Coffee Roasting Thread - Taste Testing

You want to let air get to it for the first 18-24 hours. It's losing the carbon dioxide from the charr on the beans. From what I can see, that it not an espresso roast, and it looks like it is unevenly
roasted. Make sure that all of the coffee is roasted the same, let it all catch up. You did well!!! Getting something drinkable means you roasted successfully!!

That is yet another topic. You can do what you want, but only ever use the popper for coffee, strange flavor things can happen. Some would say if you used cashews that it would impart a nutty
flavor to the coffee, which would be a very good thing and could be replicated for other nuts as well. In Lousiana, chicory is a popular coffee additive. It is a root that is itself roasted carefully
before adding to the roasted coffee. It has a nutty, spicy flavor.

Additionally, the more coffee you roast, and this is important, the popper will "season" and it will ultimately help your coffee get a richer roast. What will happen is the inside of the roaster will start to coat brown, and will eventurally get dark brown. The oil deposits will positively effect your coffee flavor, not so much as it changes the flavor so much as it prevents any metallic flavors to make it over since the coating covers up the areas that would allow the metal to interact. In fact, that first several roasts are going to be effected in exactly that way. If you've got five pounds, I'd say do several seasoning runs. It will help you get the feel for roasting.

What you can do to season your roaster is to do a roast and just roast the pi** out of it until is smokes and just let her roll. That will season it, just make sure the top doesn't warp or melt. Also, grab to cover only by the front. If you grab it by the sides it will warp and eventually not fit. It will warp over time any way. See picture. That's five years worth of roasting, with too many roastings in the winter with a tin foil covering that got waaaaay too hot.

Your flavor is going to change over the next 24 hours. Comparing to already roasted coffee involves many variables. That espresso you are buying is a blend, and is precision roasted to spec, by a professional roaster. Give yourelf some time, and you'll get it dialed in. But you can get any flavor in any of that coffee if you get your roasts right, and then start blending. There is no difference in the process, just the machines, they do exactly the same thing. Let your roast season, then you wouldn't trade it for anything. And...you'll be able to tell old, stale coffee, instantly.
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I use a blue enamel roasting pot top from the kitchen, left outside to be cool, to pour the freshly roasted coffee in. The metal immediately puts the chill on the beans. The idea is to retard the heat as quickly as possible. This is for the simple reason that as long as the bean is hot, the roast continues.

The process of roasting, when the beans get brown, then dark brown, the oils inside start to boil out to the surface of the bean, thus exposing a more developed flavor profile. There are two sources of flavor in roasting coffee beans.

1. Origin character flavor - roasting for origin character requires a lighter roast where the physical character of the bean comes into play. Acidity, natural tannin profile, mineral, starch, enzyme profiles. These are all "bean flavor."

2. Roast character flavor - this is the juicy hamburger vs the well done, charred burger. The flavors in this profile are the baked sugars, caramel, the flavors that are produced primarily because of the heat applied to the bean. This happens at Full City and beyond, the sweet spot of bean character flavor is most likely somewhere between French Roast and Italian Roast, or "espresso" roast.

 

It looks like you've either got very dense beans or some heat issues. If you don't mind troubleshooting this on this thread, I've dealt with this many times.

Location of roasting. My guess is that you are out on a back patio out in the open?

I've roasted in so many settings I can't even count. That's how I learned about the differences. We've got to get your setting up in temp, and no breeze, to help your roaster roast the beans. You're not getting enough heat.

Are you roasting Costa Rica, Guatemalen, or Columbian beans? South American beans are typically denser and harder than other beans, hence, takes more heat to get the roast going. There is a fissure on a bean, down the middle. Mid-roast that fissure is going to be white, almost looks like piping on a Ferrari seat. I can't make out the fissure from your pictures. That fissure is going to get darker as your roast finishes. You can have a full roast and it be white, but you will not have oils on the surface because the oil is what colors the fissure. The coffee you roasted is certainly drinkable. What happens with long roasts like that is some of your flavor profile does not express since the beans are more dried yet not more roasted.

Questions: How long is it taking you to get chaff? How long does it take to chaff? How soon after chaff does first pop begin? How long is first pop lasting?

I assume you are aren't getting to the second fast pop.

First thing is a thermal containment around the roaster, and roast in your garage is the out of doors is less than 70 degrees.

Two ways to address the heat, one is tin foil, the other is a cardboard box. These are temporary measures until your popper starts to loosen up and run at higher temps.

You can do either of these, tin foil is the easiest. If no results, use both cardboard and tinfoil to get results. I know it is a schlepp, but the coffee is worth it.

Cut a piece of tin foil that when folded in two it covers the top part of the popper cover.

Start your roast normally, when chaff is completed, put the tin-foil on there, and leave it. You basically want the cover to be on there, with the tin foil like an extra coating. Feel the air coming out, how hot is it? It should be pretty intensely hot, hot enough so you can't hold your hand under it indefinitely, but not just way way hot.

Cardboard box: Take a large cardboard box, cut out one wall of it, and make like a hood around the popper. It does not have to fit that closely, just around it in some fashion. But like a metal tray underneath, don't leave it in contact with concrete, or set it on a piece of wood. Go through the regular routine for a roast. Check the heat with your hand coming out where the chaff comes out.

Between the box and tin foil, you should get a normal roast cycle.

Over time you should be able to lose the hood and tin foil. Or just roast with the tin foil.
The older the roaster gets, the hotter it's going to run, always happens. That's why running them a few times to start with helps get your roasts going.

In more extreme situations you can do an entire hood of tin-foil, triple folded, that covers the whole top of the popper. Be care with this as it has a tendency to melt the plastic hood, but can be avoided by alternating air-flow.

I'm sorry your roaster didn't give you the roast you were looking for the first time. The Poppery's usually do. This is why popper brand is so important. The majority of poppers are bottom convected rather than circle, and many just don't get that hot. The poppery will get hotter with time. That has been my experience.

 

Don,

Coffee connisuers almost without fail use the French Press. Never use a plexiglass, always
all glass. The licquer is thick, and leaves sludge in your cup. It's rich, it's thick, it's chocalatey,
and the coffee will kick your a**.

I most commonly use the chemex diffusion method with pre-moistened filters. I also
use a Porsche Design drip coffee maker with thermal carafe and a Krups Coffee/Cappucino,
but mostly only froth the milk for coffee. I do enjoy espresso shots at home but it takes
alot of work to get a good espresso shot on a home machine because the cook pressure
is just not there. What people don't realize is that espresso is "steam-cooked" coffee, not
just really really strong coffee.

Never use Bunn coffee makers because the water is so hot you do not get a range of extraction temps. Use a drip coffee maker and you can get full flavor. Use brown filters, not the white one's. White one's carry bleach residue and introduce insipid flavors.

If you want to get the really real coffee flavor, rough grind some coffee about two table spoon fulls, and put it in the bottom of a coffee cup. Run some pretty hot water in the faucet and fill the cup up, let it steep for 3-5 minutes, and stir. Drink. That is the full coffee flavor.

I only use artesian well water for coffee, incidentally.

 

Those are large, irregular beans. Those can be difficult to roast consistently, and probably why Sweet Marias was selling them as a blend because the batches would be skewed if they had just that bean. My advice is to only by a single varietal at a time, such as Ethiopian Yirga Cheff, and roast it. Blends are more difficult to do and is way more involved than just mixing beans.

Every bean has it's own particular roast characteristics, and in order to get the results you want, it's a good idea to treat each new variety as a completely new roasting approach, becaue ultimately it is. The African coffees are the easiest to roast because they come from a region where coffee grows wild hence the grow conditions produce a more natural bean that is not stressed by the environment. Exactly the opposite is the case with South American coffees, they are high grown, and highly distressed, hence, the beans are very dense and very hard, in most cases. Of course the stress produces flavor. This is exactly like wine grapes. The grow environment stresses the grapes to produce flavor.

Hombre it sounds like everything is going great right up to and through first pop. Then you aren't making it to second pop, and you are not discoloring your fissures. That is simply a matter of increased heat over time. It takes additional heat to get to second pop, and your popper is not making it yet. I'd start out with the tin-foil trick in double fold, but only large enought to cover the top of the roaster. That should produce the heat to get you to second pop. You can also try the cardboard box, try to make it as close to just larger than the roaster as you can get, and leave the front open. In either of this monitor your air temp closely, and make sure your popper isn't melting.

I'd stay away from blends with names like that, they are irregular specialty blends that people are going to use in dedicated home roasters. I have a home roaster but I still love the poppers, the poppers are the coolest because the chaff separation is better than any other type of roast, hence less off flavors. The issue is to get to second pop until you use the popper enough to where the element is going to loosen up and start running the temp up. I'd say about 15 roasts should start getting you to second pop with no assistance. However, running the tin foil or cardboard box is going to get it to the temp, so the element will condition to that over time in the same way the metal in the cylinder will season to the oils in the coffee and prevent metallic flavors, and produce a flavor seal in the lining.

Pardon the rambling. I've been roasting for 17 years and I've just about seen it all and done it all with these poppers. I've destroyed well over 20, and tried over ten different brands. But I can still learn a trick or two.

I have a Freshroast 500, they cost around $200. It is basically a hot air popper with a heat and fan control. You can do cool things with that, and it makes the roast more precise, but it still does not separate the chaff as well as the hot air popper, but the control is cool. I find myself turning down the fan, turning up the heat to quickly get the beans changing color, then heavy on the fan to go slowly into second crack. Other times I'll just crank the pi** out of it and go to oil in 5 minutes.

I'm sorry you are having this trouble. I've bought off brand poppers that went to second crack in less than 5 minutes. I've bought West Bends that would not reach second crack in 20, just like you. But it will loosen up in time. In the meantime try the tin-foil. Be experimental, just have a clear idea of what you want the machine to do, and work it from there.

 

Some more comments on your roast. That is a more than satisfactory roast Hombre, you could continue to roast to that and use that as a reference point for flavor. It's certainly not going to taste bad. The beans you are using are not going to give you a "varietal" flavor because it is a blend. If you roasted just about any varietal bean to that roast, the toast would be absolutely wonderful. Here are some that I've roasted to that roast, or in some cases, way less, using a cinamon roast.

I'll officially classify that as a "City" or "Pre-City" roast. Alot of places would classify that as a "Fully City". In my book, Full City will need to be a bit more shiny.

Beans to work well with the roast you are getting, that I have roasted.

Brazil Santos (alta maggiore) -
This is a really smooth South American coffee, and one of my all time favorites. I've roasted alot of Santos, that being the actual shipping port the coffee comes out of. There are many fincas (farrms) that grow these beans, from large to small. The Alta Maggiore is a larger farm and their processing is very good, and their beans are large and consistent.

Costa Rica Terrazu, Finca de Leon - The Terrazu is considered the "fancy" Costa Rican, but I don't see those beans as just way better than other CR beans. I will say that what I've roast of the Terrazu is very consistent in roast, but they are dense beans. The flavor is high acidity (Sweet Maria's makes a big deal out of the Central American acidity, I do not), light mouth feel, full bodied. This CR makes a coffee that just about anyone will be able to drink and enjoy. The "Finca de Leon" is a far more rare bean and this farm's output is smaller. They took a hit a few years ago and aren't producing right now, Sweet Maria's hasn't listed them in a while. There are several bean sellers that have some Leon left over, but it's very rare. I'm waiting for them to get their beans up to snuff, it was my favorite.

Guatemala Antigua - many versions of the this, they are mostly the same, some of the beans can be a bit small, and a bit odd shaped, like literally "gnarly" looking, but they work. Try and get the largest Guatemalen you can if you can get a visual inspection.

Ethiopia Yurgachef, Yirga Cheffe (several spellings), Mocha, Java. The Yurgachefs are just outstanding in flavor, and also in spicy, chocalate, sometime tangy notes, low acidity, and overally just excellent. These coffees are very easy to roast due to low bean density.

Suffice it to say, you are just fine with the roast you are getting. Just get some coffee that will be fine with that roast. If I were to suggest coffee, go with an Ethiopian Yirga Chef and you'll do fine, and the flavor will blow you away.

Remember, even though you aren't getting to second crack, you are some possible results at will be great with varietal beans. And also, you'll have some incredibly fresh coffee, can't go wrong.

PS. This information I'm passing on is strictly out of my own experiences with both hot air poppers and many varieties of beans. I could be accused of just having read a ton on Sweet Maria's website and copy and pasting here. That was true 15 years ago. but not now. I'll have to be wrong on my own terms. As for all these beans, it also might sound link an unqualified rave up of Sweet Maria's, again. But just to be clear, I've actually roasted and drank at least twice as much both green and roasted coffee from a wide variety of places as I have Sweet Maria's. I'm technically a commercial roaster so I have relationships with several large scale importers. Sweet Maria's imports more varieties than any other green bean reseller, and their buyer is an expert among experts for his knowledge and enthusiasm. It was largely through him that I got into popper roasting. But I was well into it by that time. My mother bought me a French Press at age 14. By the time I turned 30 I'd already destroyed several hot air roasters. I can't even county the number of people that I've converted to home roasting. Only a few, however, stick with it for the long haul. the true coffee snobs!

Thanks for all your kind remarks, and sharing in the wonderful enthusiasm for coffee! Being able to discuss like this is a great relief from the usual jaded skepticism and overly prurient talk on this forum
most of the time.

 

More roasts!! Perspiring minds want to jabber about roasting!!

I'm going to roast in a few hours, I'll post my adventures.

Really waiting on Hombre's next effort with the West Bend.

 

Excellent improvisation. You must have some Southern roots, because that's a perfect example of "rural engineering." You know, people always laugh at stuff like that, but hey, it works, and that is the point.

Man you have a completed roast on your hands there. The reason you aren't getting a second discrete pop is because the bean density causes the different beans to finish differently. They can safely reach a first pop, most all beans will chaff, roasted some that didn't, most all beans will reach first pop, although some will not. Second pop is bean relative because the higher temps are where the physical composition of the bean most readily figures into how it responds to heat.

But I will say this with certainty, you passed the second crack. Smoke is the indication. Smoke goes with a second crack, it just wan't audible, that's all.

In fact, you are going to have some stout tasting coffee on your hands there. The lesser roasts with the white fissure probably yielded a smoother coffee. But...coffees that are that dense, when roasted that far, and do not pop....usually have some serious licquers, just plain strong. I don't want you to think that this what roasting your own is going to produce, it's not. You are learning, and you are responding well to the various issues.

THe pyrex cover is going to produce above average residual thermal retention, lots of heat in that thing. I'm afraid that if you did that in an ongoing way it would start to melt your roaster. You need more air flow to get the chaff out, and just allow the roast to develop. As it stands, you are "cooking" a little bit instead of merely "drying" it. But I'm just rolling on the floor at how Southern your fix is, and I love it!!!

So, enjoy your espressor coffee, and if your wife doesn't like it just reassure her that future roasts will be smooth and chocalatey.

Get some Ethiopian or Brazilian beans. Or Indonesian Sulawesi, buttery smooth.

This is a great learning curve. Kudos on the crypto numeric sermantics with your beans as well.

If you could use the Pyrex propper at some angle to let more air get through, you'd be just fine. Watch for plastic pieces withering though. Go back to tin-foil on the hood if you can. Your sense of
adaption is spot on. I've never used a pyrex as a cover, what a great idea, you can see the beans clearly. You have made a solid "espresso/Spanish" roast there. Your good roasts will be far less than that, so now you know
what it takes to go past your ideal roast. Now start roasting to taste. Good idea to "cup" some coffee using crushed beans, or else get a glass French Press to get true flavor.

 

Today is a blend. Two very similar regional coffees.

Ethiopia Yirga Cheffe Baraka Buna
Ethiopia Yirga Cheffe Kela Kochos

These coffee farms are mere miles from one another, and the owners are most likely friends in the coffee trade.

The character of the beans is so similar I'll just treat them as a single review, and I am in fact reviewing the blended coffee.

Speaking of blends. The best blends are when you blend the green and roast together. As Hombre has illustrated with his "Monkey" blend, blended coffees often to do reach second crack in the roaster.

That was indeed the case with these beans, even though they were grown mere miles from one another. The key difference here is in the processing and drying. Even the length of curing. Let me explain. This might also shed some light on Hombre's absence of second pop.

Coffee beans are, in fact, not a bean at all. It is a seed of a fruit that looks like a large cherry. It has a rich, ambery fruit that has a sweet flavor, not as sweet as a plum, but a fruit nonetheless. Coffee fruit is harvested by hand when the fruit has a specific red color to it. Fruit can also be ground harvested where it has fallen to the ground but is not rotted. Rotten fruit on the ground, or even badly bruised fruit, is not acceptable for export grade coffee. The reject beans are still harvested, and are usually sold locally to the villagers. It makes a decidedly different flavor, and can make a very acrid licquer, so much so that the villagers have come to prefer these very strong types of coffee.

The good beans are soaked in water from anywhere to a couple of days to a couple of weeks in larger vats. This is where different coffee producers have widely differing methods, and the methods are equivalent to whiskey maker's secret recipe (home distillation, another thread, but coming up). The specifics or bean processing is what really distinguishes coffee producers, even producers from the same region. When the beans are sumberged in water, the sugar in the fruit mix with natural yeast in the air and it does produce a mild ferment that produces a low level alcohol that essentially marinates the beans. Again, the length and strength of this marination is a key to flavor. Many producers will change out the water daily for the soaking of the bean, hence the ferment never does set up to any extent. Others insist on not changing the water and look for a specific color of the fruit's outer color to determine the conclusion of the soak.

At this point, the meat is ready to fall off the bean, so they run therm through a series of rollers to remove the meat. The meat is thrown away or composted. Some growers who get a fresh meat from the fruit use it for various things. There is even a brandy that is distilled from a mash of the coffee fruit. Haven't tried it.

After the beans are "cleaned" they are set out on concrete slabs to dry. The amount of cleaning, and the machinery used to clean the beans, is highly varied, and again, part of the producer's "signature." Likewise so is the drying habits. Some coffee is turned every 8 hours, and covered up at night. Other coffee is never turned and left out 24/7. Some is sprayed with water and re-dried. It's all in their process.

Well...no matter what they do, there is still a thin layer of fruit left on the seed/bean. This is the chaff the comes off in roasting. Commercial roasters usually just burn it right up, or ventilate it very litte, and a small amount of chaff makes it out. But it does get cycled into the flavor of the coffee. Many old time roasters insist on that chaff beaning roasting right in because they argue it's part of the bean.

The beauty of the humble hot air popper is that it offers the best possible separation of the chaff from the bean, better than even expensive home roasters. Why? Because the beans are roasted "out in the open" the chaff just shoots right out, and it never figures into the flavor of the coffee. I believe it's beter that way, because the flavor comes from the seed, not the fruit or some badly burned version of it anyway. Hence, one strong argument for the superiority of the hot air popper and the flavor result. That's why many buyers and even farmers test roast on hot-air poppers.

You wouldn't think it would be this subtle and detailed, it's just a popcorn popper. Well, to get the best flavor, you have to undergo all this detail. I only drink one cup per day, but I want that cup to be the best possible cup I can get given the circumstances. If all I have it Folger's instant, then I want to do what is necessary to make the best cup of Folger's instant.

This is just my "coffee ethos" that my wife is somewhat reluctantly embraced. She is ethnic Italian, loves coffee a great deal, but "that nasty chaff is getting on my Prada," well, you have to adjust when necessary.

Hombre, you are plowing through Roasting 101 like a champ. Better and better coffee is right around the corner, and your making incredibly fresh at any rate.

Keep posting, keep roasting.

 

A wife that loves coffee is such an advantage. They are more tolerant of the elaborate projects. When I purchased my 20lb drum roaster, she was excited about it, and even helped with my first bag. That first 133 lb bag of coffee is an exciting time, it's a like a graduation to the big leagues. It's also a big step up in roasting. I realized that everything I learned roasting on popcorn poppers was not only relevant but on the line.

Roasting 20 pounds of coffee is a seething mass of smoke, oil, and the richest coffee smell you could possibly imagine. Spread out over the floor to cool on a large piece of galvanized sheet metal, it was just incredible. That was a peak coffee experience for me. Consistency of roast, and not burning it, are the two main considerations for roasting large amounts.

I'd look at some pieces of square wood cut into triangles to sort of prop the pyrex on. Getting all that to stay perched is the the challenge though. You could just make some tin foil into a "u" shaped collar that was fitted around the edges of the pyrex with the front ventilation part left open, providing the neceesary lift for air to escape. The wieght of the pyrex and heat of roasting would probably cause that to collapse a litlte under heat. Maybe you could wrap the tinfoil around the wood, and just put to small places with wood at the front part.

This is a very technically precise, extremely detailed measured, tin-foil padding for the popper cover. I've done somthing very similar, but not for a pyrex top. I've had popper covers that were so melted from repeated use that they were warped, the picture above is not the cover in question, just another cover used over the years. So I'd jess up litte form fitting tin-foil piece to fit around the edge to shore up the gap.

Might try it if you want. I'm sure there are plenty of more well done options to fix something like this.
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Great job!! That's the zone you want to be in. I roast Yirga Cheff less shiny than that, but just about exactly that if that's the flash.. In fact, I'm sitting here looking at Kela Koona at this very moment and it's just about exactly that roast. Pat yourself on the back!

Now it's just a matter of what makes you happy with the taste. What did the above batch taste like? The whole routine will get more efficient, especially with a good preheat,
and you'll be turning over several batches and impressing people far and near with your roasts.

Also, how much preheat are you doing? Are you preheating the pyrex as well? I would suggest preheating both for around 3 minutes.

Must have been 1) blend variations and 2) bean density, and 3) bean age that figured into the almost unresponsive monkey thing. There was a reason why those beans were put in that blend, good reasons as well as "these beans have been here for a year."

I know that the Ethiopian beans are not that old, we're still drinking last years harvest, this years will be coming in soon, which is exciting because new farms will be joining those cooperatives. I'm going to be looking for the small cooperative batches on Sweet Marias.

How do the commercial guys get uniformity. The answer is, they don't really. But how they bend the beans to their will is a very large commercial drum roast made out of cast iron and gas fired that runs at high temperatures so the beans are going to get roasted by brute force. Hot air poppers sort've gently coaxes them along, which when combined with the excellent chaff removal is still an excellent roast.

Here's the harsh (pun intended) reality of commercially available coffee. From Starbucks to Folgers to Gevalia. They roast the pi** out of the beans. Starbcuks default roast, across the board, is a Full City, that's a very dark roast. The reason the lighter roasts always say "light" or "medium" is becuase these are the exception rather than the rule. If it makes no roast designation, such as flavored coffees, it's always a dark roast. Why is this? Simple, the more roasted a coffee is, the less bean origin flavor there is to be lost through oxidation. Kind of like this, a really burnt steak is going to reheat a few days later much better than a medium rare because the medium rare is going to show it's deterioration. Beans will show loss of flavor.

Always remember this too. Unlike whiskey or wines, smell is flavor. That wonderful, incredible smell of a bag of coffee is the literal flavor you will taste. The more intense the small at any given point of aging out, the less flavor you are going to be drinking. That's why coffee reaches an odor maximum then it's all downhill from there. Coffee doesn't "smell" aged out, it just doesn't have flavor, or the flavor is somewhat stale.

One down side of starting to roast your own is you will instantly be able to tell how fresh any coffee is, and practically zero coffee is going to be as fresh as what you are drinking coming of your roaster. Most coffee as the stores are already 2.5 weeks to a month old when you get them, no matter what freshness claims they make. It is almost impossible to get fresh roasted coffee only a few days old to a customer.

Any time I sell coffee I include a roast tag that shows exact time of roast, temperature of roast, and the resulting roast. I will not sell a coffee that is over one week out of roast, just not going to happen. I do not have an ongoing coffee business at the moment, but I do specialty roasts for local shops when they need a precise roast of expensive beans. And I have have roasted group buys. I have too many other business interests right now.

Again, great job on your roast. You've got the routine down. Now is the time to start dialing in the exact roast that you like to make your coffee out of, select how you like to make it, and get your bliss groove on with coffee.