Good morning, and welcome to Part 2 in my home roasting series, where I roast and extract two batches of Espresso Monkey! In Part 1 I did a quick recap of my history with coffee roasting (a few pounds with an air popper 5-6 years ago then a handful of batches on a Behmor 1600, which is what I am using currently in this series and I haven’t used in 3-4 years) and took a very quick and basic look at the goal of coffee roasting, essentially, to get it somewhere between first crack and second crack. The wonderful folks at Sweet Maria’s sent me 6 lbs of green coffee to sponsor this series and I’ve been a happy customer of theirs for years. Their website is a Ph.D. in coffee in and of itself, so if you have ANY interest whatsoever in coffee and coffee roasting, that is a mandatory stop on your trip!
A Coffee Geek’s Voyage Into Home Roasting – Part 1: Equipment and Basics
Sweet Maria’s Espresso Monkey
Longtime readers know me pretty well and when I discovered 1lb of Espresso Monkey in my box from Sweet Maria’s, you can guess that was the first bag I tore into! Espresso Monkey is blended by Sweet Maria’s “for body, balanced between high and low tones, fruited-chocolate roast flavors, and slightly rustic fruited accent notes.” They recommend roasting this coffee to right around the beginnings of second crack, stopping the roast just as it’s hitting second crack (Full City to light Vienna roast, so hit the cooling cycle right before second crack starts or the instant you hear any 2C noises!).
This is a pre-blended coffee (in other words, there are multiple types of coffee in the bag you receive from Sweet Maria’s) that costs $6.60/lb from and they score is an 87.5 based on their tasting. Side note, one of the things I love about Sweet Maria’s is how realistically they score coffee, and how frank they are that 85+ point coffees can be really good and that everything doesn’t have to be 90+. This is a refreshing perspective. Espresso Monkey’s composition will vary with what coffees are available, so it’s a mix of origins, process types (washed and natural), varieties, etc. Sweet Maria’s recommends at least 36 hours of rest before cupping this coffee or pulling espresso. Another rule of thumb with espresso is that it should be rested around 10 days to off-gas enough and be best to extract, but that varies by coffee of course. Click the Espresso Monkey link above, Sweet Maria’s has a wealth of information about every coffee they sell on their site.
One thing I never realized is that commercial roasters don’t roast blends this way, I don’t think. Instead, they roast each component of the blend separately and then blend later. This allows them total control over the beans. So with pre-blended greens like Espresso Monkey, there’s no control over the components and the blend is the blend. It’s probably a decent amount of extra work on Sweet Maria’s side of things to not only blend a tasty coffee, but to do it with coffees that will roast OK together. Every coffee roasts differently, so this can’t be an easy feat!
Espresso Monkey, Three Ways
I started my Espresso Monkey journey doing two roasts, one darker and one lighter, but a 1 pound bag has enough coffee in it for three 150g roasts, so I did a third roast that was lightest of all. Annoyingly, I did break my “scientific method” for the third batch, as you’ll see, but I don’t want to waste coffee, so that batch was a little bigger and, therefore, the parameters of the roast changed a lot.
TLDR: all three roasts taste completely different, so a lot happens in coffee roasting in a very small window of time!
Batch 1 – Middle Roast – Roasted 4/19/2020 – Tasted first time 4/30/2020
This was my first attempt with Espresso Monkey. The Behmor 1600 was cold, no warmup cycle or anything. I used 150.0g of beans as my starting weight. I pressed the 1/2lb button, Program B (not 100% sure what the A, B, C and D program buttons do, honestly) and used the P1 profile, which adds the most heat the fastest in the Behmor. My contact at Sweet Maria’s advised me to roast all of these beans he sent with P1. This put 13 minutes on the starting clock for this roast.
Around 9 minutes a lot of roasting aroma, which is not a great smell, was coming out of the machine. I got my first loud crack with 4:08 left on the timer. Cracks really started in earnest at the 3:15 mark, so close a minute from when I started 1C to when it really started popping a lot. I was still getting some random cracks when the clock got under 1:00. The Behmor 1600 allows you to add time by hitting the + button, so I hit that twice and it brought my clock up to :54, because I was worried I wasn’t going to get enough development, however at :50, just 4 seconds later, I got a 2C sound and so I hit the cool button right away. In other words, my total roast time for this batch was about 12:04. I got a handful of beans that went into 2nd crack, but I think I got the roast level pretty close to what Sweet Maria’s recommends. My final weight was 125.5g of roasted coffee. Water and other compounds in the coffee will “boil off” as roasting occurs, so this is about a 16% loss, or 84% yield. I let the coffee sit out in the air for an hour, then bagged it in a valve bag. After a few days, these beans developed some pools of oil here and there, but not an all-over-the-bean sheen. In the photo below, you can see some of the oils (and a Chihuahua hair if you look closely LOL).
Batch 2 – Darkest Roast – Roasted 4/19/2020 – Tasted first time 4/30/2020
I let the roaster cool completely down, so I did this roast the same day, but it was 5-6 hours later than Batch 1. I started the machine cold, again, and my starting weight was 150.0g again. I set the Behmor to 1/2lb, program B, profile P1 again, same as the first batch, but this time I added the time on the front end, so there was 13:30 on the timer to start with. I do believe this changes where the heat gets applied, when, i.e. it stretches or compresses the profile to fit the time you select, if that makes sense. This batch got its first sound of 1C quite a bit sooner, with 4:26 on the time and it started popping in earnest around the 3:52 mark. 1C seemed to be over by the time the timer hit 1:50 although I got a few stray cracks after this. Second crack started at :52 and rolled fast. I let the timer run out and I was still getting 2C sounds when the cooling cycle started. This batch ended up at 121.7g roasted weight, so an 81% yield for this darker roast. After a few days, these beans are oily all over, like they were coated in oil. The photo below is still fairly new out of the roast. Over the next two weeks these beans seemed to get darker, develop an all-over oily appearance and also seemed to become more uniform in their appearance. Here there is a lot of color variation, but I just finished the last 8 grams of this coffee on 5/18 and they were black, oily and uniform.
Batch 3 – Lightest Roast – Roasted 5/3/2020 – Tasted first time 5/7/2020
This will annoy some of you, but my 1 pound of coffee had 173.5g of beans left in it after my first two batches. Knowing what goes into coffee growing and production, I wasn’t about to throw that coffee out, so Batch 3 was a bigger batch and, therefore, that throws everything out the window. Now that I know this, I’ll do 155-160g batches of the other coffees and try to keep them the same weights.
In any case, I started with a cold machine, again, and ran the same settings: 1/2lb, B, P1. I added time to the front end, so the timer was 13:30 when I hit start. I got the first sound of 1C at 3:06 mark and 1C seemed to be slowing down and finishing by about 1:25. I went ahead and hit the cool cycle at the :30 mark, so this was a 13:00 roast. I was still getting a few pops here and there, widely spaced out, so I believe some of my coffee in this batch was just getting through 1C. I don’t think I was hearing 2C sounds yet and visually, this seems to be true as there is no oil on the surface of these beans. My final weight was 147.3g, so an 85% yield. I rested these in the air for an hour, then bagged in a valve bag.
Roasting Summary
So, Batch 3 is visually my lightest batch, which I think is a City to Full City roast. Total roast was 13:00 and it was a larger batch by 23g, which makes a difference. It had an 85% yield. Batch 1 was my “medium” batch and that was a Full City+ to light Vienna since I did hear some second cracks. Yield was 84% and there is some pooling of oil here and there. Batch 3 was the darkest and rolled into second crack. The beans are blacker than they are brown and covered in a sheen of oil. This is a light Vienna to Vienna roast and the yield was 81%.
Espresso Monkey Tasting
125-ish grams of coffee isn’t a lot for dialing in, so I skipped cupping this coffee and went straight to the espresso machine. I pulled shots of Batches 1 and 2 on 4/30 and 5/1, so 11 and 12 days of roast. I continued to drink it in subsequent days until it was gone. I didn’t think I had waited that long, but here we are! I was lucky, too, because my grinder settings were pretty good for this coffee right out of the gate, so I pulled serviceable shots on my first try and didn’t lose any coffee to dialing-in the grinder. My setup is a Quick Mill Carola Evo machine with bottomless portafilter and IMS 16/20 basket. I replaced the screen with a precision IMS unit, too. Temp is set to 92C, I think, but I may be wrong about that as it has been a while since I set the machine up in December. Grinder is a Orphan Espresso Pharos I converted into the 2.0 model and it is a dream.
4/30 shots:
These were my first tastes of this coffee. I did the lighter roast first, 18g in the basket, 30 second shot time and ended up with 24.1g in the cup. Nice crema, lots of color variation, and I did a vigorous stir for all these shots before tasting. None of that cardboard flavor I was so worried about previously, so I think that was from the old coffee I was roasting, which is a relief. This shot was a bit on the bitter side, but still super drinkable. Lots of plum, some cherry, cocoa, super syrupy mouthfeel. I was very pleasantly surprised by this! I did Batch 2, the darker roast, in the same session. 18.1g in the basket, 30 second shot time, ended up with just 17.9g in the cup, so this was a ristretto for sure! Big body, still pretty syrupy but not to the same degree as Batch 1. A lot more roast was coming through and very little, if any fruit, as to be expected with this darker roast. I got some smokiness out of it, and it was sweeter and more balanced, less bitter. Also less interesting. Even though it had that more bitter note, Batch 1 was my preferred shot.
5/1 shots:
I loosened up the grind on my Pharos just a bit to lengthen my shot times. I started with Batch 1, the lighter roast, again. 18.1g into the portafilter, 28 seconds shot time, and I ended up with 25.0g of coffee in the cup. This was more balanced than the shot from the previous day, but also didn’t have that same plum and cherry fruitiness I got the day before. It was slightly less syrupy and had a little less body. I got more almond and nuts notes and unsweetened cocoa out of this shot. There was a little plum in the end of the sip, but it was less bitter and more balanced than the shorter shot I pulled on 4/30. Batch 2 is so much easier to grind, I noted, with that darker roast, and the beans are covered in oil. I had 18.1g in the portafilter and got 28.1g out this time. The crema in this darker roast was uniform in color, without all that variation that the lighter roast has. No fruit here, it’s roasty/carbon and I was getting more bitterness with this shot than I remember with yesterday’s ristretto. I was getting a bit of robusta-type flavor without the bitterness of robusta. Dark chocolate, some cream in the initial sip. More balanced than Batch 1, but overall a bit dull and uninteresting.
Batch 2, my darker roast, stayed pretty consistent in subsequent tries over the coming days. It’s carbony, dark, traditional, certainly drinkable. Batch 1, my medium roast of the three, seemed to lose acidity and fruitiness pretty quickly, but had a nice sweetness and balance. Less carbony than Batch 2, of course.
5/7 and 5/9 shots with Batch 3:
I rested Batch 3 a lot less than I did batches 1-2 because I didn’t think I needed quite as long and I was anxious to try it, anyway. On 5/7 my shot was 18g in, 31.6 out in 28sec., which is interesting how much faster this coffee runs at the same grind. Definitely, easily, the brightest tasting of the three coffees. I’m getting lemon-lime acidity, it’s syrupy with a nice crema. The shot is bright and acid-forward and I’m getting some black cherry in the later sip and finish. Not puckeringly bright, but very much a “third wave” style shot.
On 5/9, just a little while ago, I did 18.0g in and got 30.4g out in 28 seconds. This shot is probably the best of everything I pulled of all the batches. It’s still syrupy, it’s sweet and nicely balanced. It’s less bracing and has a little less bitterness, so my lemon-lime acidity from 5/7 is now lemon candy. There’s some cocoa here and a hint of tart cherry.
Summary/Final Thoughts
OK, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I am really happy with all three of these coffees! This is much more of a testament to Sweet Maria’s and Behmor than it is to me! LOL Much to my happiness, I didn’t get any of that cardboard, paper, baked flavor I got from the old coffees I roasted on the Behmor in the past. Those off flavors were a factor of the old beans, not of the machine itself, so I was stoked to verify this with my palate and will go into the rest of these coffees from Sweet Maria’s with more confidence for sure.
I’m amazed at how different all three of these coffees taste, proof of just how much happens in coffee, in terms of flavors, between 1C and 2C! I enjoy all three of them and there’s nothing about any of them that would make me say, “Hmmmm…. these are home roasted…” in a blind tasting. I have a pretty good palate and if I had been sent these coffees by a commercial roaster I wouldn’t think something weird was afoot. All three pull nicely on my equipment and were pretty consistent in multiple shots. I enjoy a nice, traditional espresso, and my darkest roast was there, although a little more carbony than I care for. Still drinkable and I finished it off, with pleasure. I think my medium roast would’ve had some nice flavors if I’d gotten to it a little earlier as it seemed to be dropping off some of the acidity and fruitiness with the longer rest. “10 days” is a common rule of thumb, but maybe that was too long. I liked my medium batch better than my darker batch, but it did have some ramped-up bitterness, too. For my palate, and this coffee, I liked my lightest batch the best. It seemed to have the best balance, was bright and interesting, and, really, I roasted it more to the Sweet Maria’s recommendations, so it seemed to land in the pocket they recommended.
My overall recommendation if you’re an espresso nut wanting to get into home roasting would be to buy a 5lb bag of Espresso Monkey, at the smallest, and roast a ton of it. I’d definitely aim for pre-2C as that’s where this shines, for me, but it was forgiving enough to produce nice, flavorful, drinkable espresso in the darker range, too. In fact, I’m going to go finish off those samples now!
