Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491371
STiR tea & coffee industry international 43 LORING.COM DIsCOveR why the wORLD's best ROast MasteRs aRe ChOOsING LORING. » Produces a brighter, cleaner cup with the Flavor-Lock Roast Process™ Technology » Reduces fuel costs by up to 80% compared to conventional roasters » Achieves true consistency with agile digital controls and repeatable roast profiles » Conserves space with the smallest footprint in the industry Explore the Smarter Way to Roast. Visit LORING.COM Hoos used a 15-kilo Loring Smart Roast S15 Falcon roaster to precisely roast four of the eight samples from the sort. Charge weight was 106 ounces (6.6 lbs.) for all samples. The charge temperature was 280-degrees and the beans were dropped into the cooling tray at 412-degrees, losing a uniform 14% weight after 11:49 minutes in the roaster. First crack was nearly identical for all four sorts at 9:44 minutes into the roast. Hoos carefully mimicked the roasting curve for each sample, adjusting heat as required "so that the only difference we should be tasting in the coffee is correlated to its hue." "Normally we don't sort by color, this is something new," he said. He observed that bean size varied slightly within the samples and the coffee emerged from the roaster as expected. The profiles matched within an acceptable window of variation to ensure that any cupping differences were not due to the roast, he said. Bob Benck, green bean buyer at Batdorf & Bronson, in Olympia, Wash., used a Probat BRZ-2 gas-fired dual sample roaster. Benck aimed to have roast times and relative first cracks that approximate the roast results from their G-45 produc- tion machine. However, Benck cautioned that with their sample-sized equipment, an operator relies on sight and sound. "Frankly, you should be able to do this with any coffee roasting equipment and get meaningful results as long as the roasts are done in identical fashion," said Benck. First crack for all four of the Batdorf & Bronson samples occurred after eight and half minutes and roasting stopped near the eleventh minute. Moisture read- ings were all within a .3% range. Meanwhile in Portland, Hoos couldn't wait to taste and compare. His notes show a marked improvement in scores for the dark and medium coffee. "This was a decent coffee from the start (sometimes I am concerned that experiments don't use decent quality coffees)," said Hoos. "If we were to do another set of roasts, I am sure we could slightly modulate the flavor but what we were doing here was looking beyond the roast (and trying to minimize its impact) and taste the difference in the green… specifically the impact of the hue sort," he said. "There was definitely a correlation between the hue sorting and the qual- ity of the coffee when sample roasted and cupped. The fact that the deviation in score was close to or slightly over two points makes me believe that it isn't cupper error. This is significant because buyers would normally be willing to pay more for an 86 as opposed to an 84, wouldn't they?" he asked. The next step was to see if seven other experienced cuppers would agree with his evaluation. Three hues and the control sample of green coffee beans prior to roasting. Photos by Bob Benck courtesy Batdorf & Bronson