong.
First of all, it was a 500g batch, not 550g. Second, the beans are dense, but that doesn’t really change much, as almost all specialty coffees are dense. At least those that I roast are. The Bullet is a very powerful machine, and it can handle anything you throw at it. Of course, the first roasts will always have more adjustments than later on. For example, speaking of this roast, I now know that I need to start backing off a little before yellowing to achieve even better results. To reiterate, Bullet is very powerful. I wouldn’t know how the 110V versions are, or what kind of power runs through someone else’s walls. I’m just talking about my experience. I mean, if I’m not careful, even a 1kg roast, no matter the bean, can very easily run away from me.
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what does the Mallard timing do in this case? Does it reduce acidity or sweeten the roast?
It seems you’ve misinterpreted what I was saying. There’s no such thing as reducing or augmenting bean properties with roasting. There’s just a perceived taste at the end, and anything perceived is subjective. The coffee in question here has a very high acidity so if you take that away, you’ve done something wrong. I mean, the farmer has worked to produce a certain bean with certain qualities, so why would someone try to alter them? You want a different taste, lower acidity, etc.? Just go buy a different bean. Although all coffees are acidic, there aren’t enough sugars at the end of the roasting process to refer to it as sweet. It’s the flavours that make us perceive something as sweet, although it actually isn’t. The longer Maillard will help develop those flavours a bit more and get you a more balanced cup but, if you have an extended Maillard, it will mean that you’re too slow entering FC. Not that it already isn’t good enough, but you can always do better, even when you reach your perceived perfection, which is also subjective. The important thing to remember which, in my opinion, will give you the best results, is that it doesn’t matter how hot you start, as long as there are no roasting defects, but how you sail that ship into the FC. Too fast will be as bad as too slow. If there’s any advice I can give you, it would be to go into FC with the right amount of heat. The software helps you with this by giving you the delta temps. This is a great tool to have a better understanding of what Münchow is saying about having the same roast with different styles and drop temps. And if you’re going into FC with the right amount of heat, it means you’ve nailed the phases too, and have also achieved much of what Münchow and others are teaching.
P. S. BTW, once you’re done roasting, you can do much with your brewing methods and have different perceived tastes. Personally, I prefer immersion methods, but I do brew my coffee in all the ways possible and imaginable because I like to mix things up.
Wow, I never thought to look at the delta’s! You have made a really great discovery there!
So with Mallard, you are just suppressing character then? I find the Bullet is great for sample roasting, because it is usually uneven, and I can taste the whole potential of the bean from one roast. Roasting on the Bullet has pushed me towards appreciating immersion brewing too, since it is better at extracting the under roasted bits without over extraction artifacts. And I really don’t know if I hate that. Often I enjoy it, just cannot find the consistency in results.
Hoo and Rao’s writings talk about Mallard, but perhaps that info is out of far and more using cooking science. Has the language surrounding coffee and Mallard become more refined of late? Coffee Mind and James Hoffman seem to be exploding peoples’ heads with recent science.
I haven’t made any discovery. It’s included in the software.
No, Maillard is just a phase that can influence the roast if you run through it or extend it too much. But if you do, it means that the whole roast did not go well and you already made mistakes along the way. I feel like I’m typing the same thing over and over again. What counts is the whole roast and how you went through it.
The bullet is not a sample roaster. A sample roaster limits losses and does about 50-150g batches. The Bullet, in my experience, produces a very even roast, even if you change your batch size. Of course, that requires that you know what you’re doing.
The extraction method cannot save a bad roast. As a matter of fact, nothing can save a bad roast. Suck it up and drink it to avoid waste and to teach you a lesson. After brewing and drinking that stuff, you’ll put much more effort into not having to do it again.
I don’t know, I think the extraction method is important. But maybe professional roasters, like yourself, have a different view. It does make sense that it is all in the bean. But then I hear about people roasting for sweetness. Seems like a lot of things have to come together to make a nice cup, from soil to the make of the cup and even the environment the coffee is enjoyed in. Sort of like winning the lottery when you get a nice coffee. 
I’ll pay more attention to the beans, roast color, and the delta and I suppose the Mallard thing is good to know, but more of an old school roaster jargon. When roasters didn’t have the science we do now. Or perhaps they didn’t respect the bean the way people do now. And they relied more on the barista and latte art.
I’ll try to borrow a friends’ internet and check out your roasts more in depth. I can’t do much on my phone. The graphs are always partial. (That’s why I got the weight wrong 500g/550g, as I was looking at a couple roasts and remembered incorrectly,) You have a cool style, and speak from great experience. I’m very interested in how that all comes together. Part of the beauty of a community.