Coffee Roasters

[Straight Arrow]

Rick,
I'm sorry about your disaster. First of all I am unfamiliar with the Toastmaster popper. Does it have side hot air vents in the roasting chamber? If the hot air comes from the bottom center of the chamber that's a problem. How many watts is it? if it's much more than 1200 you will be roasting too hot. One more thing. 2/3 cup of green beans is too much. The beans may not be able to circulate properly within the roasting chamber producing an uneven roast. Stick with 1/2 cup or less. As for the chaff--yeah it's a mess!

 

[bandg]

Thanks to the advice here I have had a pretty good roasting experience. Purchased a side vent popper at Target and some beans from CCM. Did my 1st roast inside and worked pretty well, but now do this outside and place a box to catch the chaff. A 1/4 cup seems to work well and I stop and stir quite frequently. I am starting to get a better feel for when the coffee is done. Thanks for the help in getting me started guys. Some things are neat to try and do yourself. Cordially, Bradley Also, gives me something to do while waiting for my brush and razor.

 

[rikrdo]

OK.
I'm gonna go old school on this.
I was very upset with my experience this morning so I decided to take the beans to an old fry pan.
ReRoasted this 1st batch....since 1/2 of them werent even to 1st crack....and then did 1 full cup of green beans.
I heated the pan before putting the beans in and then left the burner on about 3/4 high for the roast.
At around 3 minutes I got 1st crack and at 6 minutes the beans looked like a FullCity or FC+ so I took em off.
Coooled down and containerized for consumption tomorrow.
I am actually enjoying an Aeropressed cup of the 1st batch right now. Pretty tasty but not great. We'll see how it is tomorrow.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Rick,
Keep trying. Don't give up! Like shaving, there's a learning curve. Let us know how the frypan batch turned out. We are crazy aren't we? All these funny little hobbies we develop. My best friend's wife calls me eccentric. I told her, "Thanks for the compliment".

 

[netsurfr]

www.sweetmarias.com is also my vendor of choice for green coffee beans. My coffee roaster is swiss (can't remember the name at the moment) but it takes about 20 minutes and uses a rotary drum. If anyone is interested, I will go check the manufacturer.

 

[Woknblues]

Watch out for CAD (Coffee Acquisition Disorder) which is also a part of MAD.

About that animal that the coffee beans passes through. It's a cat called a civet, which is found in the Philippines and perhaps other places. The cat doesn't digest them, but it does improve the flavor of the roasted bean. I don't know if they just follow the civets around the jungle, train the to use a litter box, or what to collect the beans after the civet swallowed them. [/QUOT
Edit: OOps... I thought you meant coffee from Vietnam/ So these poor little critters are eating crappy coffee, then crapping coffee, and then some poor sole is drinking crappy coffee that costs $300.00 a pound!
Cheers, DJ.

FWIW, I live in the Philippines. I can get this coffee for about $80 dollars a pound (significantly less than pricing I see online and quoted elsewhere). I was going to try a 150 grams just to see what the hoo-haa is all about, but they recommend a french press, and since I haven't one, I wont waste 20 bucks on two small pots of coffee. I am shocked at the almost 300% markup though. I am thinking about getting into the civet business though.

 

[BroJohn]

WellWellWell....
Tried my hand at roasting this morning.
I must say it was, a disaster.
Bought a brand new Toastmaster hot air popper and my green beans arrived yesterday.
Today I loaded up the popper with 2/3 cup of beans and went to town.
I tried the 45 sec. on / 15 sec. off technique.
After a cuppa minutes, smoke started filling up the house ( yes, I had the hood on)....chaff was flying everywhere and my coffee....my coffee was roasted at about 5 different levels.
Oh yeah.....now my popper wont turn on. I think I killed it.

Help please.

Rikrdo --

My first go around was a memorable disaster, just like yours... <chuckle>
I use a Toastmaster and it works fine. Like I said, use 1/2cup of green beans and no more. I'm surprised that you guys are roasting in the house, and it occurs to me that I never mentioned that I roast outside on the patio. Honestly, I never thought to mention it. So here goes --Due to the smoke and flying chaf that roasting in a popcorn popper generates, roast outside!

Rikrdo, 2/3rds of a cup is too much in that roaster. Remove the top with the chute and set it aside, IOW, don't use it. For the first two cycles, add beans, then 45 sec on, and 15 sec off. Don't fudge on this. Stir frequently when the roaster is on, once halfway thru the rest period. Then roast 30sec on, 30 sec off. Stirring as above. Depending on the beans, the total time will be between 6.5 and 8 minutes or so. Dump immediately into a hand held collinder and stir for about 3 minutes until cool enough that you can lightly hold a small handful without burning yourself. Dump into an open container, cover when cool (eg, roomtemp) and allow the beans to 'outgas' for 12-24 hrs. They're then ready.

Learning to roast coffee is like learning to shave with a DE, you make mistakes at first, then get comfortable with it.

Hope this Helps.

-- John Gehman

 

[rikrdo]

Well.
Its official.
My popper is DEAD.
My batch from the fry pan came out just fine.
The smoke was dispatched easily by the hood over the oven.
Because I kept a lid on the pan, all of the chaff stayed in the pan until I dumped out the beans.
And I did a full cup of beans at 1 time.
My learning curve is going to be with the skillet.
No more popper for me.

 

[BroJohn]

Well.
Its official.
My popper is DEAD.

My batch from the fry pan came out just fine.
The smoke was dispatched easily by the hood over the oven.
Because I kept a lid on the pan, all of the chaff stayed in the pan until I dumped out the beans.
And I did a full cup of beans at 1 time.
My learning curve is going to be with the skillet.

No more popper for me.

View attachment 4914

Good show, Rick!

-- John Gehman

 

[Straight Arrow]

Rick,

Keep us informed with details about the frypan roasts. I may be trying it but I'll let you do the testing first!

 

[rikrdo]

Had some more of my "1st" attempt today.
Gotta say it is really pretty good.
I am going to experiment this week with my technique and update periodically.
This is fun !!

 

[Straight Arrow]

I use a similar 1200watt popper, and early on discovered that if I turned it on and let it go 'until done' it would do a very poor job. I ruined a fair amount of coffee until I learned to slow down the roasting process.

I turn it on, 45sec, off 15sec for the first two minutes. Then on 30sec, off 30 sec. I stir frequently. A half-cup batch of green beans takes 7 to 8 minutes to city roast, (past first crack and not to second) depending on bean type. The results are much more satisfactory. I don't roast very dark; the lighter roast that results is much more flavorful. Of course everyone's milage varies.

I found that if I was just pouring the heat to the beans, they could turn to 'over-done' very rapidly. So I adopted the on/off routine above.

-- John Gehman

I tried John's on-again/off-again method with my West Bend popper and am right now enjoying the best cup of coffee I've had since I started roasting my own. Thanks John!

 

[bbqncigars]

I followed the coffeegeeks thread on WB Poppery mods and did a separate control of both fan and heat. The fan part takes a variac, whilst the heat control takes a tiny bit more. I haven't modded my Popperys to the extent that some people have, but they still roast over a cup of green beans at a time.



Wayne

 

[Straight Arrow]

Excellent Wayne! I don't trust myself fooling around with appliance modifications. Scared I'll go up in flames!!! Good coffee...good shaving...what a good morning!