Coffee Appreciation

Cheers, that's how I describe my roast level myself! I guess everybody does, but I still find grassy, cereally, dusty flavours so often in modern roasters' stuff.

To find the roast level I do the first roast of a new coffee using paramaters which have worked previously with similar style coffees, taste it, then next go I'll adjust the drop-in temp until the body is about right (lower drop in for longer roast to boost body, or higher drop in and shorter roast to get the juiciness going) and adjust the end temp so its neither grassy nor carbony. With very fruity coffees I'll keep coming down with the end temp until it gets grassy then push it back up a touch when I've found the limit.

I think a lot depends on what methods roasters use for their quality control evaluation. I find that cupping coffee (water over grounds then slurp with a spoon) is very kind to lighter roasting, thats kind of what its for - evaluating lightly roasted coffee as a purchasing sample with an emphasis on exposing bean defects, more than as a final drink, so when I brew the coffee using my filter method those vegetal flavours which weren't aparent in the cupping bowl appear. I know the thing now is for lots and lots of extraction to overcome the absense of cooking, but the payoff in terms of lack of body and overall strength of flavour doesn't suit my preference.

My QC for single origin coffee is done using a v60, the same as the coffee will be served to the customer, and the espresso gets tasted through the espresso machine. We don't QC every single batch of espresso - we use a 2kg roasting machine so batches are too numerous but we're dialling it in and drinking it every day so if anything starts sliding (and thats the danger - incremental movement toward brighter or darker roasting, more than catastrophic roast errors or bean defects) then we're on it.