Hey everyone! I’m a new home roaster and just got my Bullet a few months ago. I have gone through about 5 kilos of Guatemalan blend. I felt okay about a few roasts and at least felt I was learning and understanding my mistakes to some degree (no pun intended). But, to be honest, I’m still pretty unsure about my charging temps and how well I’m managing the roast curve. The last few roasts I did felt like I was carrying too much heat/power into FC.
I just got 5 kilos of a Honduran natural (Finca El Puente / Marysabel Caballero PROCESS: Natural ALTITUDE: 1500-1680 m.a.s.l, CROP: 2023) from 88graines. I am planning to use a modified version of the standard ‘light roast’ recipe:
Weight: 350 grams
Preheat: 210ºC
Charge Settings: Power 7, Fan 3, Drum 9
Infrared Bean Temp@120ºC: Power 6
Infrared Bean Temp@165ºC: Power 5
Infrared Bean Temp@190ºC: Power 4
Infrared Bean Temp@200ºC: Fan 4
<First Crack Begins@196–204ºC >
45–90 seconds after First Crack: End the Roast
I dropped the charge temp a bit because it is a natural and I’m keeping the fan and drum consistent (except using F4 as a bit of a brake at the end) to reduce variables. I’ve been warned that this bean can accelerate out of control post FC and I might need to drop power more than usual. I’m thinking I might need to increase to F4 when I drop to P4.
Does this look like a good starting point? What am I missing? What should I change?
Many thanks for any advice or comments.
Charge temps don’t matter. Just roast different ways and cup and see what tastes best to you.
Finally roasted the Honduran. Here is my roast profile and some pics I snapped of the beans right after I cooled and bagged them. I will cup it later today and post it. I realize taste is the final statement on a successful roast, however, I am curious as to anyone’s thoughts on the profile or the post-roast pics. One thing I found interesting, when I dropped the roast I got a really strong smell of caramel.
Looks good, I’m surprised the IBTS temp didn’t dip with the bean probe temp. Is that common on your bullet?
How did it taste?
Oh, seeing 12oz green weight. Sorry, I’ve been reading about 600g and above lately, and sort of assumed it might be at least 500g or something.
Yeah, I miss those smaller batches, I should go back to those.
Hey Brad! This looks great!
That caramel smell can very likely be attributed to the crash you have entering first crack.
(Notice 10-15 seconds after FC your ROR drops very quickly.)
In this case the solution would be to hold p4 for another 20-40 seconds during the beginning of first crack.
Let me know your results if you try it!
I’ve been roasting a Guatemalan honey catuai which looks to roast very similarly.
Cheers, Evan!
Hey, Jimmy! I’m not entirely clear on what you are talking about in regards to IBTS and bean probe correlation or lack thereof (sorry… I’m a rookie here on the Bullet!). Can you tell me a bit more about that and what you have found to be common? And I’m trying to stay at a smaller batch size to manage costs while I learn. I want to scale up eventually and do larger batch sizes. So I’m always kind of looking “ahead” at the bigger batch profiles and trying to decide if 500g or something bigger would make sense for me.
Hey Evan,
Okay, thanks for this info. This is great stuff. I was worried about the temp shooting up after FC and perhaps I overcompensated. I’ve got a few ideas in my head regarding the next 2-3 roasts of this bean. I am adding your suggestion to this list (holding P4 longer). I will keep posting the results here.
Cupping results:
I cupped it about 24 hours after and thought it was a good starting point. Decent sweetness(caramel) and good acidity (maybe green apple). I also brewed an Aeropress this morning. Again good (but not great I think) with mild sweetness and strong acidity. I found the acidity to be more upfront than the sweetness and want to adjust my roast profile to try to bring the sweetness forward and either tone down or at least balance better with the acidity. I think it might be lacking a little in complexity (but it is hard for me to tell right now and I think as it ages over the next week I’ll have a better picture of that) and thought that might be because I was out past 12 minutes (which felt long for 350g, but I would love to hear thoughts on that).
My thoughts going forward are to try to get to FC a little sooner and shorten the overall length of the roast. I am thinking I should add energy to the beginning of the roast, but I’m going to do so in baby steps because I’m still worried about applying too much too soon to a natural and I don’t want to go into FC with too much energy to manage properly. It seems like raising the charge temp might be a good first step. But I also want to try the same recipe with some adjustments at the end: drop at 15% DT and then at 25% DT. And now I’ll be adding Evan’s suggestion about holding P4 a bit longer going into FC.
Thanks for all of the comments and help. I would appreciate further thoughts. Where are my assumptions wrong? How do you adjust a roast to try to bring out sweetness? Thanks all!
For fun, roasting small is great, but if you think you know the size you want to roast, I’d say go immediately to that size, because every batch size roasts differently and hits different temp bench marks etc.
Principles are carried over, but you can try to roast the same way with the same curve and end up with wildly different results.
I think 350g is one of the best for home roasting for fun. You get to roast a lot more variations. But it doesn’t directly translate to 1lbs or 1Kg batch sizes. I felt like I was learning a whole new machine when I switch weights. So you still have a period of waste. And might even waste more because you intuition is developed for smaller batches.
Quickly. I don’t think you had a crash post FC, as the IBTS does not signal that, and the bean probe really is not much help on smaller batches. The roast in the picture looks like a medium roast, but pictures can be deceiving. You could try starting more agressively, as it seems the bean can take it. I mean, hold P7 for longer, or even start with P8. Anyway, I’d try to shorten the roast as it seems, as you’ve said, a bit too long for 350g. Can’t really say what flavours you’d get, and can’t really say it’s good advice, just where I’d start. But I really never roast less than 500g.
Here, this thread also might help with IBTS and Bean Probe temps.
EDIT, ah for some reason the link isn’t working.
Basically IBTS is a little camera that measure heat it sees
And the Bean Probe is a little stick or wand that coffee beans flow around inside the drum, hitting it, and it reads the temp of the beans.
