On Roasting New Charge Sizes
Worked most of the morning developing a 300 gram sample size in the 1K North roaster. Seemed to get it down on about the 5th sample. Bamm! Thought it might make for a good blog but I wanted to nail a kilo first. Time for the big leagues.
We have a new micro-lot Colombian that promises to be a great cup. Can’t wait to roast it so I grabbed a kilo of it and went back to multi-tasking. It is rare to have the opportunity to do dedicated roasting so I put roasting on hold and tended to some office work while the temps drifted down.
Got back to roasting and dumped the kilo into the pitcher. Around 350º, I dropped and registered it on Artisan. Boy, did she drop quickly. Huh. Time to end the drying phase and then all eyes on the Delta BT. Not enough gas. Crank it up. Not enough movement. Rate of rise isn’t moving fast enough. What the heck? Puzzled. Steve was tied up on a customer call so I was on my own. 15º ROR — oh, oh. No way I was making first crack by 9:30.
Now we are drifting into 11 minutes post charge and I have tan beans. I swore mercilessly. Why did I try to roast a kilo, anyways. Why hadn’t I just run with 300 grams!? Why did I choose the most expensive green in the whole stable? My stomach tightened. Pulled out the trier. This roast was toast. Maybe I could call it a Scandinavian roast — that’s it — I trained in Oslo, or I am bring the West Coast to the Midwest. That’s it!
Steve finished his call. Took one look at the coffee through the porthole (Steve was a Marine and insists we use naval terms for all machine parts) and said, “How much coffee DID you put in there.”
“A kilo,” seemed correct.
Steve grinned and said, “Wanna bet?” Well, my wallet is still screaming from the January 1’s football games /Vegas’ terrible spreads so I didn’t take that bet.
“Let it run,” was all Steve said. “My lawyer’s office will love it.”
Dumped the load into the cooling tray at 17 minutes. My tray runneth over. “Well,” I said, trying to reframe it, “we know the tray will hold more than a kilo.” Right about then, I wanted to climb inside the drum — any place other than standing next to my smirking boss.
I weighed out the finished roast. You guessed it, 3.75 pounds. I retraced my steps. What had I done? Whoops, I had weighed out two separate kilos while I was double-tasking and on the fly, dumped the second into the tall pitcher that already contained a kilo. “Stuff happens,” (or something to that effect) was all Steve said as he walked away chuckling. “Oh, and by the way Champ, unless you want to hear about this daily, you will blog your experience.” OK, ok…
Time to close this blog off — it’s running too long. I have some 1.5” pork loin chops to prepare for dinner. But first, I have to go downstairs and get some micrometers. I really want to make sure they are an inch and a half.
