Overview
This is a traditional triple-washed coffee from Gihombo, Nyamasheke, Rwanda, produced by smallholders organized around Kivubelt’s Jarama Washing Station.
The flavor profile is sweet, clean, and zesty, with notes of orange, caramel, lemongrass, and black tea.
Our roasters found the coffee responsive and easy to roast, and despite the “average” looking density numbers encouraged trying a slightly higher heat and faster style for your light roasts.
When brewed our baristas preferred pour-overs using flat-bottomed brewers, a slightly lower dose, and moderate to coarse grind. In the coming weeks, we’ll be dialing the coffee in for espresso service as well.
Diedrich IR-5 Analysis by Doris Garrido
I roasted the first sample of this coffee on the Proaster, and I noticed that it reacted simply great, which let me know that I can do a simple roast on the Diedrich.
And I was right. First, I started with a low charge of 416F and 50% of the air flow. This was my second roast of the day and because of that the drum temperature was stable. That allowed me to start with my gas movements. For this coffee was easy and simple, I started at 30 seconds of the roast time with the 100% of gas and left it for 3:47 minutes and dropped to the lowest 30%. I enjoy simple gas movements because it makes it easy to repeat. I spent the time in Maillard just looking at the rate of change lowering from 44.8/1-minute RoR to 19 to the first crack and doing no more gas adjustment.
On the air side, I run 50% air for 2 minutes in the beginning of the roast and then opened again at 360F 50% and 100% after first crack.
I gave it 1:31 minutes of development and dropped the coffee at 399.3F.
I was enormously proud of my roast on the cupping table. The body was great, and the acidity turned out showing a nice tanginess. The complexity of the caramelized sweetness balanced the flavors. From the beginning I thought this coffee came with a complex flavor, and again I was right.
To this moment I have tasted a few other roasts made on different roasters and the high-density profile we use on the Ikawa is my winner.
I do think that this Diedrich roast ended great, but I feel the Ikawa used a little extra heat that brought out the flavor a bit more. Next week I will be roasting this coffee on the Loring, and I am going try to match the Ikawa profile. The interesting part of this is that I use density to have an idea of how the coffee is going to react in the drum, and here the density reads 689 g/l. I would translate that to a soft approach since I consider that number as low density. But because of the taste results we got on the Ikawa I would do a bit more heat to fasten the drying and I will try to stretch Maillard.
