Production Analysis (featuring Diedrich IR-5 and Loring S15 Falcon) by Doris Garrido
We start the year at The Crown with new arrivals that are now being served as espressos. The first one is this Rwanda Mahembe Murundo, tasting sweet and juicy with a balanced tartness on the mouthfeel that makes it a pleasant espresso experience. But during roast analysis it was not love at first taste, and I will explain why.
From the first roast, I collected notes like: mild, mellow, and simple, shadowing others like tart and juicy. After roasting I got sick and I had to cup a few days later and I agreed with those tasting notes, and I also added some dry spices. Chris Kornman jumped on the Diedrich and did another roast with not much luck: cardamom, clean, low-intensity, marshmallow, plum - similar to the previous roast.
My roast was longer at 10:41 than Chris’ at 8:25. Similar percentages of drying, yellowing, and post-crack development but with different approaches. The ColorTrack reading was really close to each other: 54.53 ColorTrack (mine) and 53.68 from the CK roast. Then the two roasts were blended and dialed in on the espresso bar, and Rwanda Kivubelt started working its juiciness. I was not expecting what I would taste the first time I tried it as an espresso shot: a creamy, juicy, sweet shot, with tart cranberry and a gently silky body.
Now the roast has moved to a bigger batch size on the Loring S15 Falcon. Chris Kornman did a 9:25 min roast stretching the Maillard to bring out more citrusy notes from the coffee that complemented the cup much better on the cupping table.
One of the things I did wrong before my first roast was to mess with the Sinar by moving it to different rooms with significantly different temperatures. By doing that my moisture reading was affected and ended up being inaccurate. I thought there was 12% moisture, but it ended up being 10% after resampling. I did my roast plan based on that first reading, but have learned from this mistake.
