Got a brand new bean to roast – a Colombia natural that is hopefully very promising. I was doing some test roasts today and my second roast had a really nice RoR curve. I’ll be cupping it after it rests for a day or two to see how it tastes but it got me thinking about Maillard. I roast almost exclusively natural beans and rarely take them past 10% development time to keep them light and bright. I’ve been reading up on Maillard as a result of observing that the majority of my light roasts end up with around a 4-5min phase. It’s my understanding that this extended Maillard is actually working against me trying to keep juicy brightness and instead bringing out caramel, toffee, sugar, etc notes. I’m already only PH @ 260* for a 775g batch and when I’ve tried to drop the PH temp even lower I end up with roasts in the 12-13min range instead of the 10-11:30min range and feel like they end up a but muted and baked.
From what I’ve been reading it sounds like shooting for a 2-3min Maillard phase would be ideal for the types of beans I enjoy most but I’m trying to figure out how to accomplish this or if it’s even something worth pursuing at all. What have you all been trying to accomplish in your roast profiles when it comes to the Maillard phase?
