Training Log By Erik Liao - Training Log #002

Hello, it’s me Erik.

This log, I would like to talk about roasting, including our experience in competition roasting and what I would like to do for future competition roasting. After reviewing our experience in previous years, we found our roasting could improve in a few things:

1. Lighter Roast- I’ve been roasting darker and darker every year because each year I tried to bring out more sweetness to compensate light roast’s body. However, with recent learning, I think I can roast lighter yet still presenting good texture. 2. Good Texture- Starting from coming with some roughness and astringency to a smoother texture, I think what I need to do is to make sure I can present good texture from hot to cold. 3. Flavor Clarity- As I mentioned, I was roasting darker. This sacrificed a bit of the flavor clarity for my coffee. I would like to bring it back. 4. Balance- This, in my opinion, is the most important thing. The acidity needs to be developed, no negative feeling on texture, and easy-recognized tastes all together should lead to a good balance.

To sum up, I need to roast lighter but at the same time to present a well-developed acidity and comfortable texture. So after my recent trip to Europe, I realized that I could achieve this goal by paying more focus on before crack roasting. In my roasting philosophy, I need to make sure the coffee is already developed to a certain level before crack, and so I can drop out the coffee at a lighter level. In the coming months, I would do more experiments on roasting with only one single coffee. (Bolivian of course!) So far, my assumptions for the ideal roasting approach is to have an overall longer before crack roasting time with more conductive heat ratio before the color change.

Moreover, I would play around with several profiles in after-crack roasting: Same development time after crack, but different temperature development (e.g +3 degrees Celsius or +5 degrees Celsius after crack) or same development temperature but different development time. That’s all for Log#002. See you next time!