Home Coffee Roasting

[notoriousdjw]

My experience with air roasting was limited to using a small roaster called the iRoast2. It roasted fast and you could hear the first crack but 2nd crack was always a mystery (the roaster was also referred to as the iRoar). I was always dumping my beans at city roast or realizing that 2nd crack was well underway and ending up with italian roast.

After that it was all drum roasting. I had an Alpenroast that made good coffee but was prone to chaff fires and eventually the mechanism that turns the drum ate itself. I got a free warranty replacement and got rid of it. Next was a 3lb drum used with a chicken rotisserie motor on my gas grill (had a grill just for coffee to avoid weird flavor crossover). That produced excellent coffee from time to time and the results were often very good. It was inconsistent though and I stopped using it when my job changed and I was no longer responsible for keeping the office supplied with beans. I made my drum from 2 stainless steel office waste baskets but now you can buy them on ebay.

Finally I roasted every week for several years with a Behmor 1600. It was a nice unit and produced very consistent results. Darker roasts required cutting the batch size down to maybe 10-12oz (green). When baby 2 arrived I decided to reclaim the hour I spent roasting and gave the Behmor to a friend. It's a fun hobby and a great way to learn what you like and don't like.

[Dorman]

I love it, but a little depressing....