End of Dry

[SusanJoM]

Sometime last week I pulled beans just before and just after End of Dry and took this picture.
Too bad there is no smellimage :-))))

[jeffgsd]

Are you still marking end of dry time at 300 degrees?

[SusanJoM]

I don't "mark" it, but since I thought EOD should be at about 300 degrees F, I pulled those samples at about 290 and 310 to see if that made sense, and visually it seemed to corroborate my suspicions.

[jeffgsd]

Thanks!

[Slayton]

End of Dry to me seems to be such a subjective thing.  I'm looking at temperature sure but I'm also looking at the beans.  This is when I use the trier and mostly for visuals as the glass door doesn't do enough.

I know that dry end should end at a certain temperature but if the beans coming out of the trier are still green? I let them go just a bit longer.

All beans are different in terms of density and water content.  They will hit dry end differently depending on charge temp and what you do after.

[edtbjon]

Slayton, as you point out this have to do with all the different varieties of beans we are roasting. While (ideally) we want to measure the temp changes inside the beans, we try to estimate that temp with a TC in the bean mass.
Apart from e.g. the differencies with say washed central americans. It's quite probable a coffee grown at 3K' acts diffently to one grown at 6K'. They should react different to heat, where the higher grown coffee ought to be able to take more heat and thus dry a bit faster.
l read an article on SweetMarias, saying that it's beneficial to slow down the drying phase a bit for dried varieties of beans. That would make the beans a bit more uniform later on in the roast and e.g. enter 1Cs more "focused", resulting in a more even roast.

[Gregr]

End of Dry to me seems to be such a subjective thing.  I'm looking at temperature sure but I'm also looking at the beans.  This is when I use the trier and mostly for visuals as the glass door doesn't do enough.

I know that dry end should end at a certain temperature but if the beans coming out of the trier are still green? I let them go just a bit longer.

All beans are different in terms of density and water content.  They will hit dry end differently depending on charge temp and what you do after.

This is all so true... I used to watch thru the viewing window and mark "dry" when the beans had turned from green to jade and just a touch more towards yellow. That point usually arrived around 285Fish, sometimes even earlier, but rarely, maybe even never, as high as 300F. Eventually I gave up on that because 300F is so commonly used, plus I figured with a consistent number I'd get useful data without having to guess when the beans are dry. Useful in that the next time I roast that bean I'll be able to look at the notes and see precisely when 300F was reached. Less than ideal but what can you do...

l read an article on SweetMarias, saying that it's beneficial to slow down the drying phase a bit for dried varieties of beans.

My personal findings are this is critical with Sumatras (all Indos) and Kona too. I'll charge 20F lower and at a slightly lower (10-20% lower) stove setting for Sumatras so that 300F takes more like 4:45-5:00ish. When I don't do that the dreaded grassy hay notes are overwhelming. For dry/natural processed beans, I'll use the same stove setting but a 10F lower charge temp. Like this:]

[Gregr]

PS- yes, that is a honey processed Guatemala. Yes, you should be very jealous 

[SusanJoM]

So, although I started this thread and took those pictures to see what EOD looks like I don't really understand why it matters to nail it's place in the roast? 

Does anyone actually make decisions based on EOD?  I don't.  I make my first change to the roast when BT reaches 320F, so for me EOD is just an approximate marker for the first third of my planned roast.  If it really happens at 299 or at 300 or at 301 or   It makes no difference that I can ascertain.

[edtbjon]

You're absolutely correct Susan. The things about the drying phase that matters are IMO, is how much energy you add to the beans (and the roaster) and how fast, things like a high or low charge temp and a fast or slow DP. I mentioned that up earlier in this thread. This is why I've clicked "Auto Dry" in Artisan, so that it always denotes that drying finished at 150C (300F).
You mentioned yourself in the first post the smell of the beans. That is of course an indicator for how the roast is progressing, as well are the colour changes. But I'm not able to make anything sensible out of these subtle changes in this phase of my learning experience.

[Gregr]

It becomes desirable to "nail it" when you've already done roasts of the same bean and want to match a previous profile. Then you want to nail it, so to speak. Aside from that, it's just another one of our handful of milestones that provides an indicator of how the roast is progressing- so it's not the temp itself, it's really how long it took, is taking, to get to that temp, and how you might want to adjust your settings based on that time.

[SusanJoM]

It becomes desirable to "nail it" when you've already done roasts of the same bean and want to match a previous profile. Then you want to nail it, so to speak. Aside from that, it's just another one of our handful of milestones that provides an indicator of how the roast is progressing- so it's not the temp itself, it's really how long it took, is taking, to get to that temp, and how you might want to adjust your settings based on that time.

Okay, that makes sense and also clarifies why I won't really need it to nail it.  I never have more than 5# of the same bean and never feel the need to reproduce a previous profile.  I guess that's what separates us hobby roasters from the pros who need to be able to crank out the same results time after time.