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Roasters Rant Episode 1

A video of roasting coffee beans with a hot air popcorn popper.

 

Home Coffee Roasting Tips.  I did the Popcorn popper and stovetop pan method a few years ago.  I will be periodicaly posting new home coffee roasting methods here in the future.

Home Coffee Roasting Tips

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Roasting coffee with
a Hot Air Popcorn popper

First pre heat the popper for a couple of minutes.

Measure about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of green coffee beans.

Dump them in and start your stop watch!

You can see the hot air moving the beans around. If the are
not moving, stir them a little with a wooden spoon until they do,

this is to ensure an even roast.

Put your chimney on.  This will help keep the beans in
the popper, and retain heat.

You can use the top provided with the popper if you wish, I
mainly recommend this in the colder months when roasting outside.

At about 1:30 min to 2:00 min you can see the chaf start to
collect around the popper, this is normal.

At about 3:00 min. you can see a light brown color to the beans.
The first crack should be starting soon.

At about 4-5 minutes the second crack occurs, it could be getting
smoky now too. The beans are real close to being done.

When beans get to your desired roast level dump them out onto
a cooling tray or colander to stop the roast as fast as possible,  a couple
mists of water would work nicely also,  just one or two mists no more or
the beans get wet and we don’t want that!

Grind some up and enjoy!

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Stove Top Method
of Home Roasting

Pre heat a heavy sauce pan or really any heavy pan will work,
I used a 1 quart cast iron one for these pictures.

It is important to get the pan hot but not smoking hot.

To start with dump in about a 1/2 cup of green coffee beans.
You can adjust the amount of beans as you gain experience.

You have the option of constantly stirring the beans or constantly
shaking the pan.  It is VERY important to KEEP THE BEANS MOVING!

It is hard enough to get an even roast using the stove top
method that I recommend stirring unless you have Popeye forearms!  It will
take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to complete a roast so the stirring method
is easier on your arm.

I believe this is at about 2 minutes.  The beans are starting
to turn a little yellow.

This is about 2 1/2 minutes.

At about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes all the beans are yellow or starting
to turn brown.

Keep the beans moving!

And moving!

And Moving!

At about 4 1/2 to 5 minutes the beans are almost all brown.

More stirring! (or shaking)

At about 5 1/2 or 6 minutes you should hear the first crack
stage. It kind of sounds like tiny popcorn popping.

6 1/2 to 7 minutes final stage of the first crack and the smoke
will start to show now.

Getting close keep them beans moving!

This roast was at almost 8 minutes when I dumped the beans out
to cool on some parchment paper.

Cool the beans as fast as you can.  I just spread them
out to cool on my countertop.  Some people use two colanders to dump the
beans back and forth to cool and this will also help in removing the chaf too.

Here is a close up of the finished  product!

Note that it was not a perfectly even roast, I had to stop stirring
at times so the pictures wouldn’t be blurry.

I hope you found this helpful!

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