My roaster

Roasters and roasting

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Postby bruceb » Thu Dec 29, 2011 6:53 pm

BTW, Richard, it looks like you have massive oak planked floors. Very good taste. Very good taste, indeed! :wink: :D
Three Francesconi (CMA) espresso machines - Rossi, San Marco, LaCimbali, Faema and 2 Mazzer Major grinders- CoffeeTech Maggionlino, Hottop, Alpenröst and HW Precision roasters.
I decided I needed a bit of a change so I roasted some Monsooned Malabar. That was a change!
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Postby Richard » Thu Dec 29, 2011 8:12 pm

Thank-you.

We live in what was once the milking-parlour of a farmhouse. The barns and milking parlour have been fully converted/moderised. All our first floor is oak but not the lower bathroom where the risk was far to great.

The main farmhouse is to the left, the barns which used to be connected are on the right. We have walls that are 6cm thick in most of the old part. A lot of farming history comes with the farmhouse and barns, it's a lovely place to live unless you need help in an emergency. On a regular basis we loose water and electricity during winter months.

Sorry about the massive photo, I just wanted to give you an idea of why it worth the expense of all the oak in this place. Oak doors, oak floors, a massive oak beam and some pitch-pine. When you walk in the door the smell of oiled timber and coffee is at least a subtle nicety.

I edited the photo out, sorry, you've had enough of it anyway.
Last edited by Richard on Fri May 04, 2012 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hot-air-gun roasting.
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Postby zix » Mon Jan 16, 2012 8:40 pm

ohhh nice, a winter picture with snow in it! Haven't had a lot of that here lately...

Yes, it's obvious I come here too infrequently. Sorry about the late reply. I agree 100% about the smallish batches being the put-off regarding popper roasters. Works exactly the same way for me. Oh, and also the fact that they usually burn out once you have started to learn how they work.

Do keep writing about your experiences, I like hearing of others' experiences with roasting with this method. It's just that I am not logged in on TMC as frequently nowadays as before (had this thread been started three or four years ago I would have probably already written half a roasting book here, out of pure joy that another human being had started roasting with HG+bowl. But that's just life, isn't it)

Have you considered using a baking machine? There are some people on homeroasters.org and elsewhere who use them. I don't have one, nor have I found one (yet) in any garage sale, but basically what they do is to suspend the hot air gun above the baking machine, pointing the gun down into the baking cylinder. (yes, they take away the baking machine lid...) Then they pour coffee beans into the cylinder, turn on the machine and let the dough stirring thingies (sorry, Swedish, don't know what you would call them. Vanes? Spades? Stirrers?) do the work that we HG+Bowl roasters do manually with our wooden spoon. Looks like it works just great, but ugly.
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Postby Richard » Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:03 pm

zix wrote:ohhh nice, a winter picture with snow in it! Haven't had a lot of that here lately...


Ah-yes, sorry about the size.

I think the word you're looking for is paddles, regarding using a bread making machine i'll look into this, problem is the paddles rotate quickly during a very short cycle then they rotate intermittently but i'll check. Also, I feel I may loose the hands-on contact with the roast where I change the direction and speed of my wooden spoon.

When I use a wooden spoon with a hot-air gun I rarely go round-and-round because I think beans at the bottom of the roast won't get their fair share of heat so I do sort of do figure eight movements pulling beans up from the underneath.

I still may be getting to first crack a little too quickly so i'm trying to slow the early roast down.

The beans that came from the gas-flame roast where fine but I feel their isn't any benefit and the process is inconvenient.
Hot-air-gun roasting.
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Postby Richard » Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:23 pm

I'm still fiddling with roasts and whilst I respect and appreciate the helpful contributions i'm still managing to convince myself that a hot-air-gun into the receptacle i'm using is actually about as efficient as you can get if you accept the losses to get rid of chaff.

I don't understand why Steve has a negative comment about hot-air and matt beans being de-riguer. I'm managing to bring a controlled amount of oils to the beans if I want it or stay with matt beans if I want them and all because of the close-visual-audio-contact I have with this method.

Different beans respond in different ways, I find I need a couple of roast-taste sessions to get to where I want to go with my coffee and whilst i'm teach granny to suck eggs with many of you i'm still learning. Certainly, roasting my own green beans so I always get to fresh coffee has been the single biggest improvement.

Buying an espresso machine was an experience rather than an improvement, I wonder if buying a roasting machine would be an improvement or just an experience in just the same way as the espresso machine.
Hot-air-gun roasting.
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Aeropress. Swiss Gold Modified.
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Postby zix » Thu May 03, 2012 7:22 pm

Steve is probably absolutely right (if it is possible to be probably absolutely anything) about hot air roasts and oils - when it comes to air roast drums and other fluid bed air roasters.
As with popcorn poppers, in professional hot air/fluid bed roasters the beans are floating and whirling around on the hot air stream. An extremely effective way of transferring heat to each bean, and it makes it possible to obtain very even roasts, even at light roast degrees. Traditionally, it also means that it is harder to do darker roasts and get good results - things happen very fast at the dark end of the roast in a fluid bed roaster.

In my own experiments with an old popcorn popper bought cheap at a garage sale, I found exactly the same thing as Steven - if I went on long enough for the oils to creep out on the surface, it usually was too late, the roast almost always had a burnt taste.

Not so with hot air gun roasting in bowls. With your stuff you end up somewhere inbetween fluid bed and indirect heat drum roasters. You get longer roast times, profiles more appropriate for darker roasts, and a bit of oil is fine as long as it isn't too much. As long as you don't get it too soon or too much of it, it's fine. I like spots of oil...
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Postby Richard » Fri May 04, 2012 9:36 am

Ahh, I understand.

Sort of suggests my roasts would benefit from me being more active with the wooden spoon. I couldn't see the point someone made about adapting a rotating paddle devise to the top of my roasting bowl, that would remove me from the process at an important time.

I still find it odd that after a few years I find every roast I do very important to concentrate, if the postman arrives with a parcel he gets ignored or waved away.

Thanks for the helpful comments.
Hot-air-gun roasting.
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Aeropress. Swiss Gold Modified.
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Postby zix » Sat May 05, 2012 8:39 pm

Yes, absolutely - if you want to have total control it is better to stir manually, and also to hold the heat gun in the other hand so you can move it closer and further away instantly. Or, if the heat gun is mounted, to have a stepless effect control.

It is like you say, you need to be able to give the roast your full attention when doing hot air gun / bowl roasts. For me, it usually means I have to devote my full attention to one thing only for around 30 minutes, including preparations. I find it fascinating how extremely hard this is, at home or at work. Roasting in the oven is a piece of cake (not literally though) in comparison, and this is why I mainly do that instead. Only takes the occasional glance, and being in the kitchen after first crack.

On the subject of consumer roasters like the HotTop, Behmor and others, I wouldn't expect too much. They demand slightly less attention than the heat gun/bowl method, but you can't leave them unattended. Instead of stirring and standing in the hot air stream, you will be nervously looking through the window of the Behmor, and wondering if you really programmed it right (I should perhaps add that I have a Behmor at work, have only done 10 or so roasts, mainly because it wasn't quite the automatic wonder roaster I had hoped for). For the HotTop et al you will be using the tryer instead of peeking through (usually dirty) oven glass, it will be less work, but you can't just go away and forget the machine.
‹• Bezzera B3000AL • Strietman ES3 • Chemex • Cona C size • Aeropress • Vev moka • Bialetti Brikka • Espro • Cezve • Bacchi Espresso • Arrarex Caravel •
• HG-1 • Lido 1 & E-T • OE Pharos •
• oven • hot air gun • Behmor •›
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Postby Richard » Sun May 06, 2012 4:31 pm

Your comments relating to comparisons between roasting machines, manual methods and the amount of attention required surprised me. I had assumed these machines take-away the need for direct-input but you're saying you can't really leave them without any supervision.

Since your last comment I paid-attention to paying more attention, during cold weather I mostly roast indoors and it occurred to me that the indoor lighting isn't quite the same as when you have daylight to judge the colour of the roasting beans. So I now use a halogen spotlight immediately above the roasting beans the effect of which is to push you to a darker roast if you don't pay attention.

Don't know if I mentioned this but I don't stop the roast these days, rather I get the beans to be close to the colour and making the right noises then I cut the heat and let the beans roast-on from the heat they have within and with only a tiny swirl of the wooden spoon. Sometimes they do start to roast further than I want, then I will move them into another container and back-and-forth until they cool.

I'm still roasting Espresso-Perfetio blend, non blended beans appear to be much easier to roast from my experience so far.
Hot-air-gun roasting.
French press.
Aeropress. Swiss Gold Modified.
Bialetti Venus.
MahlKonig Vario.
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Postby Richard » Tue Dec 18, 2012 3:47 pm

This is a roast I have just done and with a bean that isn't particularly easy to roast, this is Columbia Finca Santuario Heliconias Red Bourbon. Easiest bean to roast from this years purchases has been Bolivia Bolinda Illmani.

When I say difficult, it's almost as if the beans are blends so you can easily get varied colours.

This roast is actually slightly darker than the photo shows and taken well into second crack. My method is when second crack is rolling and the smoke starts I back-off with the hot air and let the accumulated heat roast the beans to the final stage with just the occasional stir with the wooden spoon.

Image

Another photo of the same roast but maybe closer to the real thing.

Image
Hot-air-gun roasting.
French press.
Aeropress. Swiss Gold Modified.
Bialetti Venus.
MahlKonig Vario.
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