Loring S15 Falcon Analysis profile design by Doris Garrido & Chris Kornman, words by Chris Kornman
Over the past few years Rosalba Cifuente’s coffee from Bella Vista has been through the paces on our 15kg Loring more than just about any other coffee we roast. I recently looked back on the archive and history of this coffee’s analysis and a couple of common threads emerged as we began to prepare the current harvest for its heralded return to our espresso bar.
After looking at the green metrics and Doris’ initial roast of the coffee on the Diedrich we knew the coffee would need plenty of heat to power through drying phase. In the past, much of the struggle with this coffee for the roaster stemmed from an overly drawn-out Maillard phase as a reaction to the high charge and burner settings during drying phase.
Conveniently, the coffee it was replacing was roasted to avoid a similar problem, and an existing roast curve for our Timor-Leste was used as the baseline. (That roast was first modelled on a Panama Gesha from December, which was modelled on a Guatemala Gesha from October.) As far as globe-trekking roast profiles go, in one iteration or another, this roast has been around at least one full revolution in just a few calendar months.
One of the improvements made on this profile by Doris during its early development as it evolved to improve and accentuate the delicate, nuanced floral flavors of the Timor-Leste, was to wait to ramp down the gas setting until partway through the Maillard reactions. The other, critical change she made for this Mexico happens at first crack. Instead of sloping down gently in anticipation of the phase change, Doris held onto a gas setting of 80% right up until just 15 seconds before audible pops began at close to 400F on the bean probe.
Her nerves of steel steered this roast to the brink of crack and then chopped the gas out in quick increments all the way down to just 25% within just 30 seconds. As the rate of rise plummeted from 20F/minute to just above zero, Doris dropped the batch at 1:15 of development and just 5 degrees hotter than when first crack began.
The cupping table showed off complexity and nuance, with an in-tact acid profile and essential sweetness from both the bean and its caramelization preserved nicely. We tasted vanilla, raisin, hard candy, plum, and brown sugar. The Diedrich IR-5 and Loring S15 roasts share more than one commonality, but perhaps the most important is this: this coffee will crave a lot of heat during early stages of roasting.
On the espresso bar, the coffee was enthusiastically dialed in and served with abandon by our team during a busy weekend. Its immediate popularity is a testament to the recognizability of Rosalba’s coffees in the marketplace, the attention to detail in processing, exporting, roasting, and serving, and of course the unmistakable excellence of the coffee itself.
