Kenya Peaberry Surprising Crash EOR

Roasting on the Bullet
1

What’s up everyone?! Of all the varietals I have the least amount of experience roasting Kenyans. I’ve never had much luck coaxing out the sweetness that we all love about them so I usually steer clear and gravitate toward Rwandan, Ethiopian and Burundi beans when I want East African profiles. A buddy of mine bought a nice looking Kenyan Peaberry and asked me to roast it up for him. I used a peaberry recipe I created for some PNG Peaberries a while ago that worked really well.

I have never had an EOR crash like this before! In the first roast I tried to compensate for a late increasing RoR and just thought I overdid it with the P6/F4 adjustment. I changed the EOR settings and ended up with a very similar HUGE CRASH.

I have a ton of experience on the Bullet with beans from all over the globe and haven’t seen something like this before. What do I not know about roasting Kenyan Peaberries??? :joy:

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2

Ah, this is super common on Kenyan coffees. Have you heard of the Rao dip? He proposed this a few years ago as a way to minimize the crash that can happen at or after FC.

I’ve used this on the bullet with some moderarte success as follows:

  1. identify the temp that crash occurs. (looks like around 198c or there about according to ITBS)
  2. drop power (I’ve used 2 steps down) about 45 seconds before crash, hold this power for 30 seconds.
  3. at the end of 30s, return power to original setting. (p7 on your graph)
  4. leave power high through the “crash” part of the roast, which looks like about 60 seconds
  5. adjust to avoid post crash ROR flick

You won’t be able to completely eliminate this crash, but it can help make it softer.