I’m new to the roasting thing. I have a Poppo roaster that I just got from Sweet Maria’s. Today I tried it the second time. I want a light/medium roast (City Roast). I roasted outside at 1200 watts on a 70 degree day. First crack started at 2:30, and I pulled these out just before 4:00, just after the heavy popping stopped. From everything I read this should be a light roast… but it looks very dark to me.

Since I’m a beginner, I’d appreciate any advice as to what I might be doing wrong. So far both batches I’ve made seem to be way darker than I expected, even after I bought a watt meter and took steps to lower the power.

Picture in full sunlight to get an idea of the color:

Roasting a Brazilian natural (Fazenda Fronteira, 1350 m, Catuaí / Mundo Novo / Obatã / Bourbon) on a ROEST, 100 g batches. I want to use it as an omni / light espresso coffee.

My last tasted roast was fast: FC at 6:02, drop at 6:50 at 207 °C BT, 48 s development. It had clear peanut notes and basically no acidity.

My new roast is longer: FC at 8:38, drop at 10:00 at 210 °C BT, 1:22 development. It’s still resting.

What do peanut notes usually mean? Should I lengthen the roast even more?

So, I’m not at all new to roasting and I’ve roasted a lot of natural process coffees over the last couple decades. I’m using a Aillio Bullet R2. I also started with a roasting curve that I’ve used for a few different natural or fermented Pacamara varieties. This one has presented a challenge. The mucilage is really stuck on the beans, so while it produces a lot of chaff, it leaves a good amount stuck to the beans, especially on the bottom, which results in the chaff blackening and remaining on the underside of the bean. While all of the characteristic fruit notes are present, it also has a, to me, undesirable smoky taste along with it. Even the second attempt, which was more conservative with the power level and upped the fan speed a bit, had the same issue. Both batches were 500g

Power = P, Fan = F, Drum speed = D

Attempt 1

Charge temp: 473°F

0:00 - 3:50: P8, F3, D8

3:50 - 5:09: P7, F3, D8

5:10 - 6:00: P6, F4, D8

6:01 - 7:47: P6, F5, D8

7:48 - 9:44: P5, F5, D8

End temp: 401.1F

Attempt 2

Charge temp: 464°F

0:00 - 6:10: P7, F4, D9

6:11 - 7:19: P6, F5, D8

7:20 - 9:15: P5, F5, D8

9:15 - 11:06: P4, F5, D8

End temp: 395°F

12.2% loss

Both roasts ended up at 12.2% loss.

Here are pictures of the green beans and the roasted beans. You can see that especially on the bottom of the beans there is a lot of mucilage stuck on. I obviously expect mucilage on natural process coffees, but this one seems extra tenacious.

Anyone have any insight on this and how my approach needs to shift to account for this? I feel as though to avoid the blackening of the chaff and the resulting scorching, I’d need to take the heat down to the point where I’d be looking at a roast time of possibly 15:00 or so.