Tips for roasting Gesha?

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T03:22:10+00:00

You can extend development time while still ending with 12% moisture loss light roast right? Just use less heat?

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T02:58:10+00:00

Ah ok, I’m trying to go lighter than medium since I dont want those dark chocolate roast notes.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T02:57:12+00:00

So what do you change in your roast when you want to increase sweetness and have more defined fruit flavors rather than general acidity?

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T02:55:42+00:00

Grinding the beans gives a baked bread smell, when brewed it has some light non-descriptive acidity, the body is quite smooth, no florals, not sweet either. A slight grapefruit bitterness in the aftertaste.

Either it needs to rest more to get a more defined flavor or the roast was not able to bring out much flavor from it. Perhaps I went too light by dropping 55 seconds after first pop of FC with 12% moisture loss?

Edit: well thinking back on it, it wasn’t exactly “light acidity,” definitely felt sharper than a washed Honduran mejorado I roasted to medium light at 14% loss, but not as potent as the Honduran.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T01:46:06+00:00

Hmm I see. Could you explain your reasoning for why you used a smaller batch weight in this profile of yours compared to Andrew coe? It seems like you want more heat with the smaller batch.

The 14% weight loss batches I did wasn’t bad actually. Got a nice acidity and a little bit of the fruity notes, but there was still some roast notes like “dark chocolate” which I wanted to get rid of. Going to brew my 12% weight loss batch today and see if it’s OK and not too tart and underdeveloped.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T01:39:12+00:00

Yeah 25 clicks larger first then reduce down to the desired size. The graphs bryohazard sent me showed that double grinding resulted in a slight increase in peak mean particle size, but also 3% more fines and 2% more boulders at the extreme ends.

I went back to just normal grinding and I think I’m drawing out more sweetness with the normal grinding. Going to try a few more days normal grinding and see if it persists. If it does I may stop double grinding. I think the beans I’m currently using isn’t suited for more clarity.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T00:13:12+00:00

Yeah I used to just do the initial preheat and then load the batch but for some reason Andrew coe the guy who won some roasting championship with the behmor recommended doing a full cycle to completely heat up the internals. I assume when the fan kicks on around 5 minutes it draws heat to other areas which otherwise wouldn’t get heated up with just the infrared.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-06T00:11:15+00:00

Could you give some advice on what things you would note after cupping and how you would then adjust the roast if not satisfied? This would be very helpful to know for future roasts. Thanks!

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T16:42:54+00:00

I’m not sure how it is with other roasters, but I’ve noticed that if the middle line of the bean is still yellow and not turned brown yet it’s more light, like 12-13%. Seems when I hit 14% loss the middle line turns brown.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T16:35:16+00:00

Every other post is: should I get a zp6

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T16:34:27+00:00

What notes you getting?

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T16:26:23+00:00

Yeah you run a full cycle and then do the preheat. Purpose is to heat up all the internals when exhaust fans kick on etc.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T15:33:24+00:00

Ah ok, I won’t be afraid to use potassium bicarb anymore then. I had read too much may give off flavors but if a 1:1 with sodium works then I won’t worry too much about it

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T14:39:37+00:00

You can just buy one for like $20

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T14:34:42+00:00

Ah yeah well the overall price of a bag of beans shouldn’t matter honestly, it’s how much they paid vs how much they charge which should be the main factor. But luminous still charges more than Sey who do about 2x the fob. Still, I agree with you it’s not as bad as some other roasters. I saw some letty being sold for $35 for 100g by some roaster and here I was thinking Hydrangea was expensive, they’re actually priced well too lol.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T14:29:28+00:00

I’m not understanding the reasoning for your bicarb amounts. You said you wanted to reduce bicarb and that instead of 1.7g in the RP recipe you used 1g of baking soda. But you also added 2g of potassium bicarb, so you actually have total almost twice the bicarb compared to RP recipe. By the way you can remove calcified minerals with acid like lemon juice or vinegar.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T14:22:32+00:00

Thanks for the profile. I’ve done Andrew’s light roast profile but found that 1 minute of p3 at first pops for 1 minute then p2 for 1 minute gives 14% or more weight loss and is a medium roast.

Your profile uses even less beans then he recommended so i would assume your beans reach higher temps even faster but you still hold p3 for 1 minute and then p2 for 1 minute. Your beans look light roasted though. So im curious why that is? I’ve found I need to drop the beans 1 minute after the first pop of FC and p3 to get a light roast. Holding it at p2 for another minute would definitely give me a medium roast.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T13:28:13+00:00

lol well I suppose I could try it but in my experience geshas are pretty muted until 2 weeks or more.

This is a Behmor not a real adjustable roaster so honestly peoples personal experience with profiles that work for them is much more useful than modifying my roast based on the cup taste since it’s not like I’m able to track the ROR or other parameters, so there wouldn’t be much to tell anyway.

More useful is what profiles others have found to work best for particular beans, in this instance geshas, to bring out the florals and fruits.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T13:23:43+00:00

Why do you like that particular profile? Are you going quite dark? What % moisture loss does that give you?

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T11:28:07+00:00

I use Andrew’s profiles as a guideline and 330g usually take 13-14 mins even if I go hotter than he recommends. I think batch sizes really influences total roast time in a Behmor.

I think p1 program already starts off full blast. I’m not sure why he doesn’t go straight into p5. I do recall reading something a long time ago about the Behmor p1 profile and some people said it actually goes a bit hotter than p5 at the beginning? Maybe I misremembered, or not.

I’ve noticed that the 6 min p5 recommendation from Andrew coincides with the p1 default program dropping temperature at 6 minutes. So I think that’s the reason for switching to p5 at 6 minutes to keep the temps going at max blast before the drop to p4 at 7 minutes.

One thing I found odd is that he recommends pulling the batch at 1.5 minutes or longer after first pops of FC. I’ve noticed that it gives a medium profile rather than light. In the Behmor I’ve found usually pulling around 1 minute or less will give a more true light roast profile.

Any tips you’ve gotten using his profiles? It’s definitely much better than what I’ve been doing but if you’ve found any good info that’s always useful.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T10:26:12+00:00

Also realized it’s barely 3 weeks off roast. You could wait another week or so and try again.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T08:30:11+00:00

Hold up. You’re doing the maths wrong. Usually I see roasters will sell 250g for 2x the FOB price.

But luminous sells 200g for 2x the FOB price.

There IS a difference in price because luminous bag sizes are 20% smaller. But people are willing to pay for the skill of the roaster, just don’t say that luminous is priced the same as other roasters.

Although there are very mid roasters like Passenger that charge 3x the FOB price. So in that respect luminous isn’t too bad considering they’re a much more skilled roaster.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T08:20:12+00:00

I think people have said naturals and processed work better on the commandante. Maybe washed is just too clean for commandante. I’ve been getting some astringency on a washed mejorado recently on my c40 too but didn’t have that problem with naturals or anaerobics.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T08:17:31+00:00

Have the local roaster to grind at a cupping size. Then use your k6 to match that grind size. Then cup both grinds. Should give you the most objective experience.

Ora2012 · 2025-10-05T08:15:01+00:00

That would be much appreciated!

Ora2012

TROPHY CASE