Roasting for science- Part 2...

The software has proven to have a bug in the Recipe area. Recipes are a convenience feature that allows the user to partially automate the roasting process by making fan, power and drum speed changes at predetermined points based upon either time or temperature time-and-temperature.

I've ignored the feature for nearly 2 years 'cuz I wanna do it myself'. Well, Matt needed some testing done and I decided to jump in. I created a 'recipe' that set up initial power, fan and drum-speed setting, then progressed thru steps to send alert-messages and change the settings right up till the time of first crack. At first crack I had to take over since that's where the roast characteristics are most influenced by the operator.

The first try at a recipe was a flop... didn't work for me. But my recipe did work for Matt. Then my favorite Code Warrior had an idea. Bingo! His idea worked and my first try at recipes just became my basic operating mode for a heat-soak roast.

But I can't test software without having beans in the roaster. So I dredged up some beans from Kenya. They're from the Kiambu region (which sounds like a processing plant since Kiambu is right on the northern border of the city of Nairobi and no self-respecting coffee plant would want to live there!

Now I can see that this coffee choice was a fortunate decision cuz up till then I had no idea Kenya was in the same area as other coffee countries I like:

  • Rwanda
  • Burundi
  • Kenya, and
  • Ethiopia... which is mecca for coffee lovers!

Wow! What an eye opener.

Anyway, the beans I have are from Mandela Estates plantatio, (supposedly) in Kiambu Kenyan (I'm pretty sure this plantation is unrelated to Nelson Mandela of South Africa). I had already roasted over 20# of this coffee and somehow never found a way to roast which made for a great cup of coffee.

My recent discovery of adding heat later - what was called a 'heat soak' - has been waiting to be tried on these beans, so I decided 'what the hell'. So now I have five 1# bags of roasted Kenya Kiambu cooling their roasted-buns in the fridge while they 'rest'. 

Something new to try!

Ps- I had this 20# sack of beans (my 2nd 20# order) cuz I clicked "Place Order" before I noticed I had the wrong beans selected. As Snoopy would have said-




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