Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Roasting Video

OK, it's getting late, and I need to go  sleep.. but I figure I will quickly post the video of my Technique.

Here are the tools I use:

WB Air Crazy... Silicon Hot Pad, chimney, beans and Chinese *C K-type bead thermocouple thermometer.

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe... 2.87 Oz.. a little less beans for a lighter roast.  C+ is about it for Yirgacheffe.  FC I typically roast to requires exactly 3.00 Oz. 
 The Technique... hmm...

 The "Shake n' Bake" technique of using the WB Air Crazy.   The thing is low wattage at 1040W and has a weak fan.  No biggie if you manually help the unit.  The Nesco roaster for as bad as a design IMHO as it seems has an interesting feature.. that is the screw that agitates the beans in the chamber.  This makes up for a weaker fan.  So why not do the same for $135 less?  Why not indeed.

Here is the only of the four videos I did last weekend that came out.. but it's okay even if my ugly foot enters the picture a few times...



But as you can see.. it's not that difficult, there are some tricks you can do to stretch out the roast a bit.  Every one of those tricks also tends to equalize the bean temps, meaning more even and ultimately more tasty roasts.

If you are like me and do maybe 2-2.5 cups of beans a week (meaning 2 strong cappucinos a day 7 days a week) and like to have a different single origin or made up on the spot blend every day, this is a good technique.  As much as I'd like a Behmor or a GeneCafe or even a HotTop, roasting a pound at a time I'd find to be really boring.  The advantage to buying beans from Burman's and Sweet Maria's is that they will sell you a pound or two of fifteen different types of coffee for only a buck or two more a pound than buying 50-125 lb. bags from e-bay or a distributor.  I'd take advantage of it.  So that's why I love this technique.  It's quick, easy, forces you to learn quite a bit about the beans and also teaches you technique you'd never learn on an "automatic" roaster.

Hopefully this can get you started.  There are probably better air poppers out there.  The Poppery I's certainly are, and if you find one at Goodwill, you are golden.  If you think e-bay.. hell, get the SR500 or even the Behmor instead.  But you can do perfectly fine with today's much cheaper quality Chinese junque if you help the units out by bypassing the thermostat (which is occasionally needed even in a Poppery I!) and by shaking the beans to help out the weak fan.

Trust me it works.  My roasts are in demand by others.

Until next time...

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