There is no such thing as a default roast. Every batch is a decision — about heat, about timing, about what we want to preserve and what we choose to develop.
A roaster works with heat, time, and airflow. The green coffee goes in — dense, grassy-smelling, with all of its potential locked inside. Over 10–12 minutes, that potential is either realised or lost. There is no correcting a mistake once the coffee is in the drum.
The first crack is the moment the bean's structure breaks down — an audible pop, sometimes a cascade of them. For light roasts, you develop slightly after first crack and then drop. For medium, you let the development time extend. For dark, you push past second crack into territory where the bean's original character gives way to roast character.
At ÆTHER, we roast light to medium-light on almost everything. Our philosophy is preservation — of the terroir, the variety, the process. The roast should reveal, not dominate.
Every roast gets profiled, documented, cupped. We log inlet temperature, charge temperature, rate of rise, first crack time, development time, drop temperature. Hundreds of data points per batch. Because every variable leaves a fingerprint in the cup.