A video overview of our recent Bullet Roast Profile featuring the always popular Polar Expresso Holiday Blend.
Ever since we started selling the Aillio Bullet R1 1 kg coffee roaster, there’s been a growing number of inquiries about sharing roast profiles for the coffees on our list. To be honest, it’s something we’ve longed to do for all our roasters, but the Bullet is special case.
The built in Roast Time software that the Bullet comes with makes plotting your roasts and sharing profiles incredibly easy. You can then upload any of your roasts to your personal profile in AIllio’s Roast World community, where Bullet users from all over the world can access your roasts, download your Aillio Bullet recipes for playback, and even modify the automated changes.
This is the first in what will be a running series of Bullet roast profileRoast Profile refers to the relationship between time and temperature in coffee roasting, with the endpoint being the "degree of roast". Roast profiling is the active manipulation of... videos where different people on the Sweet Maria’s team choose a coffee to roast in the Bullet, and share a little bit about the roast, including a the Roast Time profile that can be downloaded from our Roast World profile. We’re not necessarily posting thee perfect roast approach here. But rather, using what we know about the coffee to come up with a reasonable roast approach give the Bullet’s capabilities, and sharing the outcome in a relatively concise way.
For this first installation I chose to roast the Sweet Maria’s Polar Expresso Holiday Blend. I recently upgraded my home espressoA small coffee beverage, about 20 ml, prepared on an espresso machine where pressurized hot water extracted through compressed coffee.: In its most stripped-down, basic form, this is... machine, and wanted to roast a decent size batch of the blend to help break it in. Considering the varying densityThe density of a coffee bean is often taken as a sign of quality, as a more dense bean will roast more with a better dynamic. The density... levels of the blend ingredients (the El SalvadorEl Salvador coffee had an undeservingly poor reputation for years, marred mostly by the inability to deliver coffee of high quality in an unstable political climate. Unfortunately, agriculture... is a lower altitude, less dense bean than the two Ethiopian ingredients), I chose to take a relatively slow-and-low approach, hoping to find some equilibrium in the drum. I also tried stretching out the time between the start of first crackFirst crack in one of two distinct heat-induced pyrolytic reactions in coffee. It is distinguished by a cracking or popping sound in the coffee, and occurs between 390... and finishSimilar to aftertaste, but it refers to the impression as the coffee leaves the palate. Aftertaste is the sensations gathered after the coffee has left the mouth. We..., by dropping the temperature input, in order to round off some of the acidity
Acidity is a positive flavor attribute in coffee, also referred to as brightness or liveliness. It adds a brilliance to the cup, whereas low acid coffees can seem... that the Ethiopian components bring to this blend.
All in all, I’m very pleased with the way this roast turned out! Don’t get me wrong. It helps to work with ingredients that are fairly forgiving.
To hear my full notes on roasting and cupping
Cupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... this blend, check out the video below.
Or, hop over to my Roast World profile to download the roast graph or recipe (you’ll have to be logged in for access).
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2 Responses
Dan,
Thanks for the post. I am used to seeing roast curves with ROR peaks near the beginning of the roast, rather than the middle. I have avoided curves like yours because I’ve read that they can lead to bitter flavors. Perhaps you could post some of your thinking on how to approach roast curves, what works well and what causes unwanted flavors.
Thanks,
Art
Thanks for your comment Art!
The ROR in my roast peaks in the first 3 min, bottoms out around the half-way point, and then steadily increases back toward the peak of about 25F/min when 1st C begins around the 9 min mark. My thinking on roast approach for this particular blend, is I wanted to have a steady, gentle rise in BT/IBTS, keeping 1st Crack well in control by pulling back on heat just before it starts. I think I could’ve started stepping down the heat a little earlier, but I also wanted to avoid a super long, baked roast.
I’ll keep your questions in mind for the next Bullet roast in a couple of weeks.
-Dan