Home Roasting

[jclaar]

Hey all I"m new here and found a thread on coffee, one of my favorite things. At home we roast our own coffee, and it's by far the best tasting coffee I've ever had. It's super fresh all the time, and we get our coffee from a couple of different places who gets their supply from all over the world. So we get coffee beans from great crops, and it's also a lot less expensive this way.

I don't know if this topic had been covered before but it didn't seem like it.

Has anyone else on here tried roasting coffee? Or have you tried it from someone else? What do you think?

Thanks!

Jeanine

[melkor]

We've been home roasting for years, as have lots of other eGullet members. There are a bunch of topics about it in the coffee forum.

[adegiulio]

I've been roasting for about three years now...better selection, lower prices, and the ultimate in freshness...there is no downside.

[Jon Savage]

Been doing so for several months and well worth the trivial effort involved.

[Peter the eater]

Has anyone else on here tried roasting coffee? 

Welcome jclaar, I think you'll get lots of responses but I must say having roasted my own coffee at home exactly once I am extremely stoked to do it again. I used a cheap-o aluminum stove top popcorn maker with a crank, waited for the first crack, and then ran outside to de-chaff with colanders just before they went black. I brewed some right away and then some the next day. The second batch was substantially better.

I am confident that with a few more iterations I can approach and possibly surpass my local roasters. Plus its a lot of fun.

You must check out an egFoodblog from earlier this summer (name escapes me, index needs updating) but an energetic woman from NYC (the Village?) with a kitchen store showed me how it can be done with a big old iron pan and a fire escape.

[jclaar]

I've been roasting for about three years now...better selection, lower prices, and the ultimate in freshness...there is no downside. 

←

Yay some other roasters out there! My poor roaster is about to die though I need to get a new one. This is the second one I've had in like 6 years or so and it gets used HEAVILY

[Live It Up]

Has anyone else on here tried roasting coffee? 

Welcome jclaar, I think you'll get lots of responses but I must say having roasted my own coffee at home exactly once I am extremely stoked to do it again. I used a cheap-o aluminum stove top popcorn maker with a crank, waited for the first crack, and then ran outside to de-chaff with colanders just before they went black. I brewed some right away and then some the next day. The second batch was substantially better.

I am confident that with a few more iterations I can approach and possibly surpass my local roasters. Plus its a lot of fun.

You must check out an egFoodblog from earlier this summer (name escapes me, index needs updating) but an energetic woman from NYC (the Village?) with a kitchen store showed me how it can be done with a big old iron pan and a fire escape.

←

Hey that's me! You can find my blog here. I've been roasting my own coffee for almost 2 years now, and I definitely don't plan to stop. The only downside is when you run out and have to buy beans--but it just makes you appreciate how much better home roasted is.

[jclaar]

Has anyone else on here tried roasting coffee? 

Welcome jclaar, I think you'll get lots of responses but I must say having roasted my own coffee at home exactly once I am extremely stoked to do it again. I used a cheap-o aluminum stove top popcorn maker with a crank, waited for the first crack, and then ran outside to de-chaff with colanders just before they went black. I brewed some right away and then some the next day. The second batch was substantially better.

I am confident that with a few more iterations I can approach and possibly surpass my local roasters. Plus its a lot of fun.

You must check out an egFoodblog from earlier this summer (name escapes me, index needs updating) but an energetic woman from NYC (the Village?) with a kitchen store showed me how it can be done with a big old iron pan and a fire escape.

←

Hey that's me! You can find my blog here. I've been roasting my own coffee for almost 2 years now, and I definitely don't plan to stop. The only downside is when you run out and have to buy beans--but it just makes you appreciate how much better home roasted is.

←

Wow cool....I"ll have to check that out....and yes there have been times I've run out and had to use "other" coffee...and I love the home roasted when I get it back again. I order from a couple of places ...one great one is http://www.sweetmarias.com and another http://www.coffeewholsalers.com

[jclaar]

So I just read up on the cast iron pan method.....not something I would have thought of but it looks interesting. My roaster just blows hot air....but like I said before it's dying slowly.

I noticed something mentioned about how it smells...to me when it's first starting to roast it smells like hay, Then maybe burnt hay but doesn't really smell like coffee until it rests like LiveItUp said...a day or two is best.

Has anyone noticed that a lot of times the home roasted coffee smells like chocolate almost?

And does anyone have a favorite? Mine is Guatemalan anything, but especially Hue Hue Tenango.

[melkor]

The cast iron pan works reasonably well but will fill your house with smoke. When my grill runs out of gas in the middle of a roast I finish it on a perforated sheet pan in a hot oven.

[scubadoo97]

Home roaster checking in. Been roasting for going on 5 years now. Started with a Fresh Roast Plus roaster and various poppers. Gave heatgun roasting a try for a year and have been using the stir crazy/turbo oven combo similar to the one seen here for the last 2 years and find it a great inexpensive roaster that can do a 14 oz batch or green in around 13 min.

http://homeroast.pbwiki.com/SCTO

I joined the greencoffee coop http://www.greencoffee.coop/ early in it's development. It's a wonderful place to buy larger quantities of coffee. Due to the sometimes lack of available coffee at the coop an alternate site is

http://www.greencoffeebuyingclub.com/index.php

I have never run out of green since I usually have upwards of 50 lbs or more in my current rotation. Like anything else it can become addictive. I use to get nervous when my stash got below 80 lbs. We travel with fresh beans and grinder when at all possible. I took a couple of pounds with me to Maui. I swear my morning coffee in the room was worlds better than the Kona served in the hotel restaurant. On that trip my suitcase reeked of fresh coffee so much I thought I was going to be search for drugs. Figured they might think I was using the coffee to cover the smell of weed. No searches no weed, just great coffee.

[MGLloyd]

I am the proud possessor of the latest and greatest in home coffee roasting technology: the Behmor 1600. Behmor has all the details. CoffeeGeek and other sites are abuzz about the Behmor.

Edited November 17, 2007 by MGLloyd (log)

[weinoo]

Welcome to the forums, jclaar. I'm a former home-roaster. Problem with roasting in an NYC apartment is that not only does my apartment smell like (insert name of local roaster here) almost all of the time, so does the rest of the floor I live on as well as the floor above me and below me.

So, I've had to break the habit, and now I just buy my beans from any of a number of places that roast quality beans on a daily basis. And my Fresh Roast plus has been passed on to a new owner - maybe we'll even see it used to develop a cocktail someday.

[jayt90]

I recently acquired a Caffe Rosto. I did not realize it is somewhat controversial, hard to get, and possibly out of production. No matter, I was impressed by the quality, the simplicity, and especially, no microprocessor.

I have used it for about a dozen roasts with no problems; an even, full city in 10 minutes including cool down, and no excess smoke or chaff. It is easy to use, and reliable (so far), unlike

the wok, or the popcorn blowers I tolerated before.

[MGLloyd]

I have two dead Caffe Rostos sitting out in my garage. After repairing the thermal cut-out and thermostat several times, I finally gave up. I am told that the newer production models, now sold only by the Green Beanery in Canada, are supposed to be more reliable.

[Jon Savage]

I upgraded from a Freshroast + to a stir crazy / convection oven recently and have been extremely pleased with the results. Were I to do it over I'd skip the freshroast altogether since the ability to do batches of around 1 pound for maybe $25 more than the Freshroast seems to represent better value to me. The results taste better to me as well but that may be simply a result of my having improved my technique.

This morning's batch, aged sumatra lintong from the green coffee co-op:

[MGLloyd]

As reported elsewhere on this site, I recently switched to the Behmor 1600 and have not looked back.