Roasting coffee with i-Roast 2

Nicaragua Pacamara RFA
Nicaragua Pacamara RFA

So the other week on recommendation I bought an i-Roast 2. I bought it in Sweden, the 240V model, from Alnö Kaffehus. They have a package with roaster and some coffee. After some experiments, I found the following actually work pretty well. All together, smell of roasted coffee in the office(!), and the taste of coffee made out of freshly roasted beans… The improvements between each roasting is so large, and quality of the result so high, that I really look forward to where this road leads.

I first tried with one of the programs in the i-Roast, but that did not lead to the 2nd crack. Some thinking and reading on roasting of coffee have lead me to the following program:

  1. 5 minutes on 188°C
  2. 4 minutes on 198°C
  3. 3 minutes on 208°C
  4. 2 minutes on 216°C
  5. 1 minute on 228°C
  6. 4 minutes cooling

Some programs on roasting I have found (including the one I first tested out of the box) started with a short burst on high temperature. Maybe to get the chaff off the beans? The more chaff on the beans, the higher the first kick? Maybe I should try that next time?

Anyway, the beans I use now are Nicarague Pacamara RFA, arabica, which works quite well also for the hard roast I am after. I have used the roasted beans now for espresso and grounded it on 6 on my grinder that have a scale 0-12 (not 11!) and tried a press. The press had tendencies of not really be as complex taste I wanted. It was more pointy in many different directions. Maybe a finer grind will make the coffee marry better with the extremely hard water I have.

I will let the beans now sit for a day or two before I try to grind some more and see what it is like.