Our very first stab at a live Discord event went pretty well. See the video replay here
NOTE: Discord didn’t work out for us, unfortunately. We had small groups, and few questions. Our SM staff generally outnumbered other participants. I know consistency is the key to success with a new platform… we moved over to YouTube Live for this type of event… still not great turn-out but better exposure in terms of replaying events later on.
Welcome to our first edition of Sweet Maria’s Office Hours on Discord. Shockingly, there were no huge gaffs considering we are still figuring out Discord. But it’s a great place to have an interactive conversation. We’re hoping this video replay gives you a taste of what this type of forum can provide, and maybe you will join us on Discord for the next session of Office Hours.
We want these to be interactive conversations on particular topics of interest for the group. For our first go around, it was more of a presentation.
Tom showed video and photos of his recent TanzaniaIn terms of the Tanzania coffee character, it belongs to the Central/East African family of washed (wet-processed) coffees, bright (acidy), and mostly aggressively flavorful of which Kenya is... trip, focusing a bit on the world of commercial coffee that we rarely get to glimpse in this way. We also discussed some new arriving coffees and went off on a BehmorA popular electric drum roaster designed for home use, with variable batch sizes (from 1/4 pound to 1 pound) and a smoke-reduction system. It has been modified and... tangent (specifically roasting EthiopiaEthiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, or a coffee cultivar: Ethiopia, or more specifically the Empire under Haile Selassie, was known as Abyssinia. The name is Latin, derived from... coffees in a Behmor) at the end. That gave us the strong suggestion that the next Office Hours should be a Behmor Q and A session!
You can see the conversation here in this embed from our YouTube channel:
2 Responses
When is the next office hours? I like the idea of roaster specific office hours. I have a FreshRoast SR800. My roasts come out tasty but typically just a little off the mark; but I’m also far from a sophisticated taster. I’m still at the ‘it tastes bad, ok, or great’ stage and can taste hints of some things; but probably don’t drink enough at once. Below are some of the topics I think could be interesting:
I set up a thermocouple to see what my temperature is doing throughout the roast. The ROR is like a roller coaster. Maybe that is inherent to air roasters. Maybe my thermocouple is fidgety or not calibrated. Maybe I change the temperature settings too late/soon. Maybe I’m graph cupping. A little more on how air roasters behave vs drum roasters would be helpful.
My percent loss feels like it is off by 2-5% points from the color and taste. For example, my last roast of Espresso Monkey had a loss of 16.8%, but using the color chart it looks like it is somewhere between City+ and Full City. Is that an effect of the air roaster or am I not calculating it correctly (should also be including the chaff in the weight)?
What does roasting fast vs slow do to the roast? I like how my roast tastes at around 455F based on my set up. I’ve been able to hit that temperature at 8 minutes or as long as 14 minutes. The 14 minute tasted more roasted than the 8 minute roast event hough I dropped at the same end temperature.
Hey Ted, thanks for the comments!
We are hoping to host an office hours in the next week or two. Tom and I have both been out of the country (he’s still in Indonesia), so we haven’t been able to line something up since the Behmor discussion. But it will happen sooner than later! We’re also discussing moving to a new platform, but will give plenty of notice on when and where the next one will be.
I’m curious where you placed your thermocouple? In a small chamber like this, I think bean temp is going to provide the most accurate readings. Are you using Artisan for logging? I know they support the FreshRoast.
Sometimes surface color doesn’t match roast level, especially if roasting long (like the 8 min vs 14 min comparison). Long roasts can really develop the inside of the bean, so we usually grind our coffee before trying to line up with the color chart. Even then, some coffees just present differently (like natural or honey process, for example, due to fruit mucilage that’s dried to the exterior) and won’t line up the same.
Hope this helps! Please don’t hesitate to shoot us any other questions.
Best,
Dan