This month we had the pleasures of releasing two coffees from the acclaimed producer group El Morito from San Ignacio, Cajamarca, Peru.
This is our first year being operational during Peru season, and its one of my favorite origins, so I was quite looking forward to getting ahold of some green. After missing out on some coffee that was purchased before we were able to get our samples, we found these coffees through importer Condesa Colab based in Sydney.
Condesa had brought in a bunch of lots from El Morito, the one that caught my attention was Faustino Flores. I have tried a number of geshas from Peru and they are usually amazing. I requested some samples and tried a few of the other lots available, all tasted great, but I landed on Felipe Estela’s blend of Red Bourbon and Yellow Caturra. As well as Faustino Flores’ Washed Gesha.
Once we had the coffees in hand, we profile roasted on April 1st. This is our usual method of determining how the coffees will go through our roasting machine, and evaluate the flavor of the coffee over the coming month before settling on a initial production roast profile.
The profile roasting went ok, with the coffees taking a good amount of time to get through the drying phase of the roast. This is slightly concerning to us, because we generally like a faster roast for our ultra-light style coffees. Not only did both of these coffees take awhile to dry on our machine, they also wanted to crack very late, at a higher temperature than we normally like. We still gave the coffee our usual profile roast development time of 20 seconds.
The flavor of the coffees over the coming weeks was revealed to be a bit caramelised, slightly brown. I attribute this to be a result of the extended drying phase of the coffee.
I think this flavor plays well with Felipe Estelas coffee, giving it a very comforting vibe. Faustinos gesha also was still fantastic, but I did want to drop the coffee sooner on production roasts. This is a good start, with both of the coffees having good development, and we can carve some out to enhance the things we like.
Above is the production roast profile for our Light Roast of Felipe Estela’s Washed Red Bourbon & Yellow Caturra. We are trying to get this coffee through the drying phase as quick as possible, but we did implement a gas change at 150c, to keep the ROR curve smooth. In future iterations, or coffees that have trouble drying, I think we will save this gas adjustment for a later stage. Even with this short of a development , the coffee is still collecting a bit of Maillard character and “brown” flavors. This is usually something that we attribute to a slightly longer roast time. The roast above had a weight loss of 11.59%, which we have reduced slightly on further batches, trying to get the coffee a tiny bit lighter.
Above you will see the Omni roast profile we designed for Felipe Estelas Red Bourbon & Yellow Caturra.
With our Omni profiles we are trying to create more solubility, while keeping the coffees brightness and raw essence in tact. Charging with a slightly lower temperature than our filter roast, we implement gas changes earlier, and finish them later. Stretching out the middle of the roast and getting a nice slow development. We chose to drop at 203c on this coffee because of the long drying time. And because of filter roast iterations, we know the solubility would be high. This roast gave of a weight loss of 12.27%, which is exactly where we aim to be with our Omni profiles. We could develop the coffee for an extra 1ºc or 30 seconds, but we don’t really like to live above 13% for these.
Above you will see the graph for our Light roast profile of Faustino Flores’ Washed Gesha.
Similarly to Felipe Estelas coffee, this one took its sweet time to get through the drying phase. We used pretty much the same profile for both of these coffees, however Faustino’s gesha seems to want to crack a bit later, so we pulled the heat later on in the roast to keep the ROR smooth and allow the coffee to develop slower. You can see the development time is slightly shorter for this coffee, we are still pushing it to be lighter. I believe the floral & acidic presence in this coffee can be enhanced from a faster roast time. The roast above gave us a weight loss of 11.03%.
We have not done any Omni roasts on this coffee yet, but the profile will be similar to Felipe Estela, with some minor tweaks to reduce the heat towards the start of first crack.
Overall, this experience of roasting these coffees has given us insight into our machine and approach. We’ve written some more profiles, and will likely try to implement some changes. The first thing will likely be later gas adjustments, aimed at starting after the drying phase. Keeping the heat on longer will hopefully help us get through the roast faster. Also using less airflow for the first minute of the roast, aiming to get a higher peak ROR and also get to 150ºc in a shorter time. If we cannot get there with the two above adjustments, I think we will look into a lower batch size coupled with different heat application for further roasts.