I am quite new to roasting and wanted to understand how do you stretch or reduce the Drying, Maillard and development phases respectively while keeping the over all time the same?
Good question. Those three phases are the result of when yellowing (end of drying) and first crack (end of Maillard) land. You move them by shaping your heat/RoR curve, and since total time is fixed, stretching one borrows from another:
- More drying, less Maillard: charge cooler or ease off power early… yellowing lands later.
- Less drying, more Maillard: a bit more heat up front… yellowing sooner, more room before FC.
- More development: ease power down approaching FC so RoR keeps declining but stays positive past first crack. Don’t cut so hard it crashes… a stalled finish tastes baked, not developed.
Consistent tracking of the events makes it much easier to grasp over time.