Has anyone successfully roasted ultra-light, high-altitude Ethiopian coffee on the Aillio Bullet R1 V2, achieving cup clarity and structure comparable to those of roasters like ShoeBox or Aviary?
I’m especially curious about:
How ultralight are you talking @lupo ?
My favorite beans are Natural Ethiopians roasted very light. For a 775g batch size I usually charge around 260-265*C and dump around 5% / 30 sec development time. I’ve had success with finding some amazing fruit notes and clean, acidic cups
EDIT: I have never had ShoeBox or Aviary so some additional descriptors might be helpful
“Lighter than light,” as quoted by Pochetsciencecoffee, who wrote an insightful piece on the topic. The Problem With Ultralight Roasts (and other myths) – Pocket Science Coffee. The “ultralight” roasters typically drop the beans based on the weight loss/moisture of the beans, and maybe a knock below the moisture level of the beans. Of course, this means the beans are well developed inside. Roasts of this type are generally quick and often produced using air-based roasters that rely heavily on convection. This brings us back to the Bullet R1, where the effectiveness of convection heating is still a topic of debate. This highlights the dilemma of how to enhance convection in the Bullet.
EDIT: Your roasts sound like they are spot on and follow the same approach as my experiments, which involve a lot of heat at the beginning. I am currently at 500-600g per batch.
ShoeBox Coffee and Aviary are based in the US. ShoeBox is known for roasting very light using a 3.5 lb drum roaster. Aviary -C. Feran is using an SX8 air roaster/IR.
I used to roast on a DIY 500g Fluidbed Roaster that excelled at light roasts and seems to fit with the article you referenced. It was a good roaster but unable to roast multiple batches back to back as the roast chamber of fluidbeds retain heat and therefore conduct heat on the second, et al roasts changing the convection dynamics from the first roast. Unless, that is, they are allowed to cool completely between batches but that significantly diminishes efficiency.
The P settings in the roast profile for my Ethiopians typically looks like P8 > P9 > P8 > P7 > P6 for the last couple of minutes. I don’t adjust drum speed at all but use F settings to manage RoR
Here’s an amazing recipe I use for Fruit forward natural central/south americans that really keeps things light and fruit popping. It’s been fun to roast and my friends and clients really like it with no complaints about body or acidity.
Hi thewildcup, can you please share an actual roast profile from the roast recipe above ?
Thanks mate… 
@gabyritaseek.qiAO here are three different ones from my session this morning. The original is the recipe in action without any modifications. For fun, I messed with the timing and settings in V2 and V3 to see if I could smooth out the curve. It extended total roast time by about 30 seconds. We’ll see how that affects the cup.
The original recipe I shared is with a Yirgacheffe Banko Gotiti and the cups I’ve been getting are great. Yesterday some strawberry jam came through as the cup cooled slightly. It’s not the most wild bean for this profile but I have found that using this for light roasts on Natural Ethiopians really brings out the fruit and keeps the acidity at a solid level.
