Coffee roasting software developer Cropster has added Flick Prediction to its predictive roasting suite. This suite forms part of the companies Roasting Intelligence program that also offers Bean Curve and First Crack prediction.
Flick Prediction provides the ability to predict a ‘flick’ or the rate of rise (ROR) in bean temperature. This usually occurs at the end of a roast, usually after 16 per cent of development time and shortly after the first crack.
Cropster says this flick can result an undesirable “roasty” flavour, causing the beans to lose delicacy.
Scott Roa, coffee consultant and author of The Coffee Roaster’s Companion says, “The flick may also mislead roasters in their understanding of how development time ratio (DTR) affects coffee flavour.
“Many roasters have told me that higher DTRs [i.e. 20 to 25 per cent] produce roasty flavours [relative to bean colour]. But there is, in fact, a modest correlation between DTR and roastiness; every time one of those roasters showed me their ROR curves from the high-DTR roasts, their RORs contained flicks.”
According to Scott, it is the flicks, not the high DTRs that cause roasted flavours.
Cropster’s new system sends a warning message to the roaster of an upcoming flick, giving them time to adjust the gas and airflow to prevent it occurring.
This new feature joins Cropster’s Bean Curve prediction, which shows what temperature the coffee beans will be at in two minutes, and its First Crack prediction, which estimates when the bean will crack, beginning the chemical reactions that cause coffee bean aroma and flavour.
Combined with Flick prediction, roasters can now improve bean quality and consistency with a better ROI with green coffee investment. Cropster further states that when developing a new profile with the Predictive Roasting suite, roasters use fewer batches, lowering overall costs.
Training of staff is also made easier with this data with fewer mistakes and undesired flavours.
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