☕️ Coffee!

[Keith Sinclair]

Thanks from the roasters not far just down the hill 3 miles can get medium roast Hawaiian. It is not cheap. Kauai coffee 100% Hawaiian 1.5# bag is cheaper at local Costco. Takes us over a month to go through a bag, we aren't heavy drinkers.

Have to see how much cheaper for green beans. I can tell coffee is better when fresh roasted couple weeks later drops off some
not dramatic, still better than Starbucks.

 

[WPerry]

I ended up picking up some Bali (Kintamani Highlands) beans from Up Roasters. I like 'em, a lot. Berry, milk chocolate, a little bit of a floral note - really nice as a latte -

 

[Nikabrik]

For you guys that roast your own, what is a good option for a smaller roaster. Was thinking might try it have outlet by my small work table in open air garage. How do you control if you want a light to medium roast.
Also how often do you roast. Except when we have family or friends it's only two of us I drink two cups a day, she drinks such small amount twice.

Pour over coffee maker blooms grinds first we get pretty good coffee that way all Hawaiian but not always fresh takes us a while to finish a bag up to a month.

Also how do you store extra beans for say a week.

I roast in a bread machine with a heat gun. I can do around 17oz batches - I previously could do larger, but my new heat gun seems to roast slower. The bread machine I've modified (bypassed control board, installed rectifier, installed toggle switch, disconnected heating element). I made a simple lid out of sheet steel that holds the heat gun but allows chaff out. Cost to get started is very low if you buy a second-hand bread machine and inexpensive heat gun.

The combination of mechanical agitation with convective flow seems to be very good.

I try follow Scott Rao's simple 4-4-4 roast profile guidelines: 4 minutes of drying, 4 minutes of roast (to first crack), 4 minutes of roast development.

Degree of roast is just sensory - listening and looking esp at the crevices in the beans, along with smell. I turn down the heat gun and crack the lid to control heat.

Bean storage for me is a quart mason jar with a slightly loose lid.

Honestly specialty coffee has overcorrected with regard to bean age after roasting, and in many cases people are drinking roasts that haven't offgassed/rested sufficiently.

 

[MarcelNL]

I started out trying to roast in a wok, but that resulted in too much stirring and burnt bean. Next attempt was a converted Illy can (250g) -the plastic liner removed!- on a cordless drill over a propane (Ikanawa) stove as the high heat burner in the kitchen stove did not quite put out enough heat and the smoke roasting creates is nasty inside...drilled a hole in the bottom, put in a length of 5 or 6 mm thread locked the can between two bolts. It does not get any lower tech than that. Any can will do, it was just that I found it fitting to use a coffee can to roast.
Added a few 'vanes' to improve mixing of the contents while spinning, some testing to find the RPM that prevents beans from clinging to the wall yet remain well agitated for homogenity of the roast, shooting for a 6-7 min until first crack (the beans pop pretty loud) and pour out like 90 sec. or longer later (drop temperature/color is the guide for roast level).

Everything is 'managed' (highly overstated) by senses, how high over the flame, what flame setting, how hard to squeeze the drill trigger for the RPM....no measurements whatsoever and yet still it works pretty nice if not as repeatable with measurement tools.
The learning curve is steep, I aimed to burn one, bake one roast to hit middle ground but in all honestly I have to say that it took like 10 roasts to figure out a process that produced palatable coffee and around 25 until the process was 'repeatable'.

I roasted using that contraption for a year and a half or so, until I grew tired of roasting so often since the batch size is around 150g. The next roaster was a Huky 500 I'm stilll using.

 

[MarcelNL]

I roast in a bread machine with a heat gun. I can do around 17oz batches - I previously could do larger, but my new heat gun seems to roast slower. The bread machine I've modified (bypassed control board, installed rectifier, installed toggle switch, disconnected heating element). I made a simple lid out of sheet steel that holds the heat gun but allows chaff out. Cost to get started is very low if you buy a second-hand bread machine and inexpensive heat gun.

The combination of mechanical agitation with convective flow seems to be very good.

I try follow Scott Rao's simple 4-4-4 roast profile guidelines: 4 minutes of drying, 4 minutes of roast (to first crack), 4 minutes of roast development.

Degree of roast is just sensory - listening and looking esp at the crevices in the beans, along with smell. I turn down the heat gun and crack the lid to control heat.

Bean storage for me is a quart mason jar with a slightly loose lid.

Honestly specialty coffee has overcorrected with regard to bean age after roasting, and in many cases people are drinking roasts that haven't offgassed/rested sufficiently.

i'm in between Rao and freestyle...I try to get to dry end FAST as in 3-4 min, get to first crack at around 7 min and drop 90 sec later at 207-208'C
regardless of that, home roasting is FUN, and easy enough when you are motivated to try and taste!

 

[user 16756]

I recently picked up a Fellow Ode, you can order them directly from Fellow with the SSP multi-purpose burrs. I took advantage of a sale they ran on the machine and got one even though I have a Forte BG, mostly because there's a lot of folks making 64mm burrs and it is a cheap way to have some fun. And the MP burrs seemed like exactly what I was looking for (I like a lot of acidity). I'm pretty blown away by the quality of the cups. It's not built near as well as the Forte and lacks some of the conveniences but the grind quality is really ludicrous for the price.