VARIETY PACK!

Nothin' like a little ordering blindly to find something new and exciting!  I've been roasting my 4lb sampler beans from Sweet Maria's.  I really like the Brazilian and the El Salvador.  The Sumatran has a crazy flavor that someday's i don't like and other days i love! 

Notice how much bigger the Sumatran beans are!

I'm still on the fence about the Ehtiopian, it roasts funny.  The beans are all different sizes and the chaff doesn't all come off (the yellowish stuff above).  A work in progress!

Banished!

Here I am, outdoors in the cruel Colorado winter. Trying to roast my beans.

Okay, maybe just mildly perturbed Colorado winter. Anyways, everyone doesn't find the smoke from roasting coffee beans as aromatically pleasing as the finished product so I am banished to the back porch. The problem I face is the effect of ambient temperature on my Air Crazy Popper/Roaster. Currently the temperature is 42, about average for Longmont in December. Since the popper sucks air in from the bottom vents and passes it over heating coils, starting with air that cold would make for a long slow roasting process.

The daring, brilliant, maybe crazy solution I arrived at is an igloo.
An Igloo Ice Cube cooler that is.  Although in this case it functions as a warmer.

That is my colander for cooling the beans and a box of wine behind the cooler for refreshment. I also use a large heavy duty rimmed cookie sheet which works great in 40 degree weather. The Igloo also nicely contains the husks that fly off the roasting beans. This did present a problem in my original configuration.

The intake on the bottom of the roaster began to get clogged by the husks that collected at the bottom of the cooler. So the next design improvement was a cardboard box to keep the vents above the fray. Et Voila! A toasty fast roast regardless of the outside temperature. If it gets really cold, I just close the lid. So far, nothing has melted, burned, or exploded.

The Postman Cometh!

After a long wait...thanks H.Sandy!  My four pound of green beans from Sweet Maria's has arrived!

One of these things is not like the others.... If you look at the lower right you'll see a much darker, almost brown, bean.  That's the Sumatra Lake Toba 19+ Screen.  Should be interesting!  The others are El Salvador Finca Siberia Bourbon; Brazil Fazenda do Sertao Catuai; Ethiopia Sidama Deri Kochoha.

I've done a batch of the Ethiopian, rather, i've Overdone a batch....sigh. Live and learn!  I'm going to make a batch of each tonight so that i can do a flight of coffee's tomorrow!

First crack, second crack, Ah, now I get it!

I didn't want to waste any of my two Gesha varieties doing an over roasting test and I only had less than 1/3 of a cup of my "cheap" beans. Then I had an idea; I could pan roast the coffee on our gas stove! If I had been a little more clever I would have taken some more process shots or maybe even recorded video. Oh well, next time.

 The first crack was more of a pop. I actually flinched as I half expected coffee shrapnel to put my eye out. The second crack was more crackle than pop. Like the sound tinder makes as it catches fire. It was fun seeing the roast happen right there in front of me and it was much easier to hear what was going on without the fan motor whirring but I won't be abandoning my air popper any time soon.

I used a non-stick wok-like pan with a flat bottom. I agitated the pan and stirred them almost continuously but still, as I expected, the roast was very uneven.

I didn't even try to cool the beans (didn't think that far ahead) so you can see a lot of scorching. I still would like to try this with my air popper. maybe I will get a pound of beans that can stand up to full city+. I can always stand outside Charbucks and give them to someone who is into dark roast ;-}

INSTRUCTION....I DON'T NEED NO STINKING INSTRUCTION....

Oh, yeah, except when it comes to roasting coffee!  I failed to follow the instructions from the very nice woman at Mystic Coffee Roasters in Medford, MA.  She very Cleary said "take them out the as soon as you hear the second crack, because they go very fast".  Hence, this uneven roast (eh, ok, half burnt) roast.

Then I did what she told me to .....

and what do you know, it came out great!  My tastiest batch of home roast yet! Mostly even roast.  FYI, the coffee itself is really fabulous with a nice almost floral aroma and just plain tasty!  I'd like to go when Mystic is brewing some of this to see how theirs is.  

The folks at Mystic were very cool about answering my questions, but i'll have to pace myself lest i should annoy the crap out of them!

I burnt the beans!

What city+ roast should look like (image courtesy of Sweet Maria's)

What my first roast in my modified popper looked like

Well, after letting the beans rest 24 hours I have to say I was disappointed with my first roasting with my modified Air Crazy popper.

Here is a beautiful city+ roast from the Sweet Maria's website; below is the much darker bean I produced. Not horrible tasting but a little too Starbucks bite for my liking.

Everything happens so quickly after the four minute mark and the beans really do roast quite a bit between when you take them out of the roaster and when they cool down.

I have roasted a couple of batches since this first try and have even braved my first batch of Gesha.

YAY

I am much happier now. Here is a Panama Organic Duncan Estate bean roasted very close to a perfect city+.

Guatemala Acatenango Gesha

The Guatemala Acatenango Gesha also came out very nicely although it took a little longer to get there (around 4.5 minutes). In fact, the Gesha turned out so nicely I decided to roast a second batch. I can't wait to give it a try (probably not until Saturday - so I guess I can wait).

YUMTASTIC!

I have been less than thrilled with the roasting efforts of my cute little red popper (6-10minute roasts) So, after a quick trip to the local thrift store, and spending seven dollars...ta da!

the very 80's Popper Pumper! This little machine evenly roasted 3/4 cup of green beans in 4 min 30 sec!  It did smoke like a soggy campfire, but hey it worked! because the very next day.....ta da!

I made my first cup of coffee that actually tasted good from my own roasted beans! (i am keeping the cute popper to make yummy popcorn with!).  I'm out of green beans now, so time to decide where to get the next batch!

Ascared to burn the beans

That's right, I was ascared to burn the beans.
These weren't just any beans though. These were Panama Esmeralada Gesha coffee beans, 28.35 a pound for raw beans and only one pound per order from Sweet Maria's.

So I hesitated to try out my newly modified Air Crazy with my super expensive Gesha beans.

My modification, by the way, involved:

1. Opening up the Air Crazy popcorn popper
2. Locating the overheat sensor about half way up the metal chimney
3. Pulling off the clip on wires leads
4. Stripping the wires
5. Twisting the two wire ends together
6. Taping the twisted wires with heat proof electrical tape

I figured that the overheat sensor broke the circuit when a certain temperature was reached and some testing after the unit was reassembled proved this to be the case.

Anyway, I ordered some more reasonably priced coffee from Sweet Maria's and just got the package yesterday:

Inside was a 2 lbs bag of Panama Organic Duncan Estate

And 1 lb of Guatemala Acatenango Gesha (another very pricey cultivar)

Now, to the roast!
The Air Crazy without the overheating turn off sensor worked great! In about 4 minutes I had a darker roast than I got in 10 minutes previously:

My four minute plus roast is on the left an earlier (unmodified) six minute roast is on the right.
Here is a closer look at the new roast:

I usually wait close to twenty four hours before brewing coffee from my home roast but these beans are so cute I don't think I can wait - here comes the Aero Press!

COFFEE GOOD.

So I admit to putting Jer on the coffee roasting path to keep him busy and out of trouble.  If he ends up burning the house down I apologize in advance to his lovely wife...just as long as he don't burn the beans!

Of course, I couldn't let him have all the fun so I stopped at Utica Coffee Roasting Company on my way home last weekend and got me some green beans! 

They were super cool there. I got the Brazil green beans and some of their Brazil light roasted so that i could match it.  They were very encouraging and gave me great tips plus I got an awesome cup of Ethiopian to keep me awake for the remaining 4hrs of my drive!  Check them out if you're cruising through NYS!

The verdict is still out on my choice of roasting mechanisms.  But it looks cute and makes good popcorn when it's not roasting my morning joe!

I've made a couple batches and the last one even turned out pretty decent.  Here's my first two batches (top two), the pile in the middle is the Utica Coffee Roasters beans (pre-roasted) that i'm trying to match. As you can see, not so much with the matching. sad me.

Jer and I are both having fun and we both know how to buy really good coffee when we can't quite roast it right ourselves!  We're gonna keep on trying it until we do and if you want to read about how it's going just check back here!  (btw...doing this blog thing is harder than roasting your own coffee!) ~b

In the beginning, there was coffee.

My friend Becky sent me a link to Sweet Maria's and the world of home roasted coffee opened before me. Next, I get two pounds of green coffee beans from Sweet Maria's and an Air Crazy popcorn popper from Marshals and I'm in business.

My Air Crazy Popcorn Popper. 

My beans are way too blond! This is a six minute roast.

Much better. These were roasted for ten minutes! I think it is time for a slight electrical modification of my roaster/popper.

And a close up.






























Sooo, did I mention how awsome Sweet Maria's is? One thing I love about this site is their honesty - they sell products (roasters for example) but they don't hesitate to tell you the pros and cons. They also have a great selection of raw beans and close relationships with small farmers. They call it " Farm Gate coffee, where we can be assured of exactly what the farmer received. And in these cases they yield 40%-100%+ more than Fair Trade prices."