kmanroastscoffee

[kmanroastscoffee]

Progress... Kind Of

The hot top is out. A few more bad batches were the final straw. It is a waste of good coffee. The wobble roaster has been working to various degrees. The design has been improved and continues to be improved, and the last few batches out of it have been so much better than the hot top style roaster. So much more consistency. This is a huge plus. The roast actually looks like a roast. There have been some issues with scorching - not running the charge temp too high and using the lower heat setting is essential to not rushing the roast. We have been experimenting with various lid types to promote air flow (glass and mesh), and the latest batches have actually been tasty. Honing this in will allow us to roast in much greater volumes, and quicker. The degassing/resting environment I think plays a big part in how the coffee develops. I have heard otherwise, but somehow it seems to be impacting us. We will have to see on this front. Cooling is also an issue, and we need to develop a better cooling tray set up.

In summary, strides are being made, but there are many more to take. The wobble is not meant as a permanent roasting solution. It is meant to get us quality roasted coffee, so we can get to the next roaster. Ideally, we aren't that far out. Either way, mastering this roasting is coming with some foundational learning curves that will help later on.

Wobble Roasted Batch of Mexico

[kmanroastscoffee]

The Rabbit Hole Begins

I can only imagine that the natural path for someone on the path of home roasting makes a stop at the DIY roaster aisle of the internet. Coffee roasters are unbelievably expensive, and the cheap ones suck, or can't roast enough coffee - or both. So why not build your own? I don't have an answer to that yet because I haven't left this station. Utilizing other peoples ideas, we have begun a (very) rough draft of a first roaster using $100 of materials you could find at the average yard sale - a heat gun, a flour sifter, and some wood. Zip tie and wood screw it all together, and suddenly you can roast coffee in your garage. Two 80 gram roasts later (one on high heat one on less high heat) I am interested to taste our macgyver style coffee, and see if big coffee really isn't just trying to sell me a fancy machine

[kmanroastscoffee]

Roasting in the rain is hard

So after a couple weeks, the coffee tastes..... not great. Smells OK, but was the failure I was afraid of. The coffee we needed was not going to be found in this formula. We would have to try again. So we did. We roasted again on the 28th of September. This time, we kept the lid on, charged up our temps, and stretched the roast out. The experience and results were much much tastier. A week later we have a coffee that tastes great and smells even better. Four batches, all stretched a little differently (its late so I won't be typing out the details I have written down somewhere else), all tasting good and oddly similar (or maybe not so odd since its all the same stuff). More or less a sigh of relief that the roasting dream didn't die on a rainy afternoon

[kmanroastscoffee]

Sweet Maria's Brazil. We roasted this with the garage door open during a rainstorm. I haven't done a ton of research yet into roasting, but I am pretty sure the sudden drop in temp, wind, and humidity during a rain storm made things a little more finicky. It was also incredibly hard to hear first crack, and I am not quite sure I got the timing right on any of these. The second batch I missed yellow and then couldn't hear first crack at all. I kept removing the lid to check on it, and I think that messed it up. We will see how it tastes. The batches are all relatively timed the same but came out slightly different. In hindsight, it would have been smarter to mix it up to have a better idea of the range when it came time to test them. From left to right is batch 1->2->3

[kmanroastscoffee]

ROAST LOG 09/02/2024

Same day I roasted the Tanza, I roasted a couple batches of Ethiopia as well. Four back to back roasts, it was fun to take a morning and just explore roasting. This was the last of the sample package from Amazon.

Batch 1

250g in -> 215g out

Max Temp - Yellow/5:40 1st Crack/10:50 Drop/11:50

Batch 2

201g in -> 173g out

Max Temp - Yellow/5:30 1st Crack/9:00 Drop/10:00

Rested this coffee about 7 - 10 days before drinking.

Batch One : This went well! Loud first crack, easy to watch, and smelled great straight out of the roaster. It was aromatic, tasted good, and worked well in the espresso machine and pour over alike. Costa Rica is an origin I am more used to drinking, so I was able to compare it to what I had drunk previously. It tasted comparable to stuff I had bought from other roasters which was encouraging to taste.

Batch Two: Not a lot different to say about this from batch one; the numbers and taste were similar. This was a good follow up to the weird Tanzania experience.

Next up will be Brazil from Sweet Maria's. Lots and lots of Brazil.

[kmanroastscoffee]

ROAST LOG 09/02/2024

Roasted some Tanzania a little while back, and waited until it was completely done with to report on it. The first batch is on the right (the close up) and the second batch is the picture on the left (the one a little farther away). Roasted again on the CafeMasy SCR 300B, these are the stats:

Batch 1

227g in -> 193g out

Max Temp - Yellow/4:00 1st Crack/7:15 Drop/9:00

Batch 2

228g in -> 208g out

Max Temp - Yellow/4:30 1st Crack/8:22 Drop/8:35

Rested this coffee about a week before drinking.

Batch One : I will be honest, this stuff really sucked. It either tasted too green, underdeveloped, or just plain not good. I tried espresso and pour over, changing grind size, temp, prep - you name it. I think I just didn't roast it well. First crack was really hard to hear, and the chaff did not separate (I did not know this) so I couldn't tell how developed the roast really was. It was not a good batch. Not very aromatic, very green taste somehow, and not well done.

Batch Two: I learned some lessons here, but still missed the target. This was... drinkable. I knew about the issue with the chaff, so I watched and listened a little more carefully. First crack was still really hard to hear; I dropped a little earlier to try and keep it lighter. These seemed to look much better coming out and were more aromatic. They tasted better (espresso and pour over), but that green taste was still lingering. I don't know that I will try Tanzania until I can buy it from a better source than Amazon

[kmanroastscoffee]

Spro and Some Filter Coffee

Made some spro out of the mexico and some filter coffee out of the ethiopia and vice versa. The mexico made a much better spro than filter coffee, and the ethiopia was a little dark I think for either. Surprising on the mexico, but a welcome surprise. It really could boil down to resting time, so I am going to start tracking resting

In other stuff, I roasted several batches this afternoon. Will post about them later. Excited to see how they turn out

[kmanroastscoffee]

Cupping Sesh

Cupped the Ethiopia Batch Two and Mexico Batch Two this morning. Compared against some Wild blend from Cirque Coffee. The Ethiopian was a darker on purpose, but I think a little too dark. The Mexico was comparable in color to the Cirque which was good to see - I was concerned it may have been under roasted, but I was glad to see I hit the mark on a light roast. It tasted alright, but I think I need to brew some to really get a better idea of how it tastes. Speaking of, I pulled a couple shots of Ethiopia through the GCP this morning, and they worked well - as milk drink shots. I forgot to taste them before adding them to the cortados lol. They were timed well, but I will need to taste it for real next time

[kmanroastscoffee]

Wrapped up the evening with a second batch of Mexico. Super light, kind of unintentional. Its easy to miss the mark with this roaster, especially if you are roasting in a rush (like I was). Could still make for some good brews but we will just have to see. Planning to let this and the Ethiopia of the night rest until the weekend-ish to give it some time to degas. Excited to put down a cupping

[kmanroastscoffee]

Roasted some Ethiopian tonight and tried for some medium/darker stuff. I have been using my espresso machine a lot more so I wanted to put something more classic in it than what I had before. Despite the shorter roast times the roast came out darker than the first batch. Maybe because the coffee was opened and aged more? Will have to look into it for sure. Either way I am stoked to give it a try

[kmanroastscoffee]

Starting to learn how to roast. Got a starter roaster and roasted my first couple of batches on the Cafe Masy SCR300B about a month ago. Roasted some Ethiopian and some Mexican (I forgot to take a picture of the second batch, I believe the Mexican). It was honestly a little easier than I thought and instantly kickstarted me wanting to do a LOT more of this... and then I put it away for several weeks because I got busy haha. Both coffees were received well as filter coffee, with the Mexican the favorite (and mine as well).