Who roasts their own coffee on their BBQ or Grill?

[tallbm]

Duplicate post, deleting this content.

 

[tallbm]

Ok guys I was able to do my first test run of roasting my 100% Ethiopian Yirgs (Natural/Dry processed).

The images show the beans being a way lighter color than what the naked eye sees, so just know they aren't that light looking in reality.


Equipment: I used a $10 Imusa electrical burner/hotplate, wooden spoon, teflon pan, colander, a $11 IR Temp Gunand a little fan to cool.

Beans: green Natural/Dry processed 100% Ethiopian Yirgs

Roast: Shot for 428F but not exactly sure where I ended up. Readings were anywhere between 390F and 410F. I thought I started seeing some Black beans so I stopped like @noboundries says he does. Also the bean husks made things hard to determine bean color being light or darker, etc. Will speak about the husks further down.

Process:

• I followed @noboundries process in post#9 of this thread
• I heated my pan to 460F
• I added beans and began mixing
• At 3 min mark I turned burner down to Medium
  • I think this caused my burner to cut off completely due to heat safety mechanisms and the way it works :(
• At 6 min mark I turned burner down to Low
  • I think this continued causing the burner to stay off due to heat safety mechanism and the way it works
• I did not hear first pops at 10 min mark so I turned the burner back to high
• Started hearing 1st pops around 15 minutes in
• Started hearing 2nd pops around 20 minutes in
• I continued stirring and taking temp measures but the temp measures were kind of all over the place.
• I think temp measures were being sabotaged by the bean husks being shed
• I pulled beans when I thought I started seeing some black beans, though it was hard to tell colors due to the light husks being mixed in with the beans so I just pulled. Temp measure highs were 390F to 410F
• I immediately put the beans in a colander and stirred in front of a fan
• The fan was blowing bean husks out everywhere while cooling the beans off
• I then kept pouring the beans into the pan and back into the colander allowing the beans to fall in front of the fan and having the fan blow the husks away as the beans fell
• I put the beans in a ziplock bag and gave them to my cousin who was assisting me. He will grind some at the 72 hour mark, drink, and note the flavor. He will do the same thing at 96 hours.
• With is input and what I have now learned, I will do my next round as a gift for Christmas

Lessons Learned:

• My burner is much more finicky than a gas burner on a grill lol
• I will likely need to leave my burner on high and just lift the pan off to manage not overheating
• I did not anticipate there being bean husks in the mix and this was interesting and unexpected to deal with
• The bean husks do not change color of absorb heat ANYTHING like the beans do
  • This makes it hard to judge bean color with the lighter husks being mixed in
  • This makes it hard to take IR gun temps with bean husks being lower temp than the beans
• I think next time I will let the bean husks come off and then I will sift/separate the beans and husks. When I have nothing but beans left I will start the roast again so I can more easily take temps and judge bean color
• These beans had a very chocolate type smell while green and while roasting in the pan. This was enjoyable as I like chocolate but I don't enjoy coffee as I never developed the palate for it and if I have any caffeine in my diet I will NOT be able to sleep. I found this out a looooong time ago so I just cut it out all together.

Ok guys this is what I have. This was very fun and interesting. I think the next go round will be much better and I look forward to any feedback you may have. Thanks!

 

[noboundaries]

Looks great! Glad you did a test run to figure out your heat source. Good to know too. I just gave one of those Imusa hot plates to my son-in-law so he could use an aluminum moka pot I gave him. They have an induction stovetop and it won't work with aluminum. I figure once he tastes the difference between Costco coffee and fresh roasted, he'll start roasting his own too.

As far as the husks, my apologies. In my directions I forgot to add that I blow the husks out every couple of minutes once they appear. Just blow on them like blowing out a candle. In a shallow pan they blow away from your face. In my deeper pan about half blow up in my face. Somewhere in the middle of the first crack it really doesn't help to blow the husks away any more. They break down into smaller pieces, but turn black from the heat so they won't mess with your ability to see the color change as the beans roast. The chaff still blows everywhere when you cool them with a fan at the end of the roast, but hey, it comes right off with a brush of the hand.

Looking forward to the taste results.

 

[tallbm]

Thanks for the feedback on the husks. I will be sure to do that. I think things will get smoother on the next go round as I blow out the husks.

I'll report back on the next batch.

 

[noboundaries]

I had an interesting experience yesterday pan roasting 8.3 oz of green Brazilian Dry Process Serrinha coffee beans I bought from Sweet Maria's coffee. They don't carry them anymore, and I haven't tasted them yet (3 more days of rest), but the roast of the beans just goes to prove that not all beans are the same.

My roasting process is practically automatic now, as described in earlier posts. Yesterday, when roasting the Brazilian beans, they turned from green to a very uniform light yellow in just a couple of minutes. None of the other beans I've roasted have done that. The others, all from Central America, turned from green to a tan color before growing darker.

My favorite final roast profile is what I'm calling a mix of Full City + and light French, also knows as a Vienna roast. Just about all the beans I've roasted taste best "to me" at that roast level. Brazilian beans below

Happy Roasting!

View media item 553422

 

[tallbm]

Cool info to hear about!
I'll be getting a report on tasting tomorrow and I'll be doing the next roast in exactly 1 week. I'll report back my info and findings as well. I'm excited! :D

 

[tallbm]

Ok so I am finally getting around to posting about my 2nd bean roasting experience.

I again roasted the 100% natrually processed Ethiopian Yirgs.
This time around I blew out the husks as I went along with the roast and that helped out a lot because I could now clearly see the colors and take better temp readings!

I roasted until the temp gun read 428F on the beans though it isn't exactly scientific but was by best effort reading.
Taking to 428F produced a much darker roast than last time but I stuck with it determined to hit my number lol.

I let the beans mellow in an open zip lock bag for almost about 84 hours then I had to grind up about 3/4 of a magic bullet mini cup's worth and put them in a smaller zip lock as the gift I would be giving the next mourning Christmas Day.

The coffee was very well received. The comment I got was that the coffee tasted sweeter expected and that it was a very high quality bean/coffee. This was a success!

The initial taster said the other day that he caught a hint of some citrus type flavors to the coffee so I am guessing their is some validity that these naturally processed (vs wet processed) 100% Ethiopian Yirgs do lend themselves towards sweet and/or fruity hints.

If you guys have any idea on whether roasting lighter or darker may bring out more of the sweet or fruit flavors I'm all ears! :)

 

[noboundaries]

Congrats on the well received Christmas gift! Very cool! Great looking roasts above.

I'm still too new to say much about how roasting the Ethiopian Yirgs lighter or darker would change the flavor. I've read that lighter roasts bring out the bean characteristics more.

I've been happy with the coffees I've roasted to the range that is Full City + to Vienna (in the same batch, the lighter beans are Full City+, the darker Vienna). I like the flavor of caramelized sugar and chocolate, which that range seems to deliver beautifully. 428F is the minimum I roast now. I actually pushed a batch of Mexican Organic to 435F, then a couple more batches to 444F. That bean handled it nicely and tasted soooooo good without tasting burnt.

The amount of coffee I roast also impacts the roast. I've bumped up the amount I can pan roast from 8 oz to 10 oz of green beans. I don't think I'm going to push it any higher. Roasting more beans means I have to run the burner on high a little longer to stay within my 15 minute start to finish roast window for the Full City+ to Vienna roast.

I've still got 2-3 lbs left from a 5 lb bag of Mexican Organic. I have 8 oz of Brazilian, a pound of Rwandan, and a pound of Burundi. My kids got me a gift card to Sweet Maria's for Christmas, so I'll be checking out the Ethiopian real soon.

My wife got me a "Cleaver Dripper" for Christmas. Look it up online for how it works. It's like the best of "pour-over" coffee and French Press coffee combined. The paper filter eliminates the grit of the finer grinds in a French press, and the stopper maximizes the extraction. It is now my favorite way to make everyday coffee, with a moka espresso thrown in a couple times a week.

Happy New Year everyone.

 

[browneyesvictim]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

So, I have been on round #2 as well. In fact I have tried roasting 3 types of regional coffee now- the 2 I already posted about (above) was finished up, and I bought 2 lbs of Morning Hills Costa Rica La Rosa. As of this morning has been 4 days since roasting, so guess what I am sipping on right now?:D I like it ALOT! Very creamy mouthfeel... almost butter-like toffee/caramel flavor. I took this one a little higher temp too. More like 445-450* and completely through the second crack, and its not bitter at all. The idea was I am looking for a good bean for an espresso roast for the Mrs. in her fancy automatic coffee machine. This one will work! But Im not so sure I want to share...

This time I used a little bigger pot. My thinking was giving a little more surface area for a more even roasting. I am only roasting about 1/2 lb at a time so its not like I need the capacity, but though that might help with consistency and reducing temp swings. I am just using a turkey fryer propane burner. I don't have a good way of gauging the throttle of the gas valve to the burner. So I'm just going by the seat of my pants as far as burner temp, and the IR temp gun tells me when I want to pull the pot off the burner for a few moments or take it off completely when done. This is working but I wish I had a better and more accurate way of measuring and controlling burner temp than just eyeballing it.

Something else I noticed when doing 3 different beans back to back was noticing the size of the beans. The Columbian Supremos are SIGNIFICANTLY larger than the other two beans. I didnt notice this when they were green, but they seem to have easily over doubled in size from roasting. They also smell best of all three of them sitting there cooling just freshly roasted, and the strangest is how "hollow" they sound compared to the others. They sound like seashells rattling around! I am going to get some measurements of WEIGHT by VOLUME and start doing some comparisons.

Congrats on the new toy Ray. That's a pretty cool gadget. I have to admit I am using my moka pot more since you nudged me to give it another try. I think it does produce a better coffee but the French press is a bit more convenient.

<edit- fix typos>

 

[noboundaries]

Erik, like you, my favorite so far has been the Costa Rican. Wow, so good.

I haven't tried Columbian yet. I will be ordering more green coffee next week. Will have to put Columbian on the list.

Folks at work used to call me "Mr. Spreadsheet." I made spreadsheets for everything, and yes, I've got one for my coffee roasting too. Below is a picture of 10 oz of Mexican Organic green beans, and the same 10 oz of roasted Mexican Organic beans, which typically expands in size (almost double) and reduces in weight 18-20% to 8 to 8.2 oz. Now you can see why I'm doing 10 oz. It fills up the storage jars I'm using!

I've also quit using milk, cream, or half n half with my morning coffee. Thanks to one of my daughters I've started using canned coconut milk, shaken really well. It gives the coffee an amazing taste without hiding any of the flavors. It's no good for steaming, but I don't do that much anyway.

I put my French press away after one use of the Clever Dripper. Besides the taste, cleanup is a BREEZE compared to the FP. I'll still use the FP for cold brew coffee though.

Okay, I'm going to have to switch to Chrome to upload the pic of the green/roasted bean comparison. Be right back.

 

[tallbm]

I did a bunch of reading yesterday on roasting and the affect to sweetness and flavor and such.

Sweet Maria's has the best library of info on such topics I have found online so far.
She did some experimenting with "stretching" the roast of coffee beans and how it affected a few factors such as body, sweetness, acidity, etc.

It was very interesting and full of detailed info on her results and some info on her approach. It is a 3 part'er you can read all about it here:
Part 1 - https://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/node/2934
Part 2 - https://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/content/stretchin-out-roast-pt-2
Part 3 - https://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/node/4726

She didn't summarize her findings but from what I read and can remember it seems that sweetness can be affected in a few different ways by targeting a sweetness type (malt, candy, fruit, etc.), acidity, and body/mouth feel to present the kind of flavors you want the drinker to have.

For example in her first stretching of the time between the end of the 1st crack and beginning of the 2nd crack she discovered that how the Acidity is perceived (front, middle, or back of the palate) affects body perception of the coffee as well as the type of sweetness (malt, candy, fruit, chocolate, etc.). So stretching the roast in this way a Roaster can affect the flavor profile by messing with the sweetness flavor and where the acidity is felt in the palate.

In the 2nd stretching she mentions that stretching out the 1st crack (time between beginning 1st crack sound to ending of the 1st crack sounds) didn't affect sweetness flavor but the body/mouth feel affected the delivery of the sweetness so it is expressed in a better manner. She basically states that more body and syrupy texture makes for the sweetness hitting the tongue and mouth differently so you perceive it differently.

In the 3rd stretching of the drying phase she identifies that the toning down of the acidity while not killing the sweetness gives longer finishes to the sweetness. This may greatly affect how a taster perceives the sweetnes.

It is all very interesting stuff.

When I look back on my last attempt I had a stretched all of her same phases inadvertently because of how my burner is working for me hahahaha. I roasted my beans for a good 20+ minutes to hit my 428F mark.
It looks like I basically hit many if not all of her sweetness points which is funny because as the coffee was being drank there as a definite mention about the sweetness of it that was written off to maybe be a byproduct of the creamer hahaha

Anyhow enough of me rambling I just wanted to share all this super interesting info since we are all kind of discussing the same kind of points that Maria seems to be honing in on when roasting :)

 

[noboundaries]

That was GREAT info! Will have to read further.

 

[browneyesvictim]

Since this thread started and I tried roasting coffee I've been going on with my wife about all the subtle flavors and nuances I was getting- and more importantly how intensely FRESH it tasted. But she never understood. Now, keep in mind, she dumps a ton of flavored (White Mocha) creamer and a full cup of steamed milk in each coffee. So Sunday morning I was up before the Mrs. So I made 3 different 9oz coffees with the moka pot using each of the three fresh roasted single origin coffee beans. Each one fresh ground and measured out to perfection. I sat her down at the kitchen bar- still barely awake and with sand in her eyes- and had her try each one. First by nose, and then sipping and savoring as if it was a fine wine. And for the first time she was able to tell the difference from one coffee to the next! She particularly kept going back to the Ethiopian Yirg and commented on how "sweet" that particular one was. She said it was her favorite out of all of them. She made it clear she wasn't fond of the straight coffee, and I wasn't going to push my luck so I steamed her milk and measured out 3 TBS of creamer. But I considered the taste test a success! ...then I made us French toast and Canadian Bacon. :p

On work days, she leave the house before I do for her shift at the hospital. I rarely ever hear her getting ready or leave. But this morning, I woke up with to the smell of coffee. REALLY GOOD COFFEE! And I knew exactly what was going on! When I got up a while later after she had gone and I was making my own coffee, all of the Costa Rican beans were in the hopper/grinder of her fully automatic machine. Needless to say I don't think we will be buying already roasted beans anymore.:rolleyes:

 

[noboundaries]

Great story Erik! So good to know she could taste the difference.

I just roasted my first batch of beans from the African continent, the beans from Burundi. They have two more days before they'll be ready to grind. Can't hardly wait.

 

[tallbm]

Man these stories are all exciting (in a nerdy way) hahaha.

I can't wait to hear more.

I was telling people at work today about my coffee bean roasting adventures and how I enjoy what I've learned and the 2 roasts I've done so far. They were laughing that I don't even drink coffee but enjoy the process of it and making quality coffee for people to enjoy :)

 

[noboundaries]

Might have to start drinking coffee TB! My dad got me started with a little sugar and cream. Then I enjoyed black coffee for decades. I've had to start using cream or coconut milk again to tame the acid, but it is still something I look forward to every day. I like the flavor and stopped noticing the buzz long ago.

 

[tallbm]

Might have to start drinking coffee TB! My dad got me started with a little sugar and cream. Then I enjoyed black coffee for decades. I've had to start using cream or coconut milk again to tame the acid, but it is still something I look forward to every day. I like the flavor and stopped noticing the buzz long ago.

I like the idea of it. The issue is how easily caffeine keeps me awake at night.
If I have any caffeine like in sodas or coffee I cannot fall asleep :(
The only time I can get away with it is if it is like 5am and I'm driving for a 3-5 hours and at that point 1 iced tea will keep me awake with little issue hahaha. Or if I am going out on a weekend day and getting hammered drunk then the alcohol kind of counters the caffeine effects even though I tend to stay up late anyhow when drinking.
Hell I have to sometimes watch eating chocolate in the evening or it might keep me awake.

The oddest thing about it all is that I don't even get jittery or antsy from the caffeine unless I do something like drink 3 jager bombs in a row lol. I just can't fall asleep. Had to cut out caffeine when I was a teenager.

On a positive note, I get 7 hours of sleep and I have zero issues staying awake or starting my day. All without a need for a jump start or a boost :)

 

[redheelerdog]

I have been roasting my own coffee for a long time now. I use a modified bread maker and a heat gun in my shop, I use a window box fan to remove the chaff during roasting.

The bread maker is nice, it can do fairly large quantities: ~2lbs roasted.

 

[noboundaries]

Very cool, John! Who needs a $1200-$4000 coffee roaster? Good old heat available heat sources, plus something to move the green beans around, and something else to cool the beans and you're good to go. I had to tell my family "NO COFFEE ROASTER" for Christmas. I doubt they would have bought one anyway, but my dad never fails to surprise me. He loves to shop online. I dropped enough hints about Sweet Maria's that hopefully he got the message like my kids did. He said no gifts for Christmas, but I'll need more green beans by the time my birthday rolls around.

 

[noboundaries]

Tallbm, you're like my wife, super sensitive to caffeine. She can drink tea, but not coffee, and nothing caffeinated late in the day. When she can't sleep because she didn't follow her own rules, eating a banana will do the trick and she can fall asleep. Has something to do with the potassium.