Posted Mon Mar 12, 2012, 6:26pm Subject: Still learning - roast levels and temps
Hi all ... just want to do a sanity check here. I've built a new roaster that is really, really working well for me. It's a Sunbeam bread baker (extra tall paddle is stock with this one) with the motor always on and the heater always off. I've rigged up a nice aluminum lid and the chaff is automatically captured down under the old heater element (outside the breadpan so nicely out of the way).
So ... it used to be (with previous roasters) that if I stopped even after 10-20 seconds of rolling second crack, I would still have plenty of tan colored chaff down in the seam of the beans. But now I'm finding (perhaps it is the Brazilian bean I'm roasting) that even stopping before I get the first snap of second crack still gives me a very dark color with no tan chaff showing in the seam. I'm hitting about 444F with a thermocouple down in the bottom with the beans brushing past it as they are stirred around. But the resulting roast (which smells and tastes great by the way) looks as though I had gotten into second crack a good 20 seconds or so - I will even start to see some oils on the surface after 5 days post roast. This is not a complaint - the roast looks, smells and tastes wonderful - I'm just not used to seeing the roast look this dark without going a bit hotter and hearing more second crack.
I found this summary chart on Sweet Maria's website - and this pretty much matches what I was used to previously. But with this particular Brazilian ... hitting 446F seems to be between FC+ and French Roast rather than the FC I was expecting. I know different beans roast faster or slower and may require more or less heat in the roaster to get them to certain bean temp --- but do the beans hit a given roast level at varying bean temps based on the particular bean? If I were to take this bean to 453F, I would have a rolling 2C and an oily looking surface like french roast.
Or is this just a function of how my TC probe is sitting where the beans are moving really fast past the TC bead?
here's the chart I found on SM:
George Steinert's Degree of Roast/Temperature chart:
Degree of Roast Temp Green Unroasted 75 Starting to pale 270 Early yellow 327 Yellow-Tan 345 Light Brown 370 Brown 393 1st Crack Begins 401 1st Crack Under Way 415 City Roast 426 City+ 435 Full City 446 Full City+ 454 Vienna (Light French) 465 Full French 474 Fully Carbonized 486 Immanent Fire 497
Posted Mon Mar 12, 2012, 10:14pm Subject: Re: Still learning - roast levels and temps
fyi, dont worry too much about the color of the chaff. i think i heard in one of the sweet maria's recent ustream videos that typically a dry process bean will have a darker silverskin and a wet process will have lighter colored silverskin.
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