[jqp]

My new coffee roaster has arrived and I have roasted the first and second batches of green coffee beans.

I bought a new, improved Fresh Roast Plus 8 for about $90 from Sweet Marias.



I started on my coffee roasting journey back in 2001 when a colleague at work described how he used a $20 air roaster to get great flavor. I was intrigued and did a little research online. I discovered that the Melita AromaRoast was an inexpensive way to get started. Sweet Marias had discontinued them by the time I wanted one, but I promptly found, at a Value City, 4 Melitta Aroma Roasts for $8 apiece (they were discontinued) completed with their ancient little plastic bag of green beans from 1983! I bought 4 because of the price and for redundancy(replacement/parts)!



Here is what is left after several years of roasting:

[picture coming]

So I finally decided it was time to start roasting again and ordered the Fresh Roast Plus 8. I roast at home because of freshness and choice of beans. Coffee looses its freshness about as fast as milk does! The difference is you can drink coffee when it is not fresh, and you usually do! When you buy coffee from shops that are not specifically roasting shops, it is probably past its optimum freshness by several weeks at least. Of course the retail industry does not want you to know this! For more on this I will leave it to you to do the research. There are lots of folks on the internets who have a crazy obsession with excellence in coffee cupping.

A choice of coffee beans must be compared to a choice of wine grapes. Not only do varieties of plants matter, but so do the regions where the coffee is grown.  

What makes this all easier and more fun is that the internet lives up to its promuise of providing information and accessibility to product when it comes to green coffee beans. Sweet Marias is just one site, but their site is a virtual green coffee bean-central, with detailed cupping information for over 70 varieties, history, forcasting, and a great inventory at a very reasonable price. And they do not accept all the coffee that they receive samples of.

With this kind of a choice of coffee beans I can have a particular bean from a particular region or even a particular plantation, chosen by a coffee expert. I can choose based on all the reviewed attributes of the bean for this seasons harvest, and of course decide for myself with a $5-6 purchase! Once you consider that you are buying individual lots, not corporate blends that have lost their individual character and freshness, it becomes a different game.

The roaster

This is a great little roaster. It has a solid glass roasting chamber and a nice sized chaff chamber. It heats up very well and has the power to roast in 5-7 minutes. By observation, you can get a very precise roast. This is a simple roater, and in this case simpler is better. I like to think of Arabs roasting a precious commodity over a fire in the cool desert night. The nice thing is that it is well supported and the fan speed can be adjusted. Heat transfer to the beans is adjusted by using more or less beans in the chamber.

[pictures to come]

The beans roast while agitating in a stream of super-hot air. This is the way an air popcorn popper works. There is some smoke produced so you use it under a range hood or in the garage. Ambient temperature is important though. The aroma is marvellous! After the first or second crack, precisely when I think it is done, I pour the coffee beans into a glass dish so that they do not continue to cook.

The coffee!

Ideally you would like the coffee to rest for about 12 hours but sometimes I like it ground while it is still warm!

I use a French Press. Yes, there can be a little bit of  grounds, which are easy to avoid, but no lost flavor ends up in a paper filter. There is always a nice crema on top! Clean up is very easy if you are not afraid of a sink and running water. I stay away from soap for routine cleaning, unless there is a real oil buildup, sure to rinse very thoroughly if I do use soap. I use white vinegar to soak occasionally. Daily, I wipe the residue off the glass with a paper towel.

This is what I have tried today



Papua New Guinea AA Maloolaba - marvelous!

[Philistine]

Thanks for the great write up - I'm going through a coffee phase trying different roasters and waiting for the Aeropress to arrive.
I've got a few questions:
How long do green beans last?
I know it varies on how much you drink, but how many times a week do you need to roast?

Thanks

[jqp]

Green beans last a long time, think in terms of dry beans you can buy in the grocery store, like pinto, lentils, etc.

Just store them in a plastic bag or a glass canister/mason jar

My roaster allows me to roast enough for 1-2 days in about 10 minutes total time. If I roast multiple batches, I can roast enough for a week. That's as much as I would roast due to freshness requirements...since it is so convenient, it is not really an issue.

[Philistine]

Thanks for the fast reply - looks like my next project 

[spudco]

With the demise of my local roaster and my recent purchases from a couple of other roasters, I'm dying for a great cup...

I'm trying really hard to ignore home roasting...  I have enough clutter in my life already!!!  But it may be THE WAY.

[MaxCast]

Great write up, jqp.  It answered many questions that I had about roasting.
Good to know that it can be done the night before as I am the first up and a range hood and roaster going would surly wake up a child and interfear with my quiet time. 
Do supermarkets generally carry green beans?

[bummrush]

I use a Behmor its so quiet it wont wake anybody,plus the fact it can do a pound,is something that I've wanted for over 12 yrs,Actually i had a Melita it didn't get hot enough to roast at all.

[sam49]

I've recently become interested in home roasting as I moved 25 miles away from the great Baltimore local roaster (Zeke's Coffee) whose beans I'd been buying for years.  The nearest source for Zeke's is over 10 miles away and I don't often have errands close to that cafe/bakery.

I got on the net and read about home roasters.  While I could see the advantages of the $200 plus machines, these were out of the budget at this time.  Some of the $100 range machines seemed to be good, but I also read about converting hot air corn poppers to roasting use and that sounded good and much cheaper.  So, I posted a Wanted message asking my local freecycle group for a hot air popper.  No direct responses, but someone gave me a Melitta AromaRoast and several pounds of old green beans in addition to the pouch that came with the machine back in 83/84.

I read about the AromaRoast on the net, including discussions of its deficiencies, mentioned earlier in this thread, but also learned that it had some good features like its chaff collector (old review at SweetMarias.com).  I also found information on working around its problem with not getting the beans hot enough to carry through a roast.

I had lots of free beans for experimentation and a heads up on how to make this machine work.  Its chaff collector works really well and I haven't set off any smoke detectors or stunk up the house, but I have done my roasting right by a window and set a fan in the window pulling air out.  (It was below freezing outside so I had to roast inside.)

So, from the beginning I tried preheating the device for about 3 minutes and doing the roasting inside a standard cardboard file box with the lid "hinged" on the side with packing tape like a door and the "door" almost closed.  With these mods, the AromaRoast will take coffee past 2nd crack and to a very dark roast in about 11 minutes.   A nice early edge of City roast, somewhat past 1st crack comes at about 5-6 minutes.  I've actually cut a couple of 2" square holes in the side and top of the box to increase outside  (cool) air flow a bit and slightly slow down the roast.

Based on a suggestions I read for newbie home roasters regardless of machine, I did my first roast to just to 1st crack, the 2nd to about 1.5 minutes past first crack, and a 3rd on out until 2nd crack was starting to subside.  All of these were in the box.   
[img]

A couple of days later I tried two roasts without preheating and with the box door mostly open.  In this setup, I never reached 1st crack even though I gave it close to 20 minutes.  (I let the machine cool between the roasts.)

The AromaRoast has an undocumented feature that allows you to control the air flow with its one switch/sliding lever - less airflow means greater heat and faster roasting.  I haven't played with this since preheating combined with roasting in the box has given me a good result. 

The point of all of this is that an AromaRoast can still be a very viable means of taking a step out into home roasting.  If you find one and want to experiment with home roasting, it really can work quite well with simple modifications/work-arounds.

The issue is not really that it absolutely cannot generate enough heat to roast coffee beans but that, in its stock configuration, it moves too much cooler ambient temperature air through the roasting cylinder to roast the beans.

However, at least for the time you are trying to figure out if home roasting is a good option for you, it seems easier to make these accommodations to the set up of an AromaRoast than it is to deal with the chaff and smoke problems that users of hot air popcorn poppers describe or to do what is needed to remedy those problems.  This is particularly true if you live where there is a cold winter and you live with someone who doesn't want the house to smell like burnt coffee bean chaff.

Most of the viable hot air corn poppers (again see Sweetmarias.com) will roast larger amounts of beans and have higher wattage heating systems, so there are advantages to them.  If you have the $$ to just jump in with a $100-200 machine, great.  Most of them have larger volumes also.

But, don't pass up the AromaRoast is one appears before you for a small amount of money, or free. :<) 

I found instructions for a mod to add a piece of glass into the top of the chaff catcher so you can see the roast and may also get a thermometer to insert into the center of the roast chamber.  But I may just use sound and timing for a while.  I am not after perfection just a better cup of coffee.

Sam
Columbia, MD

[jqp]

Great write up, jqp.  It answered many questions that I had about roasting.
Good to know that it can be done the night before as I am the first up and a range hood and roaster going would surly wake up a child and interfear with my quiet time. 
Do supermarkets generally carry green beans?

No, you will have to order from somewhere like www.Sweetmarias.com , but the cost savings over roasted beans from the store is seen right away

[jqp]

sam49 - welcome to AC!

Yes that Melitta AromaRoast was for me a wonderful little roaster. I literally wore mine out I think, and they did not seem to all be created equally, which may be why they were discontinued. Perhaps I could have done some more repair work, but I was ready to go to the "next level" - the Fresh Roast Plus 8.

Not everyone can get the AromaRoast, after all it was discontinue in the 80's. I would be a little skeptical if one for sale was not new, because if used, someone may have used the life of it. How long can they last They are very susceptible to a low ambinent temperature, so roasting outside in cooler weather is not possible (true for pretty much all air roasters). Therefore the cardboard box trick is a very good trick!

I think that with a little understanding of what roasting is (first crack, second crack) an air roaster can usually be adapted to "get you there". After all shaking a pan over an open fire is how it has been done for centuries.

Time to roast some coffee!

[jqp]

Here is a link to degree of roast

http://www.sweetmarias.com/roasted.pict-guide.html

[pjanda1]

Unless you've got one of the fairly new school, ultra-quality oriented roasters right around the corner and plenty of $$ in your pocket, home roasting is the only way to go.  It is incredibly cheap and easy.  I've been roasting for a couple of years.  My normal machine is a $5 used hot air popcorn popper.  I roast a quarter pound at a time.  It takes less than 10 minutes from walking into the kitchen to the end of clean up.  Its only slightly more involved than boiling water.  In the summer I use a modified stir crazy popper (heating element disconnected) with a convection oven top on top.  Total cost ~$40.  It takes about 20 minutes but I can do better than half a pound.

Fresh coffee is truly superior.  I've had coffee from plenty of commercial roasters, and very, very few sell fresh product.  Compared to any audio pursuits it takes crazy little time, money and space.  The web is full of resources, but I'd be happy to discuss devices and methods.

pj

[Geardaddy]

Very kool and informative post.  My wife and I just moved to Charlotte from MN and the local coffee is atrocious.  We have been forced to order coffee from afar and that gets expensive.  I have wanted to plunge into home roasting and I think now may be the time.  I had visited SweetMarias and the reviews on their various devices seems mixed...but that may simply be due to the fact that home roasters are fussy like us philes.  Also, the affordable machines seemed to roast limited quantities for a multi-drinker household that consumes lots of java.  Anyway, I am inspired to make the leap into home roasting....

[bbchem]

My new coffee roaster has arrived and I have roasted the first and second batches of green coffee beans.

I bought a new, improved Fresh Roast Plus 8 for about $90 from Sweet Marias.



I started on my coffee roasting journey back in 2001 when a colleague at work described how he used a $20 air roaster to get great flavor. I was intrigued and did a little research online. I discovered that the Melita AromaRoast was an inexpensive way to get started. Sweet Marias had discontinued them by the time I wanted one, but I promptly found, at a Value City, 4 Melitta Aroma Roasts for $8 apiece (they were discontinued) completed with their ancient little plastic bag of green beans from 1983! I bought 4 because of the price and for redundancy(replacement/parts)!



Here is what is left after several years of roasting:

[picture coming]

So I finally decided it was time to start roasting again and ordered the Fresh Roast Plus 8. I roast at home because of freshness and choice of beans. Coffee looses its freshness about as fast as milk does! The difference is you can drink coffee when it is not fresh, and you usually do! When you buy coffee from shops that are not specifically roasting shops, it is probably past its optimum freshness by several weeks at least. Of course the retail industry does not want you to know this! For more on this I will leave it to you to do the research. There are lots of folks on the internets who have a crazy obsession with excellence in coffee cupping.

A choice of coffee beans must be compared to a choice of wine grapes. Not only do varieties of plants matter, but so do the regions where the coffee is grown.  

What makes this all easier and more fun is that the internet lives up to its promuise of providing information and accessibility to product when it comes to green coffee beans. Sweet Marias is just one site, but their site is a virtual green coffee bean-central, with detailed cupping information for over 70 varieties, history, forcasting, and a great inventory at a very reasonable price. And they do not accept all the coffee that they receive samples of.

With this kind of a choice of coffee beans I can have a particular bean from a particular region or even a particular plantation, chosen by a coffee expert. I can choose based on all the reviewed attributes of the bean for this seasons harvest, and of course decide for myself with a $5-6 purchase! Once you consider that you are buying individual lots, not corporate blends that have lost their individual character and freshness, it becomes a different game.

The roaster

This is a great little roaster. It has a solid glass roasting chamber and a nice sized chaff chamber. It heats up very well and has the power to roast in 5-7 minutes. By observation, you can get a very precise roast. This is a simple roater, and in this case simpler is better. I like to think of Arabs roasting a precious commodity over a fire in the cool desert night. The nice thing is that it is well supported and the fan speed can be adjusted. Heat transfer to the beans is adjusted by using more or less beans in the chamber.

[pictures to come]

The beans roast while agitating in a stream of super-hot air. This is the way an air popcorn popper works. There is some smoke produced so you use it under a range hood or in the garage. Ambient temperature is important though. The aroma is marvellous! After the first or second crack, precisely when I think it is done, I pour the coffee beans into a glass dish so that they do not continue to cook.

The coffee!

Ideally you would like the coffee to rest for about 12 hours but sometimes I like it ground while it is still warm!

I use a French Press. Yes, there can be a little bit of  grounds, which are easy to avoid, but no lost flavor ends up in a paper filter. There is always a nice crema on top! Clean up is very easy if you are not afraid of a sink and running water. I stay away from soap for routine cleaning, unless there is a real oil buildup, sure to rinse very thoroughly if I do use soap. I use white vinegar to soak occasionally. Daily, I wipe the residue off the glass with a paper towel.

This is what I have tried today



Papua New Guinea AA Maloolaba - marvelous!

I have the same roaster and have made >> Brazil, Costa Rica, Ethiopian. Sumatra, Colombia. also Sumatra Decaf. I have some store bought Pure Kona from Costco and some Jamblum from Ebay, and compared them using blind tests with neighbors, all of them preferred my 1-2 old fresh roast over the Kona and Jamblum. This is truily amazing!! People are asking me to roast some for them. I got my last Green beans from Tampa Florida CCMcoffee.com for about $3.90/lb a great bargain!!

 

[Nick77]

Unless you've got one of the fairly new school, ultra-quality oriented roasters right around the corner and plenty of $$ in your pocket, home roasting is the only way to go.  It is incredibly cheap and easy.  I've been roasting for a couple of years.  My normal machine is a $5 used hot air popcorn popper.  I roast a quarter pound at a time.  It takes less than 10 minutes from walking into the kitchen to the end of clean up.  Its only slightly more involved than boiling water.  In the summer I use a modified stir crazy popper (heating element disconnected) with a convection oven top on top.  Total cost ~$40.  It takes about 20 minutes but I can do better than half a pound.

Fresh coffee is truly superior.  I've had coffee from plenty of commercial roasters, and very, very few sell fresh product.  Compared to any audio pursuits it takes crazy little time, money and space.  The web is full of resources, but I'd be happy to discuss devices and methods.

pj

I just wanted to say thanks for your's and the other posts. I always thought home roasting was cost prohibitive due to the $200 or more outlay for a good roaster. But based upon your posting and doing some more research I found many people having great results with air poppers. So I found a Poppery 11 on craigslist for $8 and away we go. I roasted 3 batches today, the two that I extended the roast time on by adding an extension cord are some of the best I have tasted (former Peetnik). Im am looking forward to my first SM order of Kenya AA and Mocha Sanani. Thanks again all for sharing.

[jaywills]

For those of you who enjoy Kona coffee (no affiliation other than being a customer and both of us being Arkies):

http://store.konacloudcoffee.com/konacloudgreen.aspx

Enjoy.  Cordially,

[jqp]

Would that be a Kenya AA Auction Lot - Ndaroini?, I wonder as I sip my Full City roasted Guatemala Huehuetenango "Quetzal Azul"

http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.reviewarchive.g-k.php

[Nick77]

Would that be a Kenya AA Auction Lot - Ndaroini?, I wonder as I sip my Full City roasted Guatemala Huehuetenango "Quetzal Azul"

http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.reviewarchive.g-k.php

That would be the one. hehe

I will keep you posted, by the way been wanting to try some Guatemalan, do you recommend that one?

[jqp]

This Guatemalan (Guatemala Huehuetenango "Quetzal Azul") is no longer available, but I got a 1lb bag as a sampler of 4 bags when I bought the roaster.

I can't recommend any particular one yet, that is now available, but if you go by the cupping score you are sure to get a good one. I will probably try Guatemala El Injerto Estate 100% Bourbon from here http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.central.guatemala.php

I used to like the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe (MAO) a couple years back and ordered a 5lb bag.

No Yirgs currently available but I will try this one Ethiopia Organic Wet-Process Kebado http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.africa.ethiopia.php

[bummrush]

Good job,nothing wrong whatsoever with a popcorn roaster,they work awesome,have fun,i get lots of satisfaction out of this hobby.Just the fact that you end with the freshest coffee possible is worth it,coffee is So quickly perishable fresh and home roast is the best.