For the past couple weeks, I’ve been putting down my log charts and allowing myself to roast mostly by feel. It’s not that I’m abandoning the numbers I use to profile roasts—in fact I was still paying attention to times and temperatures, I just wasn’t recording them as I usually do—it’s that I want to more deeply ingrain my feel for the roast. And to do that, I had to step away from the raw data and use what I know, what I sense, to guide the profile. SoI have been paying close attention to times, and I will return to keeping detailed logs. But for now, the distance I am imposing on myself has been refreshing and enlightening, much like backpacking in the deep woods. Just nature. Just coffee. And clear focus.
I’ll post more once I’ve collected my thoughts.