Homebuilt Coffee Roaster
Roasting your own coffee at home is not as hard as you think. It is pretty easy to make coffee that is better than you can buy in the grocery store because it is fresher. The only difficult parts are making your roasts consistent and dealing with the smoke.
I made this roaster from a drill with a broken trigger, a speed controller, the gears from a food processor, and a Whirly Pop popcorn popper.
The roast level is determined by the smell, sound, temperature, and time. Roasting coffee smells fantastic, but the smoke is pretty heavy, so you can't do it in your house without serious ventilation. As the roast progresses is starts to smell grassy, then toasty, then like brewing coffee, and if you go too far it just smells like smoke. When the roast level is very light and just barely drinkable, there is a popping sound that sounds like a quiet version of popcorn - that is first crack. If you keep roasting, there is another sound that is higher pitched and sharper - that is second crack. If you keep roasting until second crack finishes the coffee will be very dark and oily with a burned flavor. Any stopping point between first and second crack has the potential to make great coffee. Time and temperature are linked together because you can roast at high temperature for a short time or at a lower temperature for a longer time. My preference is to do darker roasts quickly and lighter roasts slowly, but that is a matter of taste.
At the end of video you can see me dropping the hot beans into a sieve box connected to a suction fan. The fan pulls a lot of air through the beans to cool them off quickly so that they don't over-roast. It also collects the chaff, which is a papery skin from the outside of the beans.
When the beans are cool you can use them right away, but darker roasts will improve a bit in 12 to 24 hours because some of the harsher flavors will fade.
For the freshest coffee,
drink your coffee within 10 minutes of brewing
brew your coffee within 10 hours of grinding
roast your coffee within 10 months of picking
Such good info and so glad to discover your page! You have a lot of good stuff! I am sloooowly working my way backwards towards the perfect hand brew. I like Aeropress for full flavour, I've hand ground with a mortar and pestle (sometimes no/not enough electricity) but roasting is my next adventure. Did you ever try in a Wok to start? Following! Cheers @ecoknowme
Roasting in a wok should work just fine, but it will take some practice. It helps a lot to have a thermometer, especially when you are starting out. The only thermometer that would work well with a wok would be a non-contact infrared pyrometer. It would also help if you had someone to show you what it looks, sounds, and smells like when it is working.
We always use the Aeropress now. It makes a much better cup that the French press when you can't get perfectly ground beans.
I've only used the Whirly Pop and my homemade drum roaster. The Whirly Pop works great, but I wore out the gears on three of them and got tired of fixing it. They only last for about 100 lbs of beans before the gears get too loose.
Awesome! Just need to replace the batteries in the infrared thermometer (what luck) What is the ideal temp for roasting??? I hear it generally take 1/2 hour to 1 hour.... depending on the type of roast you prefer.
Try to adjust your burner so that it will heat the wok to about 500F when it is empty. If the temperature is still slowly rising when you hit 500F that is okay, but it should be pretty steady.
Roast times should be 8 to 25 minutes on your first try and you can adjust from there. Half an hour is too long, the aromatic compounds in the coffee will be gone by then.
The internal bean temperatures are going to be significantly lower than 500F. The roasting really begins at about 325F. Hopefully you will hit that after about 5 minutes. The objective is to get the temperature up quickly at the beginning then decrease the heating rate as you move through first crack. Stretching out the time between first crack and second crack gives more time for the roast flavor to develop. If you like light roasts then you will probably not see second crack at all.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.
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