Taste Target
Unique dried fruit & persimmon notes with subtle smoke & earthiness. Lapsang souchong tea vibes. Best as sweeter dark or milk chocolate.
Roasting Notes
Profile Drum Roasting:
The profile I used for this is 12:40/14:40/19:10 @ 258 F. You are welcomed to take a strong hand on this roast. The abundant chocolate will benefit. 2 minutes in the development phase to bring out the chocolate and fruit flavors. After that, you want to turn the roast down a little, only slowing it as you note non-vinegar sharpness in the nose. Feel free to stretch out the Finishing phase to 5 minutes. If you are a fan of brightness, the upper 240s and lower 250s are really going to sing sing more as the sweetness will be lower.
Behmor:
Due to the cold start of the the Behmor, you can just set it on the 1 lb setting with 2.5 lb of cocoa and go. When you begin getting aromatic notes, somewhere around 4 minutes left (14 minutes elapsed of the 18 minute start) drop the power to P4 (75% power) and continue roasting for about another 6-8 minutes, waiting for the aroma to either decrease or get sharp. This is all of course if you don't have a thermocouple in the beans (Modifying your Behmor) If you have that you can follow the profiles above.
Oven Roasting:
You will need an IR thermometer. Roast 2 lb of beans. Preheat your over to 325-350 F. Place your cocoa beans in a single layer on a baking sheet and into the oven. Stir the beans at 5 minutes and check the temperature. Continue roasting until the surface temperature reads 205-215 F (it may well vary across the beans). At that point, turn your oven down 10-15 F above your target EOR, in this case 260 + ~15 = 275 and continue to roast, stirring every 5 minutes until approximately 260 F. There will be variation but the beauty of this method is having turned the oven down it is difficult to over roast. The important part here is to get good momentum going in a hot oven and then basically coasting to finish. You may not get much chocolate or brownie aroma with this one.