couple of silly questions about roasting

C-man

1. first crack?  what exactly happens?  do the beans crack open a little? 

sometimes I only get one big crack and other times I get a 1-2 min rolling bunch of smaller cracks, a bunch of smaller cracks makes sense, but what happened with the one big one? surely all beans did not go at once?

2. I know everyone tries for a nice even roast, but what if you blended lighter and darker roasts together?

seems you would get both fruit notes and deeper chock notes, but no one does it so it must not work?

thanks guys.

C-

hiphipharar

1. http://www.sweetmarias.com/instructions.php#nutshell First Crack: The steam becomes fragrant. Soon you will hear the "first crack," an audible cracking sound as the real roasting starts to occur: sugars begin to caramelize, bound-up water escapes, the structure of the bean breaks down and oils migrate from their little pockets outward. 2. Works very well as long as the light roast isn't too light nor the dark roast too dark . Try it yourself.

Kelsey

My go-to CSI blend usually winds up with the Monsoond Malabar being somewhat lighter than the Colombian and Indian. Probably not an ideal state of affairs. But it is the blend I come back to time and time again.

C-man

with my popper doing 100grms at a time each batch can be slightly different and it does not taste as good as when we do it at Lacys but it is ok I just roasted a bunch of the MM to add to the blending much later as it ages MM big fat bean easy to roast, very light weight so I can double the dose in the popper and it still spins ok. as I remember it adds a big buttery/funky taste to a blend