A week ago I did two coffee roasting demos and I featured
the Bali Blue Moon. I used the
professional Gene Café roaster and the coffee turned out much different from my
first experience roasting in the popcorn poppers. In my opinion the coffee was under-roasted in
the first demo and over-roasted in the second.
Both seemed a touch bitter to me but my guests were gracious enough to
tell me that the coffee was good – at least better than the Maxwell House they
had just drank. So I decided that I need
to roast a couple batches and get to know what was going on.
The first batch that I roasted was called a
"High-Roast" (464 deg. F: 15 min.) in the Gene Café. It was on the under-roasted side and left the
bean rawer than it was roasted. When I
ground it and brewed it we (me and my wife) sampled it and found it to be true
to its description of very fruity in flavor.
My wife commented that it reminded her of an Orange Zinger tea. Indeed we could identify that this bean was
actually grown between tangerine and orange trees. However, my wife and I not being fans of
Orange Zinger tea ended up dumping the pot and moving on to roast #2.
This second batch I moved up a notch on the roasting scale
to "City-Roast" (482 deg. F: 17 min.) which was enough more to take
the coffee from under-roasted to almost perfectly roasted (I say almost
perfectly roasted because I don't know what perfect is in the world of
coffee). This coffee tasted balanced
with only undertones of the fruitiness (like seeing something in the periphery)
from the previous roast. The natural
nuttiness of this bean blended with the fruit dominance and made the fruit as
though it were just a memory and an ever so slight chocolate note on the finish
and after taste.
What is the difference between roasting with the popcorn
poppers and the fancy Gene Café? There
are two main ones as I see it. First,
roasting with the popcorn poppers is more of an art form as the result is
singularly dependent upon a human to listen, look, and determine when the beans
have been roasted enough. When roasting
with the Gene Café the human need only set the controls for the result they
desire and then they are free to push start to begin the automatic process. And second, I consider the two roasting
methods best described as the "Petal-to-the-Metal Roasting" versus
the "Oh-Dear-Heaven-I-Think-My-Grandma-is-Behind-the-Wheel Roasting"
methods. With the PttM method, the heat
is full and furious and takes about 7 minutes to roast a batch of green beans
and the ODHITMGiBtW method is well, about 30-35 minutes from start to finish
per batch. Granted, the ODHITMGiBtW
method makes about twice what the PttM method does per batch but since I am the
type of person who would rather drive 50 miles out of my way to avoid 5 minutes
of stop-and-go traffic can you guess which method I prefer?
So, as it turns out, I have tried the Bali Blue Moon three
or four different ways now and the result has always been a different. Coffee is truly like wine tasting in that
there is much to be explored in each cup if only we will take the time to go
spelunking. Please, the next time you
have a cup of coffee consider exploring your cup and be determined to
experience it fully.
Red 
Yellow 
