John Makes Things

I’ve been sitting on about 4 lbs of green coffee beans that I got as a secret santa gift at work last Christmas. I tried roasting on a skillet over my bbq this winter, but it was way too inaccurate and I just ended up burning the outside of the beans and not roasting the inside (which made something that caused my grinder to cry instead of making something drinkable).

I eventually got a proper roaster for my birthday and now I’m spending a couple nights a week sitting in my garage over this beautiful machine, breathing in the sweet smell of caramelizing sugars.

Its taken about 7 batches, almost 2lbs worth of beans, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’ve been keeping a detailed log of things like fan and power settings, time between changes of those settings and even outdoor temp which I started noticing has been affecting how fast the roast progresses. My roast this evening, which followed the exact same steps as my roast from last night, was ready a full minute earlier and the only difference was the outdoor temp was 3C higher.

I’m really hopeful for this evening’s roast, which for the first time had a decently audible first crack and ended with a pretty even medium brown colour (pictured first) vs my very first roast which is super uneven (middle) and my french roast (bottom) which wasn’t supposed to be a french roast but I got carried away listening to second crack and waiting for my timer instead of paying attention to the roast colour.

I’ve been keeping pretty good logs, and once I’m at a place where I can do things fairly predictably I’ll post my steps, favourite beans and tricks I’ve picked up along the way. For now, I’ve ordered a couple more pounds of green beans, including some Jamaica Blue Mountain as a reward and test for when I feel I’ve gotten good (well, good enough) at this.