Continuing Adventures of Coffee Roasting

Roasted third batch today of Guatemala Huehuetenango Finca La Maravilla. I was feeling a bit cocky because I thought I had just about nailed batch 2. Well I pre-heated to about 575 F because I was trying to find an address and forgot about the preheat. Not a huge deal just let opened the lid and let the heat drop down to about 500 and dropped the beans in. The heat dropped to about 275F and I was able to get it back up to 300 around the six minute mark. However while I got some early first cracker around 5:45 nothing else for about 6 more minutes. In retrospect I was trying to keep the heat closer to 300 than 350 which simply the whole process really long. The beans are super textured and dark. No oil but definitely not the greatest roast. We'll see when it gets drunk

Also roasted batch four today. Partially trying to learn this roasting thing a little faster as well as wanting to burn through some of these samples to get a full-on sack to practice with a more consistent bean. So pre-heated again and dropped in with the Ethiopia Moplaco Yirga Cheffe. Roasts 2/3 come from the Jon Beall Approved List for Popper Roasting. The Ethiopia is absent from the JBALPR falling in the category, according to the label, C to C+. These are not friendly categories to the popper roaster crowd. This was more of a practice round to try to do a better job with the temperature. The pre-heat only got to about 450 before I dropped the beans in and was able to maintain a really awesomely steady temperature the entire time. Most of the roasting happened at around 325-350. I did have some really early first cracker at 3 minutes which caused me to drop the heat to 300-325 but still maintained consistency and did not fall below 300 which was in itself cause for rejoicing. First crack started around 7 minutes at 340 and was able to keep the roast going at that temperature until the end. However the color of the beans is again many shades darker than that of the recommended City/City+ bean. This was not entirely unexpected but still a bit of a disappointment. These beans are pretty dark and I'm guessing that these are probably burnt.

Take-away points
1) Maintained really consistent temps with second roast-yeah!
2) Roasted coffee. This is a good thing.
3) Discovered that you can actually peel the labels off the sample bags and stick them on the canister(s) so I don't have to try to remember what the heck I roasted. (Yes that is a former pickle jar on the right. It's all I had for my first roast. Works ok-probably need a valve tin.)