Roasting Malbar Gold at Home

(from Ground Control Issue #7)

Kirk Townsend writes: I noticed on the bag of Malabar Gold that it says it has been preblended for espresso. Does this mean I should set my Unimax on 10 when roasting? Do you have a favorite setting for this blend?

Well, no. Not necessarily.

Espresso is a process of preparing coffee, although it's used to describe a degree of roast and the liquid itself. You can take any roast, really, and grind it up fine and use it in an espresso machine. (Disclaimer: that doesn't mean any old beans will make GOOD espresso.)

OK. Having said that, how do you roast (specifically) the Malabar Gold? Two big factors here:

1) the Robusta bean, and

2) the aged Malabar beans.

These two are the guideposts for the range you'll want to work in. The Robustas when underroasted are especially grassy. And the aged beans will remain light well into the roast darkening only just before they burn. You won't need to roast beyond what appears to be full city. Also don't be fooled by the cracking. The different beans in the mix will roast at different rates.

Dr. Joseph John of Josuma company tells me to judge it this way: roast a batch darkly but erring toward under roasting. If you get a greenish grassy taste, thats the robusta. Roast another batch a little longer. keep it up just until the greenish grassy taste is no longer present, and you've done it. right between greenish grassy on on end and sheen or oil on the other end is where you want to be. My Unimax on 10 gets me just about where the oil is, but not over. I have been roasting lighter, like 8. It looks almost the same but doesn't taste as good to me on 10. If I really want to go for blackening something, I'll do smaller batches in the freshroast slightly overfilled.

I'm aware that different power sources will affect the results of the machines so ultimately its hard to say if yours will roast a little darker or lighter than mine at a certain setting. (more on that in GC8) The last thing to be aware of is that the longer you keep the coffee around, many months, the more the robusta ages in the blend as well. You can go even lighter than before in the roast and still achieve the same peak, not having to roast as long to get past the green grassy stage. This is specific to the Malabar Gold blend because of its particular componants, especially with the aged Malabar beans. They appearance lighter than what you might expect.

Its hard to quantify this stuff in numbers. And if you could, it would be deadly boring to read. Essentially each roaster will do the job, but there are tricks and experiments to achieve your own idea of what is perfect.

© Copyright The Coffee Project.
    Please ask for permission before reproducing this article elsewhere.