I’d like to hear everyone’s experience with this. How fast is too fast ? How slow is too slow ? Fast times to FC work best when keeping X into consideration, Slow times work great when doing X etc etc.
Thanks!
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As a rule of thumb, I expect the coffee to get to yellowing stage (~335 degrees) at 5 minutes, and hit 1st crack at about nine minutes. I tend to roast my coffee to Full City+ or darker, so keep that in mind.
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Disclaimer, I roast very light.
It depends on:
- Greens: some take heat quicker, some take heat slower.
- Batch size: more greens longer it takes.
- Your roast level target: if you do mediums and darks you might want to roast over longer time.
- Your roast profile.
- Environment temperature
For me, it’s usually 6:00-7:30 minutes for 350-500g batches.
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I don’t think I’ve ever been able to stretch yellowing to 5 minutes. That’s my target from my other roaster, but the Bullet comes in faster and slowing it down would drop RoR too low.
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I believe they’re saying 5 minutes to the beginning of Yellow, not a 5 minute Yellow time ? With FC being around 9 minutes their Yellow would be about 4 minutes. I’ve done 5 minute yellow times on larger batches and they don’t really work and struggle having enough momentum where they don’t stall past FC as you’re suggesting.
I have not had the greatest results with hitting FC in the 6 minute range (650gram batches), but that being said, I don’t think I was using the right coffee for that strategy. I bet Geshas and Typicas could work very well here. I’m sort of sitting at a 7:30 FC minimum for my palette these days.
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To stretch out the time to yellow, you could lower your drop temp.
Here’s a profile for 300g of a decal Colombian I took to 2nd crack. Roast World - Cup, grade, and analyze your coffee roasts in depth
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I must say that this is a personal preference. The faster roasted coffes will not taste the same as long roasts. For me, absolute minimum is 7:40 and max at about 10:15. I prefer to be at a span from 8:40 to 9:30. The bottom line is try, taste, make a decision. The beauty is in finding out what you prefer.
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I would agree, I have not had the best results with times to FC as low as 6:30 or even 7:00. They weren’t bad, just, un-impressive. Been finding my stride as of late between 8:00 and 9:30 depending on the bean.
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I would suggest getting a copy of Rob Hoos’s book, Modulating the flavor profiles of coffee,
There is a lot of detailed chemistry and descriptions of what happens during a roast and when it happens. All that determines taste which of course is subjective but it seems to be the information you are looking to acquire.
My brighter, fruity, floral and berry forward coffees benefit from a faster roast while mellow comfort coffees go longer. The book gave me an idea of why.
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Hi burlchester, what batch sizes do you normally roast with the roast times you mentioned.?
Hi Geoffrey, I too aim for fruity, floral, berry notes in my roasts of Ethiopian coffees but I don’t always get them. Do you mind sharing a bit more on your average batch size and FC times & total roast times that have given you these exciting flavours?
Would appreciate if you can share one or two of your best roast profiles that you were most pleased with.
Thanks in advance:)
Gaby
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Up until recently I’ve only ever roasted 910 gram batches. The quickest I could get to FC would be 8:50, but usually would sit within 9 and 10 minutes so that my curve was acceptable. A few weeks ago I received 50 gram samples of green coffee and, using some old green to practice roasting at such small quantities, I found myself successfully roasting at such a low dose, with really impressive results. Now my perception of FC at such a low dose may be faulty, however I was marking FC at late 6 minutes, early 7’s, and sadly it was some of the best coffee I’d tasted on the bullet haha. Theories abound as to why this could be, I started using smaller batch sizes and am now sitting at a 650 gram batch, comfortably capable of hitting FC at late 6’s, 7’s, 8’s and 9’s if I want. I’m finding however that 8 minutes is my minimum for this size, 8:30 being a real sweet spot for me.
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