Quote Originally Posted by CO_Flyfisher View Post
Don't be afraid to take your roasts to the verge of (or even slightly into) 2nd crack. This is a sweet spot for many coffees, especially if you're using different brew methods (and if I have a coffee I don't know anything about, this is where I start). Instead of the popcorn like sounds of 1st crack, 2nd crack sounds more like rice crispies just after you pour the milk on. Stop the roast after you hear the first few snaps. You have to go a fair bit past 2nd crack to burn the coffee.
This is reassuring to hear. I'll have to start advancing all my roasts to this point and see what I like better.

I haven't been able to really correlate my roasts to the pictorals of roast level like found on Sweet Marias. My roasts don't seem to match alot of what I'm seeing there. I can't really tell if I'm at City, city+, full city, etc.

Basically, I get a nice brown color to the bean with some mottling around the 1c stage. Taken a minute or two further, some oil specs show up on some of the beans and they're slightly darker than the 1c level. And the one batch that I had the nerve to push a bit until it started to "sizzle" and really smoke(does this correspond to 2c?) turned out completely oil covered beans. I thought this oily batch was burnt but after a few days of rest it turned out to be a pretty good cup.

Another interesting observation ...creating a "house blend" with the left overs of all the 4 coffees I rec'd from SM makes a very good cup of coffee. There are no "holes" in the flavor profile when you mix 'em all together.