Coffee Variety

Coffee Variety

After roasting a few batches of the varieties of beans that came with my initial order, and roasting them to a couple of different roast levels, it was time to expand my green coffee bean inventory to include a variety of coffees from around the world. I was intrigued by what I had learned while doing research on-line about the different profiles of the different growing regions around the world, and I wanted to try each of them for myself. My adventure began quite unscientifically by choosing a couple of different coffees based simply on the exotic names they had, and one type was much more utilitarian – the espresso blend, since roasting for my relatively newly acquired home espresso machine was one of the primary reasons for home roasting in the first place. As I recall I began with some aged monsooned Malabar and some Sulawesi Toraja as well as the Brazil Beja Flor.

Light or Dark Roast

My experience in roasting bore out what I had learned in researching coffee on the internet: the darker you roast your coffee the more the flavor is influenced by the depth of the roast than by the origin, growing conditions, and processing methods of the actual coffee bean itself. In roasting coffee there are two distinct “cracks” that you hear. Until “first crack” the bean remains in its “green” state. First crack occurs when the internal temperature of the bean causes the moisture in the bean to crack or pop the bean (much like the popping of corn in a popcorn popper although coffee does not “explode” like popping corn). Second crack occurs as the structure of the bean begins to break down, the sugars begin to caramelize, and the oils begin to be released.

Roasting Heat

The coffee bean is not “coffee” as we know coffee before the first crack. No roast should ever be stopped before the first crack. Up to first crack the roasting beans smell much like other plants would while they are heated and there is no real flavor at all. The actual flavor that you taste in your coffee is a direct result of the roasting process and the endothermic process. The roast has two distinct endothermic stages which are concluded by exothermic stages. Endothermic means internal heating or heating within. Exothermic is the release of energy (heat). In other words, the beans heat internally until the first crack when moisture is released. They then heat again internally, until the structure of the bean itself begins to change and the physical structure begins to break down – second crack. First crack and second crack are the exothermic reactions that conclude the endothermic stages.

One of the most important things for me in home roasting was to extend the period between first crack and second crack so that I could stop the roast right where I wanted it. This is because during the early stages after first crack the flavor of the bean will be determined primarily by the type of coffee bean, the growing climate (including rainfall, elevation, soil consistency, and other plant life in the region), and the method of processing the coffee cherry. As the roast progresses near the second crack, into second crack, and beyond second crack, the flavor profile is determined primarily by the depth to which you take the roast. In essence even diverse types of coffee begin to taste more uniform the darker they are roasted because it is the depth of the roast that will determine the flavor. This is why some roasters tend to roast their coffee darker – they can produce a much more consistent roast from crop to crop because the flavor is most influenced by the roast and not the bean.

Purchase Coffee from Our Sponsors:

Tagged as: Coffee Roasting, dark roast, light roast