Taste Target
Bold chocolate and plenty of smoke, with mineral, leather and a touch of dried mango. Calinan is John's pick for a decidedly brassy 75% chocolate.
Roasting Notes
Profile Drum Roasting: The profile I used for this is 11:30/13:15/18:10 @ 261 F or in time notation, x/1:45/4:55 @ 261 F. This translates to coming in hot and heavy but then slowing down a bit shy of 212 F. Under 2 minutes in the development phase brings out the chocolate and develops the bold flavors. There is a freedom in roasting this bean in that it has no nut and can handle the bold treatment. I recommend making the finishing phase a good full 5 minutes to mitigate the astringency that is there. The rest will take care of itself.
Behmor: Due to the cold start of 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: I’ve been experimenting a lot recently with a less fussy way to oven roast and I find this procedure works pretty well. It is moderately predictable and repeatable and, although not as dynamic and controllable as a drum roaster, does a good job. You will need an IR thermometer. Roast 2 lb of beans. Preheat your oven to 350 F. Place your cocoa beans in a single layer on a baking sheet and put them 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 to 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. Again, there will be variation, but the beauty of this method is that turning the oven down makes it difficult to over roast. If you do find your roast is progressing too fast, adjust accordingly, starting at 325 F and/or changing your target to 265 F. Overall, you may well roast 30-40 minutes. The important part here is to get good momentum going in a hot oven and then basically coast to finish.