Thailand Doi Pangkhon green beans in the mail

Fellow FZ94 roaster Javier sent me a great package chock full of ten 32oz (907g) bags of green beans from Thailand. Thank you Javier!

Hey! Special Delivery!!

Javier got them from Paradise Coffee Roasters who currently also sell these beans roasted and to make sure the data about these beans will remain online even after they run out of stock I will respectfully lift some text from their page.

Tasting Notes Almond liqueur, raisin, leather and spice;  butter and apple. Full bodied, balanced, masculine, with soft fruit tones.
Background InfoDoi Pangkhon is perhaps Thailand’s most promising coffee growing region: good altitude, mild climate, healthy soil, and cherry blossoms serving as shade trees. The conditions are ideal for growing world class coffee, and the cupping table confirms it.
Up until the early 21st century, Doi Pangkhon was better known for supplying opium because it is situated in the Golden Triangle, an extensive network where most of the world’s opium poppy was produced. Transitioning the region from opium to coffee has been several decades in the making - a modern story in itself of sustainability, uprising, and revival.

In 2013, Miguel was hired as a consultant by a local export company in Northern Thailand to assess the quality potential of the region’s coffees. During the trip he stumbled onto Doi Pangkhon and after cupping a few samples it was clear this region was already producing some impressive coffees.  While wandering the fields Miguel noted several excellent cultivars: Bourbon, Typica, Caturra and Catimor.
The growers, mostly in their 20's and 30's inherited the farms from their grandparents - former opium producers - and now run the estates with assistance from their families. The coffees are washed using natural spring water via a modified Kenya-style process, then dried on bamboo beds.

Price
The ten bags were priced US$ 189.50 which is a little over US$ 21 per kg, unroasted. I have the impression green beans are a little more affordable here in Amsterdam since I pay €9-12 per kg. I did notice that a nearby roaster, Lot61, sells Doi Pangkhon beans roasted for €12 per 250g so that's €48 per kg (my price for frequent/loyal users is usually € 25/kg).

Wisdom from a novelist on the bag

Green beans, with grey card in the background to represent the color as truthful as possible. The Wile device shows the beans to have a moisture content of 9.7% which is a little more moist than the 8.5% moisture Ethiopian beans I was roasting this week so I will try charging 1300g as well with the same background profile and see how it goes. Update afternoon of 25 Dec 2017: First roast finished. The green beans smell fresh and pleasant, no hint of anything problematic (no moist paper, moldy burlap, no sweaty gym locker). The roasted beans, cooling down, look good and smell nutty, reminding me of Indonesian beans. The grinds used to measure the color (Tonino 96) smell lovely, licorice / laurel  spicy.  The beans were a little slow to turn from green to yellowish, even though in the roast log I kept the "Dry End" point at 135ºC as usual to measure a consistent Area Under Curve (starts at DE in my setup). Maybe due to the somewhat higher (9.7% moisture) and maybe a higher density, the beans had a slower RoR in the middle part of the roast and I kept the increase of airflow significantly lower than with the previous (8.5% moisture) Ethiopian bean.  In the middle part of the roast, the Ethiopians were already giving off very visible steam from the exhaust but the Thai beans which went into FC a little earlier, began shedding lots of chaff and blowing off steam seriously right after FC began and towards the end airflow was at 100%.  Area Under Curve at 359 about the same as the previous Ethiopian (357), Drop temp also practically the same at just over 204ºC (these numbers can't be transported directly to other roasters of course) and development time was 3:21mins whereas with the Ethiopians I aimed for just 3 minutes of development time.  Weight loss of 13.9% is naturally higher than the 12.9% with the less moist Ethiopians. Roast profile: Much looking forward to tasting the result in a few days!