Coffee Roasting

[linus69]

Here is another of my hobby/chores, roasting my own coffee beans. I tried it out of curosity and the results were so good that my wife decided I can continue doing it for the rest of my natural life.
Home roasting is really quite messy and produces lots of acrid smoke which is probably why it fell from grace with housewives around WWI.
My wife lets me roast our beans on a workbench in an old aircraft hanger, and they bitch about it there.
You can home roast various ways from a cast iron skillet to an automated roaster costing hundreds of dollars. I use a modified 70`s vintage hot air pop corn popper which is called fluid roasting.
www.engadget.com/2006/02/28/how-to-make-a-popcorn-popper-coffee-roaster/
You can roast 1/2 cup of green beans to a full city roast in 3-4mins a batch once the unit is up to temperature. You then cool the roasted beans quickly in a strainer over a fan. I get the beans through a green coffee buying coop online.
www.greencoffee.coop/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

[red]

Paul-
I feel for the guys you work with that smell is something you will never forget! Had equipment at Tetley and the smell was beyond discription (made me want to puke!!!) Finally asked the operator what the smell was and was told that the factory was roasting coffee beans. -Ed

[linus69]

You nailed it Ed, roasting coffee is a real crowd pleaser, the guys literally howl when I do it, at best it smells like you are trying to burn fresh grass clippings. A change of clothes and a shower are in order when your`re done as the smell covers your body like a glove.
But the freshly roasted beans which are gassing off CO2 for many hours start to smell like heaven very quickly.
Once you start drinking the coffee brewed with these beans there is no going back to Folgers, even Starbucks can`t compare.

Paul

[3RRL]

Very interesting thread Paul.
I must say you have to have more success than we did roasting our own. (Yes we tried too But we didn't use your method apparently? Loretta was in charge of roasting and my job was to drink it.
Whatever happened, it did not turn out very good, so we gave up eventually.
Oh, and I can identify with the smell since she did it in the kitchen, which is central in our home.
Rob-

[linus69]

Hey Rob, if I roasted coffee in the house the bride would strangle me, she doesn`t even want me to do it in the garage. The fluid roasting method is fairly easy as the beans are in constant motion swirling in the stream of very hot air.
You are less likely to scorch the beans this way, it only takes a scorched bean or two to make a batch that brews coffee that tastes like dishwater. You do have to hover over the unit when roasting though as things happen fast and furious.
The beans I get through the coop are excellent, it is all volunteers that run it and they only buy the best beans from around the world. They only sell to other home roasters and there is a 15lb limit on buying an available variety of beans.

Paul

[linus69]

After 2yrs of hard service my home made roaster gave up the ghost. So I went on Ebay and located another of the exact same vintage popcorn popper, it is in high demand because of home coffee roasters like me who convert them.

Paul

[linus69]

After roasting coffee in modified hot air pop corn poppers for a couple of years now, I was tiring of the process as it was so labor intensive and you could only do 1/2cup of beans in a batch.
You also had to stay with it every minute of the process which really gets old fast.
I got lucky at a late summer roadside garage sale and scored a Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Oven which the woman had won years ago as a door prize at an affair and never used or even unpacked. She was asking $55 but took $40 which was a steal for one of these in new condition.
I then bought a homemade roasting drum from a guy on Ebay who has a coffee business which I caught on sale at the time, he makes them to order. I tried it out with a couple of test runs and it works well, I can now roast a pound of beans in a batch and I can walk away from it without worry of burnt beans.









Paul