I'm back from my school/work hiatus! Sorry it's been a while, but I'm looking forward to blogging weekly about my roast and being more consistent with my updates. My first roast this summer was with some lovely Yemen beans I got from Sweet Maria's.
The Yemen Mokha Sharasi were dry processed and Sweet Maria's recommended I roast them in between a City + to a Full City +. I decided to do a Full City + since I was just getting back into the groove of things and stopping the roast after the first couple cracks into the 2nd crack is the easiest way to do so in my opinion. I used my trusty old Behmor 1600, P1 profile with the A program. I should've used the B program, but oh well I just did some time adjusting on the fly. The total duration for the roast was 20 minutes flat. The 1st crack for me started around 17:15 seconds and ended around 18 minutes. The roast hurried onto the 2nd crack around 19:50 so I just stopped the roast at 20 minutes. Overall the roast seemed a bit off to me. Usually the first crack comes sooner, but maybe it was the beans, or because I hadn't used my roaster in a while and it needed time to warm up. The chaff on these beans are a pain to clean up, like most dry processed beans, but at the end of the day, totally worth it for the taste.
Using these beans throughout the week to keep me alive, I brewed them with my Chemex, V60 and even tried it as espresso with my Rancilio Silvia. My favorite by far was with the Chemex. The aroma was very sweet, like fruity sweet. The flavor was like a strong dried apricot that was delicious to gulp down every morning. Acidity was pretty low. The finish wasn't all that great, just a bland chocolate taste, which probably had to do with my roast, not the bean itself. Overall it was a pretty good cup of coffee. I really enjoyed the apricot flavor and would definitely buy/roast it again.
Looking back, I would probably try a Full City roast next time I roast these beans to see if I could get a better finish with the coffee. Other than that I was pretty satisfied with my cups of coffee for the week. Hope everyone has a great week and next week I'll be roasting some Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe!
