Nerds-ville...

I'm not sure I qualify for using this not-very-kind title. I was not the top of my class in anything science or arts related, but I do enjoy techie subjects. These days my tech efforts are limited to too much detail about roasting coffee. In the past that also included brewing coffee. Over the last couple years I've accepted that I keep doing things the same way cuz I like what I'm tasting and I don't want to change anything. The Admiral's tolerance for this 'same-ness' has proven to be remarkable!

For perhaps the last 2 years I have been buying green (unroasted) beans - what we coffee nerds call 'greens' - from Coffee Bean Corral in Jackson, Mississippi. These organic (!) greens are sourced from the state of Chiapas in Mexico. Chiapas is the most southern state in Mexico and it is also (at upper elevations) a coffee growing region. I gave it a try a few years ago and decided it was good enough I didn't care to keep experimenting to find something different.

In years past I bought greens exclusively from Sweet Maria's in Oakland, California. Then Sweet Maria's changed their packaging to eliminated plastic bags and replaced them with cloth sacks. Altruistic but unfortunately the greens dry significantly before use because of moisture loss through the porous fabric of the sack. This drying renders the greens useless, dry, dead seeds. Sweet Maria's refused to use plastic on request. So after 15+ years of buying greens exclusively from Sweet Maria's I had to find another source. 

There are many to choose from but I quickly settled on Coffee Bean Corral. I tried a few varieties offered at CBC but got hooked on greens from Mexico. They had 2 or 3 varieties to choose from but the greens from the state of Chiapas really grabbed me as they respond well to a dark roast. 

So a few months after giving up on Sweet Maria's 'no-more-plastic' campaign I found myself buying organic greens from Chiapas, Mexico as sold by CBC. These greens have been consistently good when roasted using my usual roast profile. Done and dusted!

Our trusty Aillio R1 V2 coffee roaster preheating (PH) in the shop. 
As of 24 August 2025 it had roasted almost 1,700 lbs. of greens since 
purchased new 16 January 2019.

The image below is pretty typical of the roast profile as executed and recorded by the Aillio-supplied RoasTime software (gratis) I use to operate the roaster. Aillio has a new roaster on offer but it would cost nearly $5,000 (plus more $$ for a step-up transformer to provide the required 220 VAC power). I have no interest in spending that kind of $$ to do what I'm doing already. The risk, of course, is that Aillio's support for the R1 may go away at some point.
 

Typical roast profile that I've been using the last 2+ years.

So... a blog post just to say I'm still roasting coffee for us plus 2-3 other residents in our RV park. And that I am still happy with the results.

And in case you wonder about the coffee name in the screenshot above- 

• Mexico is the country of origin for the greens;
• Org is the abbreviation for organic;
• Mocabe translates from Spanish to 'cement slab'- the flat surface the farm uses to dry the green coffee and the name the grower chose for the plantation; 
• Chiapas is the state in Mexico where the greens originate.

The map of Mexico centered on the southern-most state of Chiapas.

So there it is: an update about coffee roasting that basically says I'm perfectly content changing nothing about what I'm roasting. All that will fall in a cocked hat if CBC can't get any more of the greens I enjoy so much!! But that's borrowing trouble. We'll just have to wait and see.