Isotherm — a specialty coffee roastery
Single origin · drum roasted
A line joining every point of equal temperature. We roast to the line, not to a colour.
Scroll to charge the drum ↓
Origin
Ridge lot 04-K sits on the shoulder where the slope stops draining, and the cherry ripens four days late.
Region
Altitude
Varietal
Process
Harvest
00°25′S 36°57′E
Nine contour intervals, twenty metres apart.
Green
Sorted
000
GREEN
Three hundred grams, hand sorted on a moving belt. Everything that fails leaves the line at the gate.
Section
The crease is where the silverskin folds in. It burns off as chaff during first crack and tells you the bean has opened.
Moisture
10.4%
Above 12 % the bean stalls in the drying phase and the roast runs long.
Density
742g/L
Dense beans take heat slowly and hold acidity. This lot sits at the top of the washed range.
Screen
16+
Size uniformity is what lets one curve apply to the whole batch.
Defects
0/ 300 g
Quakers, insect damage, broken. Specialty grade allows five. We stop at three.
Reject gate
The drum
Twelve kilos tumbling against a steel wall at fifty-two turns a minute. Conduction from the drum, convection from the air, and nothing else.
Drum speed52 rpm
Drum wall148 °C
Batch12.0 kg
AirflowMedium
The probe sits in the bean mass, not in the air. It reads the batch, not the machine.
First crack
Roast 04-K
Maillard
Development
0.0 %
196°C
First crack 7:42 · audible
Nothing you do after this is reversible.
The bean roughly doubles in volume and sheds about fifteen percent of its mass in ninety seconds.
Every argument in specialty coffee lives in the window that opens here. Drop early and it is sharp and grassy. Stay too long and it flattens into cocoa.
The cup
Three rings. The inner one is what the roast decides; the outer one is what the origin brought.
Selected
Blackcurrant
Acidity0
Sweetness0
Body0
Bitterness0
Click any segment to read the cup it belongs to.
Three coffees
Kenya
68
Nyeri Ridge
Nyeri
Ridge
Blackcurrant, bergamot, cane sugar. Dropped nine seconds after first crack.
- Process
- Washed
- Agtron
- 68
- DTR
- 19.4 %
- Drop
- 232 °C
Colombia
62
Huila Terrace
Huila
Terrace
Red apple, panela, almond. A longer Maillard and the sweetest thing on the bench.
- Process
- Honey
- Agtron
- 58
- DTR
- 21.8 %
- Drop
- 226 °C
Ethiopia
74
Sidamo Lot 4
Sidamo
Lot 4
Strawberry, jasmine, black tea. Dropped early and cooled hard to keep the ferment bright.
- Process
- Natural
- Agtron
- 72
- DTR
- 17.2 %
- Drop
- 219 °C
Drop at 218 °C
Nineteen percent development, cooled in ninety seconds. A concept project — not a real company, nothing is for sale.
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