Tune in soon for updates on drop 4! If you purchased Drop 4: A/B Experiment, leave your profiles reviews here.
Instructions for participants
- Wait until the coffee is at least 10 days rested before brewing. Ideally, the coffee is 18-20 days rested.
- Brew each coffee (your way) and take notes on flavors, roast character, and structure.
- No you do not have to brew each coffee on the same day. If you do want to do this, I propose you try cupping them (see Base Coat IG for a how to).
- When tasting, think about structure of flavors, acidity, sweetness, and overall cup complexity. The details here should be pretty nuanced between each up.
- Share with us any feedback on taste you have in the Profile Review Form! We plan to update this page with your feedback (anonymously of course).
Profiles that were available in this experiment
| Profile Name | Method |
| 1: Full Soak | This is the most standard approach where we cut gas and wait for the barrel and bean mass to find an equilibrium temperature before they rise together. For us, this usually takes around 1 minute. It also slows the roast down a bit to outside the window (+15-30s specifically) of roast times we typically like for our extra light profiles. |
| 2: No Soak | In this case, we're leaving our gas application at full gas when we drop. This can work well when we charge lower and are roasting darker. I think we could still get interesting results since this will surely be the fastest roast time. I expect that we lose some complexity in this coffee though. |
| 3: Artificial Soak | This is our standard method. It's similar to how we sample roast. Essentially, we pick a bottom out temp where we start applying gas to catch the roast. At that temp, you apply half your full gas pressure. Just before turnaround, you apply full gas. You can also fix this to time though. I could do 30s in half gas, then at 1 minute apply full gas. It leads to a quicker drying phase than a full soak and a higher Peak RoR. It's been great for wetter Colombias this year. |
| 4: TW (Tim Wendelboe) Method | TW is on a loring so in all honesty, this is more a product of "common Loring approaches". The approach is to keep gas (or heat application) just barely on at drop and then at turnaround, full gas. It means you can catch the bottom out of your drop in temp earlier, which is exciting in the winter when bean mass is much lower in temp to start. I was interested in this method because it actually keeps the gas (just barely) on. On the Proaster, the igniter can be really twitchy and can cause you to lag on your soak. If I like this method, it may become the new default on this roaster. |
| 5: Step Up Method | A more gradual approach to artificial soaking that actually has full gas application come in after turnaround. Not a method I've used before but one that a friend in the co-roasting uses pretty often. The result is usually a longer maillard but still good Peak RoR. Her coffee is awesome too so I wanted to give this a try with our curves. |
Experiment Design
Each purchaser received 3 different profiles of the same coffee in 60g quantities. Each profile has the same charge temperature, drop temperature, gas adjustments, and airflow settings. Rate of rise will vary since our peak heat velocity will differ between profiles. Purchasers were not blind to profiles this time around. Instead, the packaging let them know what was different between each roast. Total roast times, and development time differences (if any) were shared on each bag.