Roasting Coffee at Home

[Sclass]

Hi,

I’ve had a few weeks to experiment. What I’ve found is my roaster is indeed a bit hot. The time between a medium roast and a French roast is literally ten seconds. It is really touchy and yep, the transition between the two makes a lot of smoke.

I’ve had really good luck blending beans. I buy Major Dickasons blend from Peet’s and cut it half with my own yirgacheffe. What I’ve gathered is the beans I roast have a simple chocolate flavor while the Major has a more complex blended taste. Awesome when mixed. I’m guessing this is why people drink blends rather than single origin coffee.

Online there were people using the harbor freight tools router speed control to slow down their air poppers. I haven’t tried it but I’m thinking I may mod my popper to produce less heat while maintaining the same air flow. Tons of mod sites out there showing how to do it.

[Sclass]

An update on coffee roasting. My green beans bought in a 5 lb bag have really lasted. I’m about half way through after several months of roasting. I only need to roast 2/3 of a cup of green beans a week. The beans expand a lot and make over a cup of roasted coffee beans which I estimate to be approximately 1/4 lb by eyeball.

So it is actually turning out to be very economical. Quite a bit cheaper than buying fresh roasted beans from Peet’s. I’m still buying there but I blend half of their beans with half of mine when I grind.

The roasting process is so quick and efficient with the air popper I don’t even notice. It takes around five minutes a week to roast. I’ve got it down to a routine.

I’m actually looking forward to emptying my bag of green beans so I can get something new. A little goes a long way and they store well.

[guitarplayer]

Very glad to see a thread on this! Recently I went to my local oriental shop to stock up on legumes and got a small packet of green coffee beans. I am very excited to experiment with these. This morning I put them on a plate and microwaved 50g for 3 min at 750W, got quite a lot of smoke so had to open the window. The beans though looked roasted (as in roasted peanuts) with only some hints of black, unlike when you buy roasted coffee beans which are essentially burned by comparison.

Ground it in my normal hand coffee grinder, it was a bit harder to do it and some bits were left in chunks.

then used a coffee pot with a filter that you just press the coffee to the bottom of the pot (I will find a photo later)

The coffee is something else! The smell while grinding, wow. The taste - sweet and only slightly sour, not very sour. However, compared to my Viennese past best before that I now usually drink, it does not get the fruity flavour that I recall from drinking coffee processed with fruit flesh on whilst in a finca in Colombia.

I have not read the above posts but will today after work. Posting here to share some most recent excitement that I got from playing around with it, but I will make sure to follow with some more factuals.

[vexed87]

Since I buy my coffee online for postal delivery, I usually keep a stock of green beans in the cupboard to tide me over between deliveries, I don't have a subscription because that leads to early or late delivery due to fluctuations in consumption. My supplier offers discount on green beans vs roasted, but 1kg of green beans yields about 0.8-85kg roasted, and the discount doesn't cover the yield loss, so as per other's experiences, it's not worth roasting your own unless you want to get creative with DIY blends. But I do do it between delivery of 1kg bags, because I really loath to drink coffee beans that have spent the best part of 3-5 months in a distribution chain before ending up on a supermarket shelf, by which time they are useless for my espresso machine, once roasted beans gradually loose the CO2 that is necessary to deliver the real crema you get with a quality machine.

On the flip side, green beans do store incredibly well. At one point I lost a bag at the back of a cupboard and they were perfectly acceptable for roasting some years later.

I've found we get through enough coffee the just about get the best experience from a 1kg of freshly roasted coffee just as we run out, the acceptable limit in flavour is reached. So I will continue to buy roasted, but I frequently end up with a few days between ordering and delivery without coffee. This can be mitigated with planning ahead, but then unexpected guests can happen, etc...

Also, roasting does create a lot of smoke, personally I do it outdoors with a popcorn maker to stop creating an air pollution problem indoors, but you have to factor outdoor temperature (and precipitation) into your roasting timelines, nothing a handy spreadsheet can't mitigate.

[guitarplayer]

That's interesting to know that green coffee beans store very well. I am nowhere near you all connoisseurs from above, which maybe I don't want to become one as it seems like I get satisfied with little. My microwave roast was great this morning, even though indeed it was not even. I will give it a go with roasting and leaving it for a day or two to see if flavour improves. I am also experimenting with soaking green coffee beans overnight and cooking them the next morning to arrive at a coffee equivalent of green tea.

Yes, definitely lots of smoke, I am unsure if this can be avoided.

@vexed87 is your supplier a very local one or within reach in Scotland?

ETA: other than a mugful of water with 18g of green coffee beans soaking to be heated up tomorrow, I also did a second round of bean roasting. I again used 750W setting on my microwave and this time roasted the beans to right before it started getting smoky. I leave them cool down and still cook a bit as they cool down. It is a very light roast. Will have them tomorrow or the day after. For me, in this latter process it is crucial they turn out crunchy enough so that I can grind them (yes, I did try grinding the beans green. no, it does not work at all).

I hope @Seppia is not reading this as it is coffee after all and with the microwave experiments I feel a bit like eating pasta with tomato ketchup in front of an Italian.

[vexed87]

@guitarplayer, they probably do deliver to Scotland. Lalico coffee and North Star are my go to roasters. The latter (which is £££) is on my doorstep (40min each way by bike) but since I work office hours, I get delivery instead.

I don't mind the premium price on the local roaster since it's an ethical business model, vs. the former which based on price simply cannot be.

[sodatrain]

Happy to find this thread! I've been want to roast at home too. Because I have coffee plants at home! Last year's harvest was small and maybe 15 lbs/7-ishKg. I've done the cast iron thing before... thinking the air popcorn popper is the way to go. I prefer a light roast.

[thef0x]

I solved this thread's problem recently by making my own wobble roaster for ~$70. Here's the post, figure it might help some of you! viewtopic.php?t=13064

[sodatrain]

Excellent, thank you @thef0x! Great looking solution.