Back from the SCAA Expo and the Anaheim Wizard World ComicCon, a few final thoughts:
I really enjoy taking part in the roasting labs each year. Most of the material covered in the lectures is pretty basic, but it's really meant just to create some context for the exercises. These exercises are really fun challenges even for the most seasoned roasters and are great opportunities for knowledge sharing. Having access to multiple different roaster models and some top notch coffees to play with is a pretty unique experience the most roasters don't have the time or resources to take part in.
I recently had a discussion with a roaster who was having difficulty with a natural dry processed coffee from Ethiopia. He did not have much experience roasting DP coffees and had not really even considered how coffees processed in that style were different. He believed that the problems that he was finding in the cup were the result of the beans not all being of a uniform size since he was not having similar problems with other coffees that he was roasting (which happened to all be washed coffees and thus of a more uniform bean size).
In this video I talk about different styles of drum roasters and how they use airflow differently depending on the placement of the blower in relation to the energy source. There are a number of styles that I don't touch on, namely pure convection roasters or even the Loring Smart Roast which is billed as a hybrid roaster but seems to me to definitely be more convection based. Anyway, here's the video.
I did some roasting in the lab last night and video-ed a roast of the Guatemala Finca San Diego Buena Vista Bourbon which I took to a City roast level. If anybody has any roasting questions, feel free to shoot them my way and maybe I can address them in future episodes.
