Roasting Coffee Beans at Home

[JitteryJoe]

For years I have been sourcing my whole beans and grinding at home
(Thank you, Mazzer Mini!). But I am intrigued by the prospect of buying
green and roasting at home. So, my questions for the home roasters out there:

What are you using to roast your beans?

How happy are you with what you have?

Where do you like to source your beans?

Thanks for the input.

[Octave]

http://www.velocipedesalon.com/forum...g-23589-2.html

[Cookietruck]

Getting Started Roasting Coffee at Home

i used a behmor 1600, works pretty well. i can roast a full pound if i need to, which is nice since i drink a fair amount of espresso.

i get my beans from Roastmasters.com - Everything for the home coffee roaster or Home Coffee Roasting Supplies - Sweet Maria's
or from a local roaster who is my favorite in town.

[stackie]

Previous threads good.

My two cents from a guy with a gas fired pro level roaster in the garage. Start small and cheap. Go to goodwill and find yourself a poppery 1 or 2 hot air popper by west bend. Buy a sample pack from Sweet Marias, read his website and go to town. If you fall in love with it, consider buying a small electric roaster.

Be warned however, I find the small electric roasters to be pretty unreliable (iRoast and GeneCafe). They roast fine, but wear out quickly and repair gets tiresome. I've heard good things about the Behmor, but not used it. Final warning, you are considering a step to the dark side. Next thing you know you could be obsessed and trying to arrange your garage around a 300 lb roaster.

Final thoughts. Buy from Sweet Marias. I've never dealt with a business who has been more friendly, accommodating, and filled with passion and knowledge about their craft.

Jon

[WadePatton]

I got my first batch as the Sweet Maria's sampler pack.

I have 2 air-poppers. One was free and the other about 10 bucks and a drive (C/L).

Second batch (yet to be roasted from a small local coffee importer/shop/vendor operation. GF surprised me with these beans after we had a coffee-date there.

Green beans are wonderful, last forever until you need them. Fresh is everything.

[WadePatton]

Previous threads good.

My two cents from a guy with a gas fired pro level roaster in the garage...

this is why we are here(in this spot on this forum):
bike folks r nuts, and we r 'specially nuts about our food and bevs.

yo, bring on the heavy hitters!

thanks Jon

(but do please read the old VS thread first)

[sonny]

i'm sure hej has some sage words..

[Zimmermanbicycle]

Ok,this will sound a bit bizarre and it's OT in the OT but I do roast beans this way a few times a year.
It started back in 1976 when I spent some time as a teenager working on a farm in southern Sonora (Mexico) and the coffee was amazing with a very unique smokey/sweet taste,when I asked the woman who ran the kitchen about it she said "oh EL Hefe (the boss) is so cheap I roast the coffee myself to save a few pesos" so I asked her to show me how she was doing it and here it is:
she would build a fire in a 55 gallon drum outside and she had a big shallow wok like pan the size of the top of the drum once it was good and hot she would put 1 pound of green beans in the wok thingy and keep them moving with a wooden spoon until they turned a golden brown,not too dark yet,just getting brown,and then she added 1 pound of sugar and continued to stir as the sugar melted you could see the beans getting darker,she kept cooking the mixture until the sugar caramelized and went almost black but NOT burned but a deep brown almost black.
she then scraped the mixture out of the wok onto a cookie sheet and let it set up,it looks like the devils peanut brittle,and then when cool she busted it into little chunks with a great big f'ing mallet and ground it up in a giant hand crank grinder mounted to the wall outside the kitchen.
This brutal sounding rural process produces some fantastic tasting coffee.
My urbane variation is to go to one of the local Ethiopian groceries in my neighborhood and buy a pound of green beans and do this on my Weber with a cookie sheet,the end product I usually bring to a friend who has an ice cream shop who makes fantastic smokey/sweet coffee ice cream from it but I always keep a bit for myself.
just a caveat,if you try this,bust it up really well so most of the sugar comes off as it's really rough on your grinder.
-Eric

[false_aesthetic]

^^^
Why have you been keeping this from me?

[Zimmermanbicycle]

there may be more you don't know?
-Eric

^^^
Why have you been keeping this from me?

[lukasz]

It is called torrefacto.

[Britishbane]

Ok,this will sound a bit bizarre and it's OT in the OT but I do roast beans this way a few times a year.
It started back in 1976 when I spent some time as a teenager working on a farm in southern Sonora (Mexico) and the coffee was amazing with a very unique smokey/sweet taste,when I asked the woman who ran the kitchen about it she said "oh EL Hefe (the boss) is so cheap I roast the coffee myself to save a few pesos" so I asked her to show me how she was doing it and here it is:
she would build a fire in a 55 gallon drum outside and she had a big shallow wok like pan the size of the top of the drum once it was good and hot she would put 1 pound of green beans in the wok thingy and keep them moving with a wooden spoon until they turned a golden brown,not too dark yet,just getting brown,and then she added 1 pound of sugar and continued to stir as the sugar melted you could see the beans getting darker,she kept cooking the mixture until the sugar caramelized and went almost black but NOT burned but a deep brown almost black.
she then scraped the mixture out of the wok onto a cookie sheet and let it set up,it looks like the devils peanut brittle,and then when cool she busted it into little chunks with a great big f'ing mallet and ground it up in a giant hand crank grinder mounted to the wall outside the kitchen.
This brutal sounding rural process produces some fantastic tasting coffee.
My urbane variation is to go to one of the local Ethiopian groceries in my neighborhood and buy a pound of green beans and do this on my Weber with a cookie sheet,the end product I usually bring to a friend who has an ice cream shop who makes fantastic smokey/sweet coffee ice cream from it but I always keep a bit for myself.
just a caveat,if you try this,bust it up really well so most of the sugar comes off as it's really rough on your grinder.
-Eric

Good application for a mortar and pestle, or no? Thinking I want to give this a shot.

[Octave]

I've been roasting on a Behmor for about a year now, after playing around with a couple of air poppers. The difference in control is huge, and I can get really precise roasts with the Behmor.

A word of advice that took me a long time to figure out: air temp. If you're a neurotic scientist (I am), you're probably taking notes of the beans you use, the time, heat level, cooling time, rest time, brewing notes, tasting notes...etc etc etc. However, one thing I found has made a huge difference is taking measurements of the humidity and temperature in the air at the time of roasting. A 5f degree change can make the difference between a city and full-city roast at the same time and same heat, especially if you're using an air-popper. Same goes for humidity.

And yeah, Sweet Maria's is where it's at.

[Cookietruck]

^ yeah that's true
i don't get that scientific with it because i rarely buy more than a few pounds of beans at a time, so at most that'll be 4 roasts per origin
doesn't seem worth it to take all those notes given the few amount of roasts

i pretty much go by color, sound, smell and how much the beans have grown...

one thing i started doing is roasting in the behmor without using the chaff catcher, noticed the catcher was kicking the small beans towards the heating elements when they'd fall through the screen and then they'd burn up in the back there and cause alot of smoke before the beans in the drum even got to first crack.

i was roasting on the 1lb setting for a while but i've been using the 1/2lb setting mostly again, with most of the stuff i roast the heating element turns off right at the end of first crack which seems to be good timing for the beans i roast.
P1 all the time...

[Zimmermanbicycle]

Great idea!
-Eric

Good application for a mortar and pestle, or no? Thinking I want to give this a shot.