The Two Week Evaluation

I told you my attention span doesn't last very long and as I start to think about new greatest passions, including wine tasting/cellaring, photography, weight lifting and/or triathlons...I think at this point it is time to take a step back and look at what I have learned about home roasting and weigh it against quality, cost, time etc.

Let me start with what I have learned
When I started with the idea of roasting coffee at home, I really was not able to find an objective resource to tell me that roasting coffee at home was easier, or higher quality or cost less than going down to Starbucks and paying $10-$15 per pound of beans. Sure, there were books and websites telling me this, but they all wanted to sell me something. It reminded me of the time I thought brewing my own beer was the greatest thing in the world based on the information I read and was told by books, websites and the local home brew store. I went out and purchased hundreds of dollars worth of kits, large pots, strainers, carboys, empty bottles, etc. I spent the next two months cleaning, brewing, racking, watching, waiting and taking copious notes only to be extremely disappointed when I wound up with a sweet, semi-carbonated swill with an alcohol content less than the current norm in the state of Utah.

Unlike brewing beer, I have found roasting coffee to be extremely easy and fun. I was literally able to start a batch of beans within 30 minutes or so of receiving my package. And probably could have started sooner if I hadn't wanted to make it more complicated.

I also like the immediate gratification of roasting beans compared to brewing beer. I know what I have created by the following morning and can immediately make changes to the process if I want to. Brewing beer takes months to finally uncover what you have made and by that time I had become board of the process and had moved on.

Time
I have found that I can roast about 2/3 pound of beans in 2 separate roasts in about 30+ minutes. This is enough coffee to last me about 5 days (I brew 1, 6 cup pot per day at an average of 7.5 grams of grounds per cup of water).

This is a difficult variable to measure. Currently it is not difficult at all to find 30 minutes 1-2 times per week because the process is new and exciting. I'm still watching the entire roast process to document the evolution of the beans from green to full city roast and beyond. So it is actually entertainment at this point, but I'm sure it will eventually become somewhat of a chore; however, once I have perfected the roast cycle for a varietal of beans, the process will not demand my full attention during that period of time.

Cost
My initial investment was $285.99 for the iRoast 2, a digital scale, a digital thermometer and 4 pounds of green beans. I think that I will start buying beans in 5 pound bags and choose 2-3 different varietals to have on hand. If I buy beans in 5 pound bags, the average cost per pound will be around $6.37 after shipping costs. This represents a $6.45 savings compared to the average cost of $12.82 ($12.00 plus tax) for a pound of Starbucks. Using these numbers and considering that we drink about a pound of coffee per week, I will recoup my initial investment after 45 weeks. Now, there is cheaper coffee out there (but I don't like it as much) and the iRoast may or may not last 45 weeks of consistent use.

Quality
This is the big question, and one that I have not fully uncovered. Home roasting does prove to be extremely fresh, but so far I have not nailed consistency. I typically am a very programmed individual. I like my routine to be fairly similar from day to day and I like my coffee dark and strong. But it has been refreshing to wake up to a new flavor everyday: from the bright acidic floral and semi-sweet chocolate of Ethiopia to the smokey thin bodied cup of Kenya that I had this morning (I haven't yet posted my notes). I'm sure that consistency will come when I begin to focus on one particular bean instead of a different one each roast. I think that it is certainly possible to create a consistent cup of coffee that rivals or beats anything you can purchase at Starbucks or even your local roaster, but if consistency is your thing home roasting may not be for you.

Conclusion
For anyone out there who wants to know if you can roast your own beans, the answer is yes. Hopefully I have provided enough information to help you weigh the cost/benefit ratio and make the decision to dive in or stay out. There is nothing worse than spending a lot of money and then never using the equipment or being unhappy with the results.

For me, I will continue to roast coffee and will continue to update the blog with new informtion that I learn and will hopefully perfect my process so that I can wake up to a consistent cup every morning.

My First Visit to Ethiopia

Today's adventure took me to Africa. I roasted about 2/3 pound of Ethiopia Organic Idido Misty Valley beans in 2 separate batches.

Green Bean Notes
These beans are far more yellow than any of the other beans, they are also smaller than most of the beans that I purchase.

Weight
Batch 1 150g start weight/128g finish weight
Batch 2 150g start weight/122g finish weight

Roasting Profile
Both batches followed this profile:
325 degrees for 2 minutes
400 degrees for 3 minutes
460 degrees to finish

Roasting Notes
While I am extremely happy with most of the roasts so far, I am still in search of the perfect roast. I have never been overly excited about real acidic coffee, but the last batches have changed my opinion, and I'm trying to balance the brightness of the acid with the full body of a darker roast.

The first roast I started the cool down cycle at 5:30 minutes for a total batch time of 9:30. The beans did not look nearly as dark as any of the other roasts taken to this amount of time. The weight is also high compared to other batches, indicating that for the time roasted, the beans were not as far along. I ate one of the beans and it was more solid and firm than other beans directly after the roast, it had that bright acidic flavor to it.

As I was cleaning the iRoast, I noticed a tremendous amount of chaff in the collector. I wasn't sure if I forgot to clean it after the last roast or if it was a result of this particular bean. After the second roast, I realized that high chaff was a characteristic of this bean. Perhaps this is because the beans are smaller?? I will have to look for this in the future when I Roast small beans.

I started the cool down cycle on the second roast at 6:10 minutes at the first sign of oil on the beans. I noticed that these beans had a much more audible crack than any of the other beans roasted before.

Aesthetically speaking this second batch is the nicest roast yet. The beans are just shiny but not too oily that they appear wet. They have a very nice dark chocolate color.

Tasting Notes
I decided to blend the two roasts (pictured)because I think the first roast would be too acidic. The roasted beans have a very sweet smell, almost like licorice. The coffee is extremely unique, but probably not my favorite. The cup is very acidic and has a bright floral flavor upfront. The finish has a muted sweet flavor that remind me of semi sweet chocolate and cherries.

The Christmas Roast

On Christmas Eve, I roasted about 2/3 pound of Nicaragua Matagalpa Pacamara Peaberry in 2 separate roasts. I noticed a very inconsistent size to the green beans before I roasted and this carried over to the roasted beans. In addition, these beans became much larger than other beans that I have roasted leading to a more inconsistent roast because the chamber became too full and the beans were not able to circulate properly.

My roast profile was:
325 degrees for 2 minutes
400 degrees for 3 minutes
460 degrees for 3 minutes

My finish time (after 4 minute cool down) was 9:20 for roast 1 and 9:10 for roast 2. I started with 150g for roast 1 and 140g for roast 2. The finish weight was 125g for roast 1 and 116g for roast 2.

I gave away half of the roast as a present, and brewed the other half on Christmas day. It made about 20 cups. While I had a few too many glasses of wine (perhaps my next hobby to blog about) to give an accurate description of the subtle nuances of the cup, it was well received by several food snobs...it runs in the family.

2 Versions of Guatemala

While I keep a scientific log of each batch that I roast, I've decided to skip the painstaking details and only list the highlights and individual lessons. On the December 22 I roasted 2 batches of Guatemala Antigua - Finca Retana Yellow Bourbon (click for a link to the detailed description on Sweet Maria's site).

Here are the highlights from the first roast:

Weight
150 g start/115 g final

Roasting Profile:
325 degrees for 3 minutes
400 degrees for 2:30 minutes
460 degrees for 5 minutes (I knew I wouldn't take the roast this long, but wanted enough time to ensure that I could manually cool the beans when I had the desired roast.)

Roast Notes:
The iRoast took about 2 1/2 minutes to get to stage one temp, but kept rising and eventually surpassed 325 actually getting to almost 360 degrees by the end of the first 3 minutes and continued to be a little hotter than the profile I outlined above. First crack started around 4 minutes. I saw external smoke at about 5:30. I manually started the cool down at 6:30, the beans were dark and exceptionally oily. By the time the cool down was complete, I felt like the beans still looked too dark.

Tasting Notes:
I waited about 18 hours to brew the first pot. The coffee was not as acidic as I expected, but had a very nice aroma. A bold cup with a faintly sweet finish.

Guatemala Antigua - Finca Retana Yellow Bourbon take 2. Still in search of a lighter roast, this time I commit myself to stopping the roast before the beans are dark and show signs of oil. I remind myself that the beans will continue to roast a little once the cool down cycle has begun.

Weight
150 g start/123 g final

Roasting Profile:
325 degrees for 3 minutes
400 degrees for 2:30 minutes
460 degrees for 5 minutes (I knew I wouldn't take the roast this long, but wanted enough time to ensure that I could manually cool the beans when I had the desired roast.)

Roast Notes:
I was showing the my new toy to a friend, so did not take temperature or notes of the roasting process, but started the cool down cycle at about 5 minutes. The beans had moved to a rich brown color, but still much lighter than the previous batch. There were no external signs of oil on the beans.

Tasting Notes:
I waited about 12 hours to brew the first pot. Wow! Home roasted coffee is something to experience. It is coffee on steroids, the flavor just erupts in your mouth and doesn't die down. The coffee had an incredible bright and sharp acidic start. Followed by subtle fruit/pear flavors. Probably the best roast so far.

The First Roast, Second Take

This thing is new. There's no way I'm stopping at one batch. The owners manual of the iRoast says you must wait a minimum of 2 hours in between batches, but the supplemental instructions that came from Sweet Maria's said you must wait at least 20 minutes. 20 minutes it is.

I certainly wanted to create a lighter batch, but was also concerned about roast time. It seems like what I have read indicates I should be roasting in more like 8-10 minutes, not 6. So this time around I decided to use the custom profiles setting on the i-Roast to see if I could slow things down a bit.

I finished off the 1/2 pound sampler of the Mexico Organic Nayarit Terruno, but because I used 130 grams the first time, there was only 98 grams left. I have read that with fewer beans, the roast will move faster. No problem, I will take that into account in my custom settings, which are:

350 degrees for 3 minutes
400 degrees for 3 minutes
460 degrees for 4:30 minutes

I also decided that the smoke was not nearly as big of an issue that everyone made it out to be, so I did away with my make-shift exhaust system.

Here were my results:

1:00 267 degrees - straw color
1:30 312 degrees - tan color
2:00 340 degrees - consistent light brown
2:30 360 degrees - I begin to notice loose chaffs floating in the chamber
3:00 380 degrees - the beans are increasing in size and turning to a brown color 3:28 398 degrees - I notice the first audible cracks
4:00 420 degrees
4:30 437 degrees
5:00 450 degrees - based on my last batch experience and the look of the current beans, I hit the cool down button. I want to have something to drink the following morning.
5:30 318 degrees
6:00 244 degrees
6:30 196 degrees
7:00 167 degrees
7:00+ 3 smoke alarms go off in my house simultaneously. I look up and notice a very visible cloud of smoke. I guess the home-made exhaust did a much better job than I though. When Andrea came home that night she thought I had burned a batch of popcorn. It took about a full day for the popcorn smell to fade. Note to self, work on exhaust problem.

Here is a picture comparing the first 2 batches. The temperature readings were surprisingly similar from batch one to batch 2. I guess because the profiles were not different enough, and it takes time to ramp up to a certain temp. But the difference between 5 and 6 minutes is pretty large.

The next morning I cupped my coffee. Because of the way I am--I don't like to waste anything--I decided that I would create my own special blend of 1/2 of each roast. The result was fairly impressive considering I burned the first batch. The flavor was not the greatest because of the burnt beans that I used, but the coffee was surprisingly clean and noticeably nutty. The results are definitely enough to keep me going for another day.

The Arrival & First Roast

About three weeks ago I picked up a new magazine from Wild Oats called Imbibe Magazine. It is an excellent read about many of my long standing passions: beer, liquor, coffee, food, entertaining, etc. One of the articles in the December issue discusses home coffee roasting. From that moment on (for the last two weeks anyway) I have been hooked on the idea of roasting coffee at home.

I spent the next couple of weeks researching home coffee roasters, green coffee beans and the roasting process. Eventually I made the jump and placed an order with Sweet Maria's for everything that I would need to get started the right way.

So far, I have found Sweet Maria's to be an excellent resource. They have extensive right ups on many coffee roasters, in depth reviews of green beans and the encouragement that I could roast a fine cup of coffee at home.


My package arrived on Monday, December 17. I ordered the i-Roast 2 from Hearthware, a digital scale, a digital thermometer, a timer, the 8 1/2 pound sample back and 5 additional pounds of green beans (not pictured). I was set and ready to go.

I was a little concerned about the smoke that I had read so much about, so I also ran to Home Depot and picked up a 4" dryer exhaust hose. After carefully reading all of the literature that came with my package, I decided upon a strategy and set up shop. You can see my make-shift venting system is not a great permanent solution, but I just wanted to start roasting. I'll have to come up with something better later.

I started with the Mexico Organic Nayarit Terruno green beans. I typically like my coffee roasted a little darker to provide a more bold cup, so I decided to use the preset 2 roasting cycle that comes programmed on the i-Roast 2--the roast cycle is stated to be:
Stage 1 455 degrees for 6 minutes
Stage 2 400 degrees for 4 minutes
Stage 3 435 degrees for 1:30 minutes

I carefully weighed out exactly 130 grams of the hard green beans and poured them into the chamber. I ran the on board thermometer into the chamber so I could measure the actual temperature versus the programmed temperature. The notes included on Sweet Maria's web site states that the actual on board temp may be as many as 40-50 degrees lower than the programmed temp; however, on later versions of the i-Roast the temperatures more closely match.

Here are my notes from the first roast:
1 min on board temp reads 241 degrees

1.30 beans are already starting to turn a straw-yellow color

2 min 327 degrees beans are fully yellowed and starting to turn a light tan color (pictured below)

2.40 starting to notice loose chaff in the chamber

3 min 391 degrees

3.30 consistent brown color

3.38 audible signs of first crack

4 min 437 degrees, first crack continues

4.30 beans are noticeably dark, it sounds like first crack continues--does it go on this long??

5 min 487 degrees, first signs of oils are showing on the beans, still cracking?

5.30 beans are significantly larger in size and extremely oily. The look very dark at this point, I think they are done, but the pre-roast is set for 11.30 minutes, they can't possibly be done.

6 min 528 degrees - this sucker is hot!

6.13 I can't take it any more and hit the manual cool down button.

7 min 356 degrees

7.30 275 degrees

8 min 218 degrees

9 min 155 degrees

10 min 130 degrees

10.11 my first batch of beans are complete! My first inclination is that they are burned, but I tell myself that I like a dark roast. I move them to a metal rack with holes to continue the cooling process to bring them to room temperature. The beans look a lot darker than in the picture, at least an esspresso roast or darker.

The Introduction

I'm sure there is a term for a person like me: ADD, flighty, easily distracted, Jack of all Trades--Master of None...it doesn't really matter. I get really excited about new things. I mean really, really excited about new things. The more obscure the better. I obsess about them, I research them, I feel that I cannot live without my latest passion. Unfortunately, I often lose interest right about the time I make a significant investment in said passion. By the time the latest book, tool, gadget or appliance arrives I am already deeply involved with the next great passion of my life.

Maybe its the American way, categorically lazy, maybe its my way. It is easy to take a hobby to a certain point, when suddenly the learning curve grows significantly steeper; then I quit. However, as a sufferer of this "phenomenon" (I haven't gotten around to becoming obsessed with obscure medical conditions) I tend to learn a lot about a lot of different things, but a master of none.

I guess the purpose of this blog is not necessarily to make me feel shame for my flightiness or sometimes wastefulness, but to document the journey of my current interests--which for today is roasting coffee.