OT: Doing your roasting at home?

[jeduardo]

We all know that cycling and coffee go hand and hand, but how many of you enjoy doing the roasting at home? Thanks to a former collegiate teammate (roots in El Salvador) I now have the ability to source, for small ca$h, the green beans needed for my first foray into roasting. How should I go about doing it do it Fluid bead roaster or spring for the pricey home drum roaster? I would like to do more than 5oz at a time and it seems that the drum roast may be only way to do 0.5 lb or more per roast. All roasting input extremely appreciated and please send you opinions on preferred roasters: type/manufacturer/model suggestions?

[67-59]

Hope you get it to work out.

I gave it a shot for a while, but could never make it as good as the roasted beans I get from Intelligentsia, Vivace or 49th Parallel. The "just roasted" freshness factor never made a difference for me because I drink espresso...which is best several days after roasting.

[AngryScientist]

i also wish you luck. from my perspective, roasting beans is in the same boat as brewing beer. there are so many local places that roast amazing beans, that it's simply not worth my effort or $$ to probably wind up with an inferior end product. i'm lucky to have a few places close to me that source great beans and roast them in-house.

i can understand the desire to do it yourself though, let us know how it turns out!

[goonster]

I have used a popcorn popper, and now have the Behmor drum roaster.

I'm very happy with the drum roaster, and appreciate the ability to roast full pound batches at once. The Behmor is fairly quiet, and does provide some smoke reduction via heated plates on the exhaust. There is still enough smoke to set off the detectors, so I do it in the garage (next to the Shopvac).

There are reports that it is difficult to achieve very dark roasts with the Behmor, but I have never been unable to achieve the roasts I want, even in winter in the unheated garage. I don't roast darker than Vienna, so if you need pounds and pounds of Scuro, the Behmor may not be for you.

I will say that the drum roasts slower than a good air roaster, so it becomes a little more difficult to determine the exact end of 1st crack, but overall I am a very satisfied Behmor user.

[Ken Robb]

double post

[Ken Robb]

I think there is a lot of old info on roasting and coffee in the archives here.

[paperpants]

+1 on the popcorn popper

If you get an old school west bend poppery or wearever popcorn pumper they work great you can identify the older ones by checking the wattage on the bottom, the old ones pull more than 1250 watts.

I actually PID'd my popcorn popper and it works great, I can program in a roasting profile just like the fancy dedicated coffee roasters. One downside is you can only roast around 100 grams of coffee at a time, and it looks pretty sketchy, mine looks kinda like a bomb hahaha.

Whole setup will easily be under $50
:)

[DerekB]

I am also considering buying a roaster. The Hottop is another popular home roaster. Two others, less popular but probably better are the Quest M3 and the Huky. Both of those will roast a pound. Check out http://www.home-barista.com/home-roasting/
Many experienced home roasters there.

[William]

I've been using this for a year or two now...

http://www.ineedcoffee.com/07/iroast2-guide/images/roast2.jpg

It works great! It has two preset roasting curves but you can change them to dial them in to your liking. I get the green Espresso Monkey blend from Sweet Maria's.





William

[William]

I have used a popcorn popper, and now have the Behmor drum roaster.

I'm very happy with the drum roaster, and appreciate the ability to roast full pound batches at once. The Behmor is fairly quiet, and does provide some smoke reduction via heated plates on the exhaust. There is still enough smoke to set off the detectors, so I do it in the garage (next to the Shopvac).

There are reports that it is difficult to achieve very dark roasts with the Behmor, but I have never been unable to achieve the roasts I want, even in winter in the unheated garage. I don't roast darker than Vienna, so if you need pounds and pounds of Scuro, the Behmor may not be for you.

I will say that the drum roasts slower than a good air roaster, so it becomes a little more difficult to determine the exact end of 1st crack, but overall I am a very satisfied Behmor user.

I've found that the iRoast2 will roast very dark if you want to take it that far.

Roasting in the Winter in an unheated garage/shop can be interesting. It makes it harder for a hot air roaster to get to the right temp, especially in cold New England Winters. I did a little experimenting and came up with the Winter William roasting method. I have a large box on a table with a vent in the top that I can adjust, a door to place the roaster inside, and a square cut out on the opposite side that's just big enough for a small ceramic heater to be placed in the opening. I preheat the box before starting the roaster and leave it on throughout the roasting cycle. If I feel I need to slow down the roast I open the front door a little to allow cold air to mix in. I try to take it to the beginning stages of the 2nd crack. I've done it enough that I can just watch the color of the beans and know when it's done. It's hard to hear the crack at first with a hot air roaster due to the noise they make, but you'll start to recognize the sound over the whine in no time.






William

[William]

Hope you get it to work out.

I gave it a shot for a while, but could never make it as good as the roasted beans I get from Intelligentsia, Vivace or 49th Parallel. The "just roasted" freshness factor never made a difference for me because I drink espresso...which is best several days after roasting.

Once you get it dialed in there is nothing better than fresh roasted beans. Let them sit for a day or two and then grind away. Just as good as other roasters out there....though that Intellgentsia Black Cat is some good stuff.:cool:





William

[Fixed]

the aroma is worth it
your house we will all meet ,:)for java before the ride starts
cheers

[oldpotatoe]

I am in Colorado....

[bagochips3]

Whenever I get the itch to step up to a drum roaster, I look at the prices and decide to stick with my West Bend Poppery II. Works fine, green beans are cheaper than pre-roasted ones, roasting is easy, doesn't take too much time, and my results are better than any pre-roasted beans I've tried. What's not to love?

Check out Sweet Marias web site (www.sweetmarias.com). Tons of good info on different roasters. Great place to buy green beans, too.

[R2D2]

I used to. But at that time the difference between green beans and roasted beans was large. Not so much these days and not as cost effective.
We drink a lot of coffee and spent to get a HotTop. While more $$$ it is still kicking.

Now beer is a different matter.
Since my equipment is old and paid for the running cost of a pint of really good ale is 40 cents.
Experimenting with some ales with honey added to the wort.
Cheers.........

[ClutchCargo]

I used to. But at that time the difference between green beans and roasted beans was large. Not so much these days and not as cost effective.
We drink a lot of coffee and spent to get a HotTop. While more $$$ it is still kicking.

Now beer is a different matter.
Since my equipment is old and paid for the running cost of a pint of really good ale is 40 cents.
Experimenting with some ales with honey added to the wort.
Cheers.........

R2 -- I've been considering this for a while, so this is timely. If one were getting into this gig now, do you have any recommendations as to where to look for the equipment and what to begin with?

[R2D2]

R2 -- I've been considering this for a while, so this is timely. If one were getting into this gig now, do you have any recommendations as to where to look for the equipment and what to begin with?

Beer?

For beer it is hard to beat morebeer.com for ideas, equipment etc.
But you'll need to decide what you want to invest. Bottling is a royal PITA so I went the corny keg and kegarator route. And I can always buy and serve micro brew bought at the local distributor. So I think that is the best path for most. Get a kegarator and keg. You can build one from an old freezer.
Now I've been brewering for a while so I buy bulk barley and do whole grain and a stainless conical fermenter. It was acquired gradually.
But you can brew fine beer in carboys.
PM me f you want more details.

[stackie]

Home roasting?

I've been doing it for 10 years. Started out of convenience since I could no longer find Peets coffee less than 30 minutes from home. Evolved from popcorn poppers (still the best deal out there), on through a succession of iRoast (disposable junk) on to the Gene Cafe (repairable but unreliable junk). OK, maybe not junk. But, my experience with electric roasters is that they are seriously underpowered and basically force you to roast with full power on to roast anywhere near a 14-15 min Full City roast.

I could get a pretty good roast, never quite like Intelli, Verve, or Vivace. But, it was convenient and economical. Green is about a third of the price of boutique roasted coffee.

Anyway, I flipped last fall when the Gene broke again. So, I upgraded.

Diedrich IR 2.5. 2.5 kilos of gas roasting love. Now, I am cooking with gas, literally. This thing is amazing. I've been roasting about 10 lbs a week. I drink about 2 lbs and the rest is given away resulting in donations to my coffee fund. It'll take a while to break even. Seriously. But I am loving it. One of my colleagues told me the other day that my coffee was no better than Verve. I told him that was a high compliment! I've got people at work just coming up to get my coffee.

Jon

[oliver1850]

I'm going to cook some beans tomorrow over an open fire, but they are going to be eating beans, not coffee beans. It's going to be too hot to cook inside, so I'm planning to make refried beans and tortillas, "authentic" to the extent of my abilities. I wish there were more chilis ready, all I have is a few Cayennes.

[forrestw]

My lab will soon decommission some equipment parts of which are begging to be re-created as a coffee roaster.

My plan is to purge with argon :-)

[goonster]

Diedrich IR 2.5. 2.5 kilos of gas roasting love.
Woah, Nelly. That is some serious gear for personal use.