Coffee: can the baking curve really be copied? Does it make sense to copy the baked bean curve?

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Author: Michael Wang

Today I want to talk about one of the most important concepts that are often overlooked by beginners:

Assuming that "everything else remains the same", it makes sense to copy the baked bean curve.

As the transmission of online information becomes more and more transparent, you can easily get the curve of the winner of coffee baking in an international competition; then beginners often take it for granted that they can achieve champion-like baking results simply by copying this path. But the reality is that there are far more variables than you think; factors such as the variety of coffee beans, the altitude of the place of origin, the water content of coffee beans when roasting, the type of roaster, the type of energy used in baking, and even the temperature or atmospheric pressure of the baking environment should not be ignored.

So the Latin ceteris paribus (everything else remains the same) as an assumption is indeed concise and concise, and it can be inferred from common sense that simply copying the champion baked bean curve is futile.

The skill of baking beans is basically nothing more than two keys: controlling temperature and time. The indispensable thing to improve your skills is to practice again and again, but unfortunately, continuous practice may not necessarily make progress; although knowledge does depend on experience, the premise is that you can find out which links are the key in the process of practice, so as to eliminate the noise. Here are a few causes of raw beans for your own and your reference:

Raw beans directly determine the flavor, and their own characteristics also determine the efficiency of heat transfer.

Raw bean varieties: understand the relevant knowledge of bean species, region, altitude and so on, and refer to credible cup test flavor results; baking can not be expected to bake raw beans with an essence of 50 points into passing products with more than 60 points. however, it is not uncommon to bake 90 points of beans into unqualified products.

Bean structure: bean size is not necessarily related to flavor, but size, flatbean or peaberry will to some extent determine the difficulty of baking beans, but because there are so many varieties of raw beans, you have to return to the expertise gained through experience.

Density and water content: it is best to have instruments to obtain accurate data. Water in raw beans is an important medium for heat transfer; density itself is the key to determine heat transfer, and density is also closely related to the types of raw beans. The higher the density, the more difficult it is for moisture to leave the bean body.

Raw bean treatment: there are two common ways of washing and tanning. Generally speaking, the density structure of sun-dried beans is lower than that of water-washed beans; this is why some people say that sun-dried beans are more difficult to bake because the moisture removes relatively quickly and may be scorched if they are not careful.

Freshness of raw beans: with time, the water content of raw beans will gradually lose, if you bake old beans with the same firepower and time as fresh beans, the probability of baking will increase.

After talking for a long time, the cause on the machine has not been mentioned yet. However, I believe we can more or less appreciate the gap between the assumption that "other things remain the same" and the reality. In any case, if we lack the understanding of these factors, we will not be able to choose the appropriate firepower or time in the process of baking beans; to return to the root, accumulating baking experience and cultivating professional knowledge is still the only way.

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