Sour shots from heatgun roast

[Bombcup]

Yes, sadly where roasting is concerned I am Outside WC. Actually I prefer Brick Sh.... Anyway, that oven roasting sounds interesting. I shall investigate further...

[bruceb]

Speaking of Brick Sh... how would you like to visit for awhile? From the looks of your avatar you could do some magic on our 3rd floor bathroom walls. In the meantime I could roast you up some of anything you'd like to drink!

[espressomattic]

Oven roasting is pretty straightforward. I use a thick ceramic dish 200g of beans, pre heat oven to 200 Deg C with Fan assist on. As long as you keep a careful eye on the beans and turn them a couple of times you are onto a winner. No diasters from it yet I have to admit.

[Bombcup]

That sounds nice, I'd love to do a job fuelled by something better than a flask of instant! (I tried making fresh coffee for the flask but it felt like sacrilege and was more than my weary brain could cope with at 6.00AM).

It might be a bit of an adventure for my beaten up old Astra van but please feel free to PM me if you need any tips.

[Bertie_Doe]

Yes, sadly where roasting is concerned I am Outside WC. Actually I prefer Brick Sh.... Anyway, that oven roasting sounds interesting. I shall investigate further...

I have bookmarked oven roasting by zix. You may get away with it, if you have an oven extractor.

QC

[Bombcup]

OK, been playing with the roasting. Matt, I tried stretching the time to 1C to around 15 mins, and also did a roast as I would usually by way of a control. The longer 1C roast was definately more full flavoured and gave better crema after a 48hr rest than the control batch. Cheers mate!

Cumbers, just finished an oven roast. The results are better than I expected, more uneven than the heatgun but more even than I was expecting and not as much smoke as I thought either. Looking forward to trying them in a couple of days.

Thanks also to Zix for the excellent instructions.

[espressomattic]

No worries At the end of the day, my philosophy is to just enjoy it and have some fun. A good by-product happens to be good coffee.

A near diaster today though. I roasted up some canario, thought it went into 2C, took it outside to cool with a little water sprayed on it, shock horror, just getting into 1C!!!! ack in the oven and it turned out OK...just!!!!

[Richard]

Interesting, I just did my second heat-gun roast. The first wasn't good, I used the heat-gun into my wok and swirled the beans, a lot of over roasting and unevenness.

That was weeks ago, today I did a heat-gun roast but used a heavy deep colander. The roast turned out very even and I got to shiny beans in 16 minutes. Because I used the same bean in a popcorn popper that's working well at the moment I'll be able to compare the taste tomorrow so I'll let you know if there's any difference.

Right now I have the choice of a wok on the stove, two popcorn poppers, one fast and one completes about 15 minutes but wont shiny them-up and of course the heat-gun method.

It's all Kenyan AAA at the moment, I got tired of that very lovely Yelnoorkan so I stashed it for a couple of weeks.

Happy Christmas.

[Richard]

I need to bring this one back to life, I'm doing 250 gram roasts with a heat-gun now, still nice and even, none of that smoky flavour I got with a wok and lid.

My particular heat-gun is a very old Black and Decker 'Pro' 2k watts with a fan shaped spreader that may be helping.

Over the 15 minutes minutes there is a lot of movement and action with a wooden spoon but I don't have to roast my beans in the shiiiiiiiiiiiiite-house.

I have an out-building that is clean, dry and warm. It's about the size of a small terrace house so you imagine the upstairs room has plenty of space with a huge Velux window, I use an 18" fan behind me to blow all the crap out of the window but I'm not outside so the roast isn't inhibited by the recent cold-spell.

I started to think that roasting smaller quantities was causing problems with over-roasting and high-spots on beans so I'm leaning towards this heat-gun and collander method, the collander is huge so plenty of room for shimmy-and-shake in of course the fan behind me helps when I stop the roast. Even when it's p'eee'sing down with rain outside.

[lukas]

Sounds like quite an ideal homeroasting environment to me!

[Richard]

Sounds like quite an ideal homeroasting environment to me!

Yes, I'm fortunate to have that building and even though we don't have residential use (In planning terms) it could be used for residential purpose. As it happens the two floors are well used, downstairs houses my grass cutting machines, strimmers, chainsaws, woodworking machines and tools, bikes and other paraphernalia together with a utility area for washing machines, fridge/freezer then the upper floor is 75% sail-loft so I wont want to be roasting coffee up there and drying sails, kites and wetsuits because of the smell from coffee.

For the meantime and until late spring I will continue as I am, maybe by then I will have organised a roasting machine that controls the chaff and directs the roasting smoke outside.

'The' tidiest roast method I have used is the wok and lid method under our kitchen extractor, the chaff stays under the lid but gets roasted along with the beans and I was never sure that-that was a good idea.

I have just about exhausted all the domestic methods of roasting without spending £300 plus, the iRoast has a reputation for being a 'stinker' so I'm sure my next sensible move may be the Gene roaster with a vent-kit.

So, to summarise, 'the' most efficient though most messy method is my heat-gun method, then comes the wok and lid for clean and tidy.
The popcorn roasting method is working well but that's also messy, I use two poppers, an 800 watt and a 1200 watt. The beans go into the 800 watt popper for 8/10 minutes then I transfer them into the 1200 watt for about 2 minutes.

Even though I have a very convenient annex for roasting coffee the chaff still gets everywhere and into everything.

[Gouezeri]

No idea where you get the idea of the IR being a stinker. All it needs is a metal hose on it (few quid from B&Q). I can roast quite easily within a few metres of a smoke alarm using one. The IR definitely has its limitations, but it is clearly designed as a kitchen appliance and does the job that it is intended to do well. It's not a HT, but then it's a third of the price and less than a third of the size.

Now if you want to talk about the problems of drying 13m² of kite in a london flat, then there's a stinker!

[Richard]

Now if you want to talk about the problems of drying 13m² of kite in a london flat, then there's a stinker!

How about a 15 and a 12 together with all the neoprene and other stuff, I have it sorted with the fan and a dehumidifier. Get the lot dry and smelling sweet over-night.

Thanks for positive comment on the iRoast, I better have another look at that, I hadn't realised you could vent it.

[Gouezeri]

On the IR, if you do want to consider it, give me a shout and I'll give you the lowdown, warts and all.

On the kites, I try to only use one at a time to avoid a drying nightmare (tends to be the 13 more often than not), though then there's the boards (land and water) and all the other stuff (ah the smell of damp neoprene ).

[Bombcup]

My particular heat-gun is a very old Black and Decker 'Pro' 2k watts with a fan shaped spreader that may be helping.

Over the 15 minutes minutes there is a lot of movement and action with a wooden spoon but I don't have to roast my beans in the shiiiiiiiiiiiiite-house.

I have an out-building that is clean, dry and warm. It's about the size of a small terrace house so you imagine the upstairs room has plenty of space with a huge Velux window, I use an 18" fan behind me to blow all the crap out of the window but I'm not outside so the roast isn't inhibited by the recent cold-spell.

Sounds very much like my own roasting set-up. I'm also in an outbuilding but it's very draughty and might aswell be ouside! I use an ancient Black & Decker 1200w heatgun but I like the sound of Richard's gun with a diffuser, I may have to check those out.

I use a heavy saucepan with an old sieve sat inside it. This diffuses the heat very nicely so avoids the risk of scorching and gives a bed of heat in the airspace underneath the beans which I guess would help keep the roast even.

I know this is minutiae but I used to use a wooden spoon to stir the beans but after a few roasts I started to get an acrid charcoaly taste in my beans. It turned out it was from the wooden spoon getting scorched during the roast. I now use a metal spoon with a long handle so it doesn't burn my hands.

The one problem I now have with the roasting is the addition of a '62 Beetle to the garage, not much space anymore! PM me if you want a rat look bug with 150hp and pram tyres on the front. It's great fun until you come to a corner!