Chemically Imbalanced (espresso-jogged screeds)

curvy: the sulawesi, thermoprobed

lesson no. 1 from the now-rigorous commitment to chart my roast curves as i consume the newly arrived sulawesi toraja grade 1 — all 20 green pounds of it: ambient temperature is huge. huger than i thought. although it’s sometimes hard to see any variance on the total time it takes to roast a batch, a cooler room temperature, for example, will produce a noticeably slower ramp-up to full roast levels. more managed roasting environs, please.

the good news, seen below, is that the overall curve is more gradual than i thought it would be, not far from the nice, measured roast profiles on professional, computer-controlled roasters. i had thought that with only three distinct stages programmable on the iroast that the rate of increase would be jerkier. not so. also, the cool-off is faster than i had thought — another good sign. go here and you get a sense of all the metal and plastic layered inside the roaster lid (plus, i attach a ventilation hose to the top to spare the ladye all the fumes). all this would seem to retain a good amount of heat longer than you’d like … but the curve shows an adequately sharp drop-off when i hit the “cool” button. so with the major anticipated flaws pleasantly rendered moot, now we tweak!



notes: all charted temps are in celcius, since i’m already too engrossed in this geekiest of projects to spend more time translating the figures to F. for consistency, i’m using one full cup of green beans and roasting only the sulawesi as i attempt to more closely manage roast curves and pull more intriguing cup results from one of my favorite indonesian beans. warning: this could mean impending bloviations on roast theory, arcane measures of temp stability, etc. also: nerdy excel charts that resemble a hulking mid-summer tsunami.