Hey guys! It’s JP from Dancing Ox Coffee Roasters in North Carolina and I’m going to take you through a few important steps of the coffee roasting process. Please check out this video attached, where I roast Costa Rica West Valley Ateneo coffee...Puravida!

After preheating my roaster for about 30 minutes, I’ll go ahead and turn the burners off to let environmental temperature (ET) drop to 390F before charging 1lb of these beautiful specialty coffee beans.

I use Artisan software to record the process. I charge the beans and wait for the turning point. Turning point is the first big change in your roast profile that you’ll see on the graph. It happens when the bean temperature (BT) stops falling and starts increasing.

I generally try to have my turning point at 1-1:30 minutes but it all depends on bean density and weight of the batch. Turning point is kind of a launching pad for the rest of the roasting process, therefore I always pay very close attention to it.

Here we go! Turning point is 209F BT at 1 minute and 20 seconds. The next big step is reaching the end of the drying phase, that’s when Maillard reaction ends. It happens around 300F BT but I like calling mine out between 320-330 degrees. The airflow is turned up by 15-20% to get rid of the excessive chaff.

When I reach 360F on the bean, I make another significant adjustment by lowering gas pressure by 10-15% to slow down caramelization.

At 380F it's time to bump up airflow while anticipating the first crack. I do this to control the spike of ET since coffee beans will quickly become exothermic.

At 9:05 minutes and 401F BT, the first crack is underway. You can hear the beans popping inside the roaster, similar to the sound of popcorn. Now it's time to decrease gas pressure by 5% so we don’t go through first crack too fast. This is very important to me in order to reach my desired level of development.

At 1 minute and 50 seconds I’ve reached 20% development at 428F BT. This is when to drop it like it’s hot :) which it really is!

Voilà! Beans are dropped in the cooling tray to cool off for a few minutes!

To learn more about roasting Costa Rican beans see another one of our roasting blog posts "Roasting PURAVIDA with JP".