guess i should just bring the Keurig to JC this year...best coffee ever...and i'll be there
EARLIER this year...the coffee will be on!

emflys wrote:Thanks Les. Cool!

Anyone try one of these - a bbq grill rotisserie roaster? I have a good grill with good heat control and great rotisserie. Half pound would be great as my wife doesn't drink coffee.

http://www.coffeeroastersclub.com/coffee-roaster-drums-for-bbq-grills/25-mini-me-8-oz-coffee-roaster-drum-for-bbq.html

This is what I want for my next roaster but the 1 lb. size. I wore out my electric and have been to lazy to get another yet. Also I found a couple local places that roast daily so its not as important as it was a few years back.

m7flyer wrote:

emflys wrote:I found a couple local places that roast daily so its not as important as it was a few years back.

That is true. I started to do it because I went to college in a place that had both kinds of beer- Bud *and* Bud Lite, and the coffee was Folgers and it was in a red can at Safeway, and I could buy green beans at the foo foo coffee house for 2 bucks a pound because they thought it was odd a guy would buy green coffee.

I just got cranky enough to be a little particular after a while, especially when it's so easy. Just another ritual in the routine, like getting eggs or milk out of the barn in the morning.

Coffees on

This has been a great thread and I learned a lot. I wonder however how many more hobbies I could stretch my life around.

Recently I bought a 2.5 pound bag of Guatemala beans at Costco. Did I mention that before? It was by far the best coffee I've ever tasted. I like nice stuff and I like good stuff, but I tried making home brew beer in my misspent youth. I know what can happen with an unchecked imagination. Maybe there are some things I just don't need to know. Like how to grow coffee in the back yard for fun and profit. I have gotten carried away by a variety of things over these long years. Today I think I'll just continue to use electric drip and store bought beans. I'll grind them at the store. There is less mess that way. When camping I use something like Zane's pee cup first thing in the morning.

The Ersatz Traegergrill though has been a great investment. You can't get any better than that for cooking outdoors. But then that's another thread.

Ok, well I've lost my roasting virginity. I've got several blends and individual beans. This is an Ethiopian from Sweet Maria's. I did it outside and it's in the hi 40's so i think it prolonged the roast a bit. Solid 3.5min till 1st crack really kicked in, and it was 12min to second crack started (actually few cracks around 11:30). Stopped there.

Beans look nice, not really oily on the surface at all, so I think I got Full City to Full City +. I think.

Resting now. Will grind and taste in the AM.

So excited. My wife thinks I'm crazy.

Emmet
The beans won't get oily right away. The freshly roasted beans will be dry and the oils leach out over time. It takes a few days to get oily, you are just not used to fresh coffee yet. Also the flavors get better after 12 to 24 hours . IMHO peak flavors for espresso is 2-4 days.
Dave

You may or may not be able to view this... this is a startup project that work with that allows you to store media and create video presentations from it. Player is a little wacky right now, and it doesn't support Internet Explorer, in fact we disallow it. >:) Flash required at this time.

http://beta.tumblecloud.com/cloudpage/?cloud=456

Here is the "stack" of media I used to build it:

http://beta.tumblecloud.com/stack/?stack_id=116887

Very cool Zane!

emflys wrote:12min to second crack started

Beans look nice, not really oily on the surface at all, so I think I got Full City to Full City +. I think.

If you get oily beans during the roast, unless you have really agitated them, there might be charred beans mixed in. I usually stop around 15 seconds into the 2nd crack in my particular roaster (about 8 mins), or when smoke is just barely visible and the color looks right. They continue to cook and a few beans are slightly oily by the time they cool if I let the roaster fan cool them off, or fully oily if I pour them into a bowl to cool (the insides get cooked completely this way). The oily but not charred zone makes for very sweet flavored coffee (carmelized throughout) with no sugar added. I prefer it this way, but a lot of people like it a bit greener.

I like them several hours after they are done. After 4 days or so, they start to bland out the way my other half likes them.

I think I'll get my gun and stop by Starbucks for a cup

I thought y'all might get a laugh about this story.

At our crayon biz we have the typical beat to crap coffee pot that looks like it has been to hell and back. Brew what ever coffee is on sale.

One day back in the early 2000s I go in and pour a cup and go out to make sure the guys are on task. I mention the coffee taste different, and better than usual. I ask whats up? Did you change brands? No just the same Safeway brand came back the answer. It is the 1st pot of the day and everybody is drinking it.

We empty the pot and the last guy makes a new pot. Now this coffee maker was an old one I had when the kids were little. The kids had stuffed toys through the water slats. I couldn't get them out so I broke the slats out to make a bigger opening.

At Amark Inc. [crayon biz] we had a little mouse problem. Guess what, the flap over the water fill was open and a mouse must of thought it was a hot tub. He drown.

When the guy made the next pot you know what came floating to the top as he filled the reservoir.

We cleaned the coffee maker real good and still use it today, and the coffee is what you would expect from a 20 year old cheap coffee maker. How the heck that thing still works is a miracle.

Good day

The coffee was great! I can see a few beans have a speckling of oil. The taste seemed balanced and not over roasted at all. I had probably stopped it about the same Les - 15sec into second crack. I cooled outside in a wire colander - probably 50f outside.

I usually drink heavily roasted coffee (Peets Italian or similar or French) and its clear I am tasting more of the roast than the bean.

The flavor seemed to actually develop quite a bit in the cup as it sat after brewing. I brought the rest to work with my grinder and am goin to try another cup! Pretty stoked.

Congratulations Em, it looks like a great success for your first attempt; better than mine was an actual roaster! Now the fun begins trying different roasts, grinds, beans, etc. This is one of those hobbies where you get quality and low cost without much of a time investment beyond the initial learning curve.

I buy beans for around $7 per pound shipped which lasts 3 weeks if I drink 15 cups a week. So that works out to 16 cents per cup. Rob's mouse flavored brew might be cheaper? And I'm sure it tastes great too.

OregonMaule wrote:I thought y'all might get a laugh about this story.

I mention the coffee taste different, and better than usual. I ask whats up? Did you change brands? No just the same Safeway brand came back the answer. <snip>

Guess what, the flap over the water fill was open and a mouse must of thought it was a hot tub. He drown.


Good day

So let me get this straight. What is the proper proportion of mouse to coffee grounds? Would two mice be better than one mouse? Anything worth doing is worth over doing.....

I was driving along one day on the haul road eating out of one of those long skinny tubes of shelled sunflower seeds? You know, pouring them in my mouth right out of the bag. Hehhehhehhehheh. So anyway, there's something really chewy in this particular mouthful I got and I'm trying to figure out what's up. Yup. A hind quarter of mouse. Well salted and aged. Yummy.

Rob - that's slightly disturbing and pretty hilarious.

Ok, so I just brewed up the last of the Ethiopian 24hrs after the roast. Wow. The flavor definitely develops. My mother in law had a taste and she's was wowed. You guys really weren't kidding. I've always considered myself a "coffee snob" but I don't think I've ever had truly fresh roasted coffee. The body and complexity is just amazing, especially just before and into the finish.

I got two espresso blends, and roasted one to maybe light Vienna (stopped just as second crack started to get going) and the other to probably to Vienna (well into second crack). I'm guessing at the roast level, but they are definitely lighter in color than French beans that I'm used to.

Stoke to try them.

You guys tried an Aeropress?

Yes, I use an Aeropress every day. It works great and a single filter lasts a long tine, if you clean it right away. I'm enjoying a freshly pressed cup of Honduran San Marcos right now, in fact. I don't buy-in to the claims they put on their packaging but it does a good job for up to about 4 cups, for more than that, I use a french press. The FP imparts a different, stronger taste the AP is clean and crisp. Hard to loose either way.

Why did not know about home roasting sooner?! I'm kind of addicted, but my Air Crazy popper is already having issues. It seems that it must have a thermostat that is kicking off the heating element (or one of them?) before the roast can get to second crack. It eventually does, but it takes sometimes 14 minutes or so.

One of the best discoveries for me has been the AeroPress. What a great little device for the individual drinker. Especially if you have on-demand hot water. You can make a seriously good cup of Americano. And you have the flexibility of an espresso or espresso drink. Not real practical for a drinking family, but since my wife doesn't drink coffee, it works great for me. And easy to clean. And it's great for traveling.

I'm just trying my second coffee order, looking at some other bean origins.

Sweetmarias.com is awesome. Great info, sometimes not that easy to find, but there.

I am really looking at how to get into roasting more coffee in a single batch. Using the Aeropress, I can only get probably 5-6 cups of coffee. I'd like to be able to roast a weeks worth or more. Sometimes I have company on a weekend and would like to be able to roast a bunch.

I might try a BBQ drum roaster, as I have a pretty nice BBQ that also has a ceramic rotisserie heating element - it should heat evenly, but its not a real hot running bbq, so not sure.

Fluidized air roaster just seam to make the most sense to me. Been thinking about some sort of "homebuilt" option. I made a cup of my coffee for a Mech Engineer that works for me (big coffee drinker) and he's all jazzed about designing an air roaster to sell as kits that can roast up to a pound. Seems to be lots of designs out there that don't seem to be tremendously complicated. We'll see.

For sure, I am so hooked that I just can't bring myself to go buy roasted coffee right now.

See what you guys did?!

emflys wrote:Been thinking about some sort of "homebuilt" option.

I did that a bit too. But honestly, the units for sale now are just fine. My pop corn makers rarely lasted more than a few to several months, and I did that for a decade or so before coughing up a hundred bucks for a purpose-built unit. My air coffee roaster has worked once a week for several years solid with no sign of giving up. The companies that make them come and go; it must not be a profitable segment. It needs more marketing.

People come over for my better half's famous cooking, but they stay a bit longer for the coffee.

Les - you use the SR500? How much can your practically roast?