Basic Roasting queries.

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Basic Roasting queries.

Postby Superlight » Thu Nov 30, 2006 2:54 am

As we don't go through enough coffee to make buying roasted coffee via mail order very economic once postage is taken into account, I thought that I'd give home roasting a try.
Local Lidl store had a popcorn maker on offer for a fiver so one now sits at home and I've sourced some green beans from HB :
Green Ethiopian Longberry Harrar and Green Brazil Espresso perfeito Blend : whilst buying these I also though it an idea to buy the HB roasted version also so that I could see what their roasted version looked like and I could maybe aspire to achieving similar !

I've read about going through first and second cracks but I wonder what beginners tips there are for roasting using my type of machine to achieve a respectable roast ?
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Postby HughF » Thu Nov 30, 2006 7:58 am

Grinders : Macap MXK conical for espresso, Mahlkoenig Vario for Chemex, Macap MC6 (spare when our office was closed) for cafetiere, Zassenhaus Knee Mill for cafetiere when working away from home.
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Postby fiend » Thu Nov 30, 2006 8:44 am

The key thing is to start learning the difference between the first and second crack. The first comes at around 10 minutes (depending on ambient temperature and bean type), and sounds a bit like a pencil snapping. The second is just a couple of minutes later, and is a softer 'ping' type sound. The second crack also causes little bits to come off the side of the beans, so if you see little brown circles starting to fly around it's time to stop! Usually there will be a pause in between the two where there is no cracking, but not always.

As a general rule of thumb I would say drop the beans into a sieve for cooling as soon as you detect second crack. Once you're a bit more familiar with when it occurs you can try stopping earlier or later to see how they turn out.

Another useful tip is to take both ends off a can and jam it into the top of the popcorn machine. This means that the beans are less likely to come out as they jump up and down.
Last edited by fiend on Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Superlight » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:31 am

Just gave aroudn 80gms of the Ethiopian beans a go and ...
not too much chafe flying about and 10 mins or so later what looks like a pretty decent roast !
I certainly heard some cracking noises early on (1st crack) and then a few mins later a few softer noises (2nd crack)

Hopefully the pic will show something of the end result : it's a fairly consistent colour, some beans not achieving the full roast but I'm pretty pleased !
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roast003.JPG
Roasted Ethiopian Longberry Harrar
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Postby Superlight » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:35 am

This may show the beans better,plus a pic of the £5 roaster.
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roast002.JPG
roast002.JPG (38.67 KiB) Viewed 18414 times
roast001b.JPG
roast001b.JPG (29.16 KiB) Viewed 18414 times
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Postby leecb » Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:38 am

Cool, looks really good. 8)
Did it make much smoke and chaf?
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Postby jameso » Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:38 pm

They look like they went well into 2nd. (Not a problem for Harar). As 2nd just starts, the colour for Harar would be a mahogany type colour - if that helps.

But ultimately, of course, you go on taste, and modify next time accordingly

Have fun!
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Postby Beanie » Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:20 pm

Nice job, Superlight :) and on the 1st roast too :) Don't worry about the few beans that don't seem to have roasted as dark - it's quite normal for Harrar. Just cull those very light beans (no more than 8-10 of those in a 210g of roasted for me)
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Postby Bertie_Doe » Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:56 pm

Superlight wrote
Just gave aroudn 80gms of the Ethiopian beans a go and ...

Haraar is also one of my favs and I like to roast mine to the same colour superdark, superlight. If you like the haraar, you'll also like the monsooned, not much chaff with these - wait till you start on the Central Americans, then you'll see chaf!!
Don't worry about the odd colours, some may disappear after a few hours. You could experiment a bit with say 70gr, but this may shorten the roast time. If you see too much surface oil after 2 days, again you could reduce the roast time, but for me, a bit of oiling dosen't seem to spoil the taste.
FWIW the destruction booklet which came with my roaster states that 1st crack sounds like broken pencils and 2nd crack like broken toothpicks. Hmm they must think I'm made of money.
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Postby Superlight » Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:00 pm

There wasn't too much chaffe or smoke : sufficient to set off the smoke alarm in the hallway but not as much as I had dreaded.

I've just this moment ground some and pulled a shot : very, very nice, one of the best espressos I've pulled with my Classic ever - nice creamy slightly pale crema maybe and the taste was a tiny touch burnt but all in all a raving success imho !
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Postby Superlight » Thu May 31, 2012 1:00 pm

Update to this rather old thread I've dredged up !
As my iRoast has issues - most of the tabs on the top lid that stop it from flying off are broken so I have to bodge something to hold this down whilst it roasts. Works fine but as there was a recent Lidl offer on popcorn roasters again I bought one (now £12.99 !) in case the iroast fails completely in some way.
Fired it up as soon as it was home and off we go.
Worked ok (chucks the beans out a bit too readily but I can deal with that I think) however the temp seems mega high since it took barely a couple of minutes to very dark roast a batch of beans whereas I see from my old post above that I was getting more like 10 minutes roast time from the previous model. These look the same but it is now badged Silvercrest.
a) Is this bad, ie I need to have a longer, slower roast
b) What can I do, easily, to change this - simple resistor change will alter the heat output ?
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Postby bruceb » Thu May 31, 2012 3:31 pm

Simple resistor change? I don't think so. There normally is no resistor on a 1000 watt heating element. It would be very large and need a lot of cooling. Most people connect up a "Variac," a transformer with variable output, but one big enough for a heating element is big, heavy and expensive. It is possible to control the output using dimmer circuitry, but here again you will need to find dimmer components that can handle the large load of a heating element.

Two things to note: Firstly, you will need to control the heater separately from the fan motor, ie. you have to open up the machine and find the leads going to the heater, clip them and attach them to your variable circuitry. Secondly, a variable output will be virtually necessary so you can experiment with it to find the optimal setting for roasting coffee beans.

Personally, I would watch e-bay for a good iRoast or one that you could use for parts to repair yours.
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Postby Superlight » Fri Jun 01, 2012 1:41 pm

ah well, might just keep for emergencies / popcorn roasting !
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Postby misalda » Mon Jul 09, 2012 9:35 pm

I used to roast in a popcorn machine too, I sat outside in all weathers my kids called me a garden gnome sitting hunched over with my hood up, the smoke and chaff did set our alarm off :oops:
My solution to slowing the roast was quite primitive but effective, when the beans passed the wet straw stage I cycled the power on/off/on/off and agitated the beans by hand on the off phases with an old wooden spoon.
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Postby Superlight » Fri Jul 13, 2012 7:48 am

Might just try that this weekend.
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