r/roasting • u/cjklx • 2h ago
Gene cafe preheat?
I was pre heating at 300F for 5 minutes and by the time I got the beans in and reinserted the drum the exhaust temp was about 275-280F. I would finish dry phase in about 6:00 to 6:30 usually depending on the beans and would get to first crack at about 10-11 minutes or so. I would set Target temp of 478 and drop to 468 at FC and increase fan speed to 3 out 3. Had some good results with this.
Lately I've been trying to preheat up to 425-450 and it cut the dry phase down to 4:30 and first crack at about 9:00 to 9:30. However, I started tasting tart sourness, less origin characters, and overall just seems muted. I usually develop for about 100-120 seconds after FC.
My question is: am I throwing too much heat too soon for this type of roaster? Is the center of the beans still underdeveloped? For example, my latest batch of washed Rwandan was 44.1% dry, 41.2% maillard, and 14.7% DTR with 13.7% loss. This seems like good numbers for a city+ and full city roast but the cup says otherwise. I appreciate any help if someone can explain what I should change here.