Roastmasters has some incredible coffees at the moment. By far the best of these outside of geisha prices, is their Panama Elida Natural. This is just a spectacular coffee all around. Incredibly sweet, rounded soft flavors of many subtle kinds. This should be a very versatile coffee for both espresso and drip. I'm really looking forward to working more on this on.

Another little teaser about how impressive this coffee is, as I opened the jar this morning, I was enveloped with the deepest, sweetest scent of fresh baked banana bread. Almost intoxicating ( but not in the fermenty-alchohol smell of over-ripe bananas).

This isn't my prettiest profile, but the coffee was spectacular. My ET probe connection has been giving me problems and I didn't need it since I still had my secondary Drum Temp reading as well as my MET (which I purposely don't transduce).

Roast date 8/17, charge weight 170g, weight loss very low at 11.3%-Quest M3



Brewing notes over the subsequent days revealed layers of clean sweet dark fruits, dates, plum etc. Aromatics were still quite heady for such a light roast. I think it would be a coffee that would yield some interesting distillate aromatics if handled correctly in more developed roasts.

Thanks for the tip, Tom.
We're new to roasting and are 'sampling' many different coffees right now, including the Panama Elida Natural. The drying phase was quick (as was the entire roast/profile) and I'm a little worried just the exterior of the beans were dry. We'll cup tomorrow several different roasts of this coffee and go from there. We did complete another roast/profile just into the 2nd crack for espresso and the beans look, smell (and taste) great with no 'nail polish' remnants (my roasting partner Erika was munching the just roasted beans from above profile and pick up the acetone odor).
We're working with a new Quest M3 and SLOWLY adjusting to lag times, etc as noticed below when I lost the declining ROR at 10:70.

150 gms in, 127.5 gms out. Beans seem to take an aggressive power setting thru the drying/ramp phases.

I lost my detailed cuupping notes from this roast, which was my first try at the bean. I have since tried other profiles, but this one is still my favorite.

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Roasting Info:

Bean: Panama Elida Natural
Roaster: USRC Sample Roaster
Charge Mass: 300g
Charge Temp: 375F
Dry/Ramp/Development: 3:30/4:20/1:16
FC-start temp: 382F
Finish Temp: 398F
Overall Roast Time: 9:08
Moisture Loss: 13%

Profile Plot:



[BT=Red, Exhaust=Green, Gas=Blue, Fan=Yellow]

Overall Impression: As I said, I lost my detailed cupping notes, but here is how I described this roast when I wrote to Tom after my first tasting: "I roasted my first batch today and got a wave of strawberry candy out of the cooling tray. I brewed a cup right away, and it is full of rich strawberries, tawny port, and honey, and has the richest aroma of anything I've roasted this year."

If my memory is accurate, I gave it 92.75 points using the Tastify scoring system. This was one of those coffees that tasted best to me on the first day, but it was delicious all the way to the end of the batch. In addition to what I describe above, I also noted some serious rose & lavender notes in the aroma.

I did my first roast of this today in the Behmor. I pre-heated to 180° and charged 12oz., the chamber temp climbed a bit to 188° by the time I fired up in 1# mode. I immediately switched to manual P5 (100%) with fast drum speed. At about 6 minutes in the chamber wall temp was approaching 300° and I switched to a P5/P4 cycle (87.5%). 8 more minutes and the first pips of first crack hit (286° chamber wall), I dropped the temp to P3 (50%), dropped the drum speed and switched to Rosetta Stone mode. 2:40 and I dropped after 15 seconds since the last pop. I'll give it a shot or four on Tuesday or Wednesday AM.

I also roasted a full pound of Monsooned Malabar today, but that's another story... First time I've been at 2C on more than a year.

These are graphs of my first two roasts, done yesterday afternoon. I will brew tomorrow morning, although it will only have about 36 hours rest. There is radically different development time between these two roasts, which is what I wanted for comparison purposes, but I wasn't able to maintain declining RoR, so they may be baked.
Modified Poppery, 150g charge.

Multiple roasts later on our Quest M3 with this natural coffee, the following is evident to us:
- Shorter drying times (and resulting shorter roasts) can result in a thin-bodied, slightly sour cupping with little of the fruit-forward complexity this bean is known for.
- Naturals may suffer from erratic sorting, resulting in uneven bean size and resulting densities. If this is the case, drying time may be extended by altering either charge temp or delaying applying more power. In this profile, we charged at 330 F delayed raising power for 45 seconds. The green beans however look great prior to roast, very uniform in appearance with minimal obvious defects.
- It seems difficult to maintain sufficient power thru 1C without either adding more amps at 1C or dropping early (otherwise, the ROR drops off the grid). In other words, avoiding the 'flick' is very difficult for me with this coffee (if we even need to discuss this!). In this roast, we cut power by 50% approx 1.5 minutes before 1C to extend the roast and then raised the power back to 8 amps 30 seconds later attempting to 'push' the roast thru 1C without losing the declining ROR: we almost made it. More work necessary. In the next roast, I'll use full pedal to the metal and tweak the fan only, looking for the best results with the least amount of knob-turning. We will cup the new roasts tomorrow and look forward to some nice results. And we haven't even started roasting for espresso!

We're looking for a lighter roast, with some nutty complexity plus significant fruit. This is not an easy task for novice roasters, but we're learning! All comments appreciated.

I have a bunch of Elida Natural from Klatch, does anyone know if this is the same coffee?

The profile I posted was for greens I sourced from Klatch, before Tom announced that the same coffee from Roastmasters would be the subject of this month's thread. It's the same estate and the same processing method, but a different lot.

The bag I got is described as 100% Catuai (like the Roastmasters lot), although Klatch's website is currently describing a lot that is a mixture of Catuai, Bourbon and Typica. I'm not sure if my bag is a misprint or if they sold out one lot and have moved on to another. I like this coffee so much that I'm very, very tempted to order more, so if I get some from Roastmasters I'll be happy to post a comparison.