Roasting Newbie (AKA Santa brought an Alpenrost)

[phil]

I would always go for post-blend myself. I get away with that because normally my household gets through enough coffee to justify it.

If you're going to pre-blend, I would say that you need to have roasted the single origin separately to understand how it roasts anyway. Pre-blends can work quite well (e.g. Malabar Gold, Espresso Vivace Dolce, Carolyn's blend) but I think the most fun as a coffee nut is to be had blending a number of roasted single origins in different combinations and proportions to see what you like best.

Just my two euro-cent's worth!

[gruff]

Thanks Phil,
The only problem I see for me with that is that I drink about 90% of the coffee in our house, and with the Alp doing 200g at a time, it would take me a while to get through several batches of single origin. I suspect they'd end up going stale. I guess i could reduce the quantity, though I don't know what the smallest realistic amount that could be roasted in the Alp is.
I've got some of Caroln's blend as well so I'll play around with that first.
Or a popper mmm.. (+ laptop of course!)

[alans]

You know you need a popper Gruff I have the same "problem" with the Alp, go for post blending and there's just TooMuchCoffee! Hence I normally roast single origin and sometimes mix whatever's roasted. But recently thanks to Hugh and Carolyn I've been trying pre blended greens and they may be converting me.

Either way if an Alp is your only roaster you're soon going to get to a stage where you have less than a full batch of greens and you're going to have to start blending or get that popper.

Have you cleaned the Alp yet? If you haven't you may notice that your roasts are getting longer and longer, once you get the Puly Caff on to it and get all those surfaces shining again (except the drum which stays "seasoned") you can drop up to two minutes off your roast times.

[Steve]

You could start and opinon war with this one Gruff I always blend the green and roast, but I know others in the group like to do all the beans on there own and blend afterwards. Its a matter of taste and I dont think either is right or wrong. Up to you

(steve gets down of the fence)

[gruff]

I think you may be right about the popper Alan!. I give the Alp a good wipe down after each roast, but could probably do with getting something a bit stronger on it.
As far as the times go, I'm sure the 30mph freezing mist here in the IoM has a lot to do with it!

[phil]

Well I'm firmly in the "post" blend camp. I dunno how you know what it's going to taste like otherwise. I recall PeterJ saying much the same in an email to me the other day (he said, squaring off ... )

[Sunnyfield]

I have started roasting two-bean blends. It takes some experimenting to find out which beans have similar roasting times. In general my blends consist of 4 or 5 beans, ie three 125g batches.

[alans]

Great to hear you're getting some good results! Your times are longer than mine and your batch smaller, but I guess that's just the variation you get between different machines. In general I roast in the spare room with the vent pointing in to a small disused fireplace, which deals with the smoke well but when forced to move to different location the smoke has the same complications for me as well I find the variation between summer and winter no where near as big as the variation between "cleaned recently" and "well seasoned".

I'm still a blending newbie but from the start I enjoyed roasting two batches I like seperatly and seeing if they were any good together. As soon as you start thinking about adding a small amount of one bean you need to think about blending it green (10% robusta, what am I going to do with the other 180gm). I find pre blended harder to roast though, different beans in first crack and second crack at the same time make it hard for me to know when to stop but I'll get it right one day!

[Sunnyfield]

I recognise your problems. It really is trial-and-error. I am quite new to blending as well, but at least I know the individual beans a little bit. I have given up on hearing second crack; it's the nose and the eyes that do the trick. I roast in my kitchen and my whole flat fills up with the nice smell of roasted coffee... until it turns stale after two hours... such is life of a home-roaster!