I found an old vac pack bag of green Sidamo from almost a year ago, so tried some profiling and a bit of a home cupping... After reading an article on 'stretching out the roast', I thought I'd see how things went trying to use a home roaster as a sample roaster. I was using a much smaller batch size of only 300gm, which needed a lot more attention than the usual 1kg in the KKTO which is just set and forget until first crack. The first roast was just to get a bit of a baseline so I let it run all the way through to 2C, at around 215deg. The ramp was kept to 15degs/min until approaching 1C. 
Second one used the same ramp and was pulled at about where I'd normally do it for this bean, between 1C & 2C, at around 207deg. 
Third was with a slow ramp (10degs/min), and pulled much earlier for a lighter roast at 203deg. 
And the results... I've got a bit of a head cold so probably not the best time to be trying to cup coffee, but anyway the results were surprising in how good & bad the profiles were compared to each other. Roast one was pretty bad, although the colour of the beans were dark, it didn't look ridiculous or spotted with oil. The taste however was just like a morning cup of charbucks. Ashey, smokey, burnt and overall nothing good about it. Roast two, which is how I would usually have roasted this bean, was underwhelming. Drinkable, but flat, bland, perhaps muddied -as in no particular taste of any note stood out. Roast three, which I thought would have been too light, was actually the best of the lot. Clean, 'crisp', an immediate fruity sweetness on the front of your tongue, a bit like honeydew. The cupping taste was so good I think it would make a nice filter coffee. So the lesson learnt is I should be doing more cupping rather than just adjusting the roast based on taste from espresso. (And I have to get a box of cupping bowls - the mugs are a pain in arse to get the spoon in & out of...)
