The Difference Between Medium and Dark Roast Mandheling Coffee - Mandheling Coffee Roasting Tutorial

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FrontStreet Coffee's Indonesia Golden Mandheling Coffee Roasting Experience

1. Medium-Dark Roast

Rich and mellow with more pronounced bitterness, enhanced chocolate notes and subtle sweetness, distinct licorice aroma, weak fruit acidity, moderate smoothness, intense aroma but less complexity.

2. Medium Roast

Excellent balance. At this roast level, the Golden Mandheling loses some of its bold character but gains more elegance. The taste is purer than medium-dark roast while maintaining good body. Smoothness is significantly better than medium-dark roast, bitterness remains prominent but noticeably weaker, and fruit acidity is clearly enhanced.

3. Medium-Light Roast

This roast level of Golden Mandheling presents quite a dilemma - it's neither love nor hate. If medium-dark roast emphasizes bitterness, medium-light roast brings fruit acidity to its peak tolerable level. Smooth with distinct but comfortable fruit acidity, creating a mouth-watering sensation on both sides of the palate. Moreover, the bold character of Golden Mandheling has completely vanished, making it refreshingly delicate.

Roast Level Flavor Characteristics

Light roast beans mostly exhibit fruit acid flavors from the [Maillard Group], such as lemon, coffee flowers, and apricots; medium roast beans primarily show caramel aromas from the [Caramelization Group], like roasted almonds, hazelnuts, and roasted peanuts; dark roast beans display smoky aromas from the [Dry Distillation Group], such as cedar, pepper, and clove.

Medium-dark roast beans approach the end of caramelization, dominated by the Maillard reaction, producing resinous, spicy, and carbonized aromas. Our Golden Mandheling performs best at medium-dark roast, featuring elegant woody notes, cedar and fir aromas, with turpentine-like flavors. The mouthfeel is smooth with a thick texture.

Roasting Process

Preheat to 200°C, set damper to 3. After 1 minute, reduce heat to 160°C, keeping damper unchanged. At 5'40", temperature reaches 148°C, beans turn yellow, grassy aroma completely disappears, dehydration completes. Reduce heat to 140°C, adjust damper to 4.

At 9'40", ugly wrinkles and black spots appear on bean surface, toast aroma clearly transforms to coffee aroma - this can be defined as the prelude to first crack. Listen carefully for the first crack sound. At 9'54", first crack begins, reduce heat to 60°C, fully open damper (adjust heat very carefully - not so low that cracking stops). Remove beans at 204.5°C.

Flavor Characteristics

Golden Mandheling possesses high-quality herbal notes, stronger caramel sweetness, and relatively calm, elegant fruit acidity. With rich sweetness, full body, and wild spice flavors, regular Lin Dong Mandheling is best roasted beyond second crack to effectively reduce off-flavors. However, Golden Mandheling already exhibits excellent clarity and sweetness even before second crack, offering broader interpretation space for roasting.

Important Notice :

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