Test Roast Coffee....

[josh_robb]

What coffee do people use to test various roasting setups/techniques etc? I don't know that I can bear to burn or destroy any more good coffee while I test various drum configurations etc on the Foreman.

I noticed that Sweet Marias offers "Ugg!" as an example of bad/cheep coffee. (http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.thumbs-down.html). This seems like an ideal candidate for test roasting.

(Happy new year everyone).

j.

[AlanP]

I use my prefered coffee

If you use bad/cheap coffee how do you know when you get it right ?

[mnemonix]

there's two stages to getting a roasting setup right - the first is simply, are my bean going to roast, bake or incinerate in this contraption ! anything'll do for that, and i've usually used my least favourite bean for it so i don't care about wasting it - deliberately ordering bad coffee from the states seems a bit much even for this purpose though ! having got that far, i'd agree with you Alan, use something you can relate the flavour to previous roasts so you know if you're getting the fine tuning right.

[mnemonix]

oh, and a bean that roasts easily and smoothly is obviously going to give a better indication for a start ! brazilian & costa rican are two from my store cupboard I'd use.