Curious about Roasting - Page 3

Discuss roast levels and profiles for espresso, equipment for roasting coffee.
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luca
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#21: Post by luca »

Capuchin Monk wrote:There must be real good roasters around you in which case I envy you. Where I am, they are OK (to my preference) at the most but the biggest problem is the shelf time. Even the so called fresh batch is about a week old and hard to find. In most cases 2 to 3 weeks old that are from local roasters. Roasts from further away are a month old or more.

The advantage of home roasting is the guaranteed freshness and customized roast to fit one's own taste. Around where I am, the espresso roast is medium roast. I always thought this particular roast (Espresso / Italian Roast) is similar darkness as French Roast.
Don't let me mislead you into thinking that I'm always drinking fantastic coffee. I'm pretty sensitive to a lot of roast defects and particular qualities that might not be defects in green, but that I nonetheless really hate. I drink lots of coffee that I'd think of as "good"; at the moment, I get more enjoyment out of a fairly bland and boring, but clean and sweet, green coffee with a roast that has no baked, charred or flicked character to it than I do out of, say, a highly aromatic and expensive coffee that has some of those roast defects and/or some off green characteristics to it. People in Melbourne have some patriotic sense of pride that our coffee is supposedly amazing, and what this really means is that if you walk into any random cafe and order a milk drink, the shots are pretty likely to be competently extracted and the milk will be well textured. But I don't think that we really have any roasters that are consistently pumping out aromatic, clean light roasts with no baked or flicked flavours, with green coffee that is free of what I think of as off flavours. My friends and I have an ever-expanding blacklist of roasters, and the ones that are doing a really great job that we buy from regularly are overseas. I buy a little bit of stuff from local roasters, which is always a crapshoot; probably 40% of the time it's undrinkable, 50% of the time it's OK but not memorable and the remainder it's kind of good. What this means is that the bar is lowered, so at the moment I'm drinking a lot of home roast; it's often slightly underdeveloped, but it's better than the alternatives and it's usually in the genre of something that I've picked and I enjoy.

But this is a good point to illustrate the unreliability of things you read on the internet about coffee. Things people write tend to be polarised into good and bad. You'll rarely read a dispassionate evaluation of any coffee that acknowledges that there are shades of grey. People carry on like coffee is either 90+ or it's undrinkable.
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BogongTiger
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#22: Post by BogongTiger »

Much of what's been written here about poor vs good vs excellent roasts is undoubtedly true. The thing is, unless one's palate is well-trained and their coffee-making skills are decent, a person might not know the difference. They'll "know what they like" but may not know if they've converted an excellent roasted coffee into an excellent espresso, or an average espresso, or an awful espresso by objective standards.

I'm in the "know what I like" category and may never rise far beyond that. Now that I've retired and not constantly rushing from one thing/place to another, I'm taking a bit more care with roasting and the technique of making espresso, and enjoying the ride.

I do think I'd be wasting time and money if I were to try roasting and brewing a super-expensive geisha bean - as much because of my skill level as the equipment I have, and that my palate may not be sufficiently refined to fully appreciate it even were I to fluke "excellent" at every step - ha ha.

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luca
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#23: Post by luca »

BogongTiger wrote:I do think I'd be wasting time and money if I were to try roasting and brewing a super-expensive geisha bean - as much because of my skill level as the equipment I have, and that my palate may not be sufficiently refined to fully appreciate it even were I to fluke "excellent" at every step - ha ha.
Not only that, but if you roasted a super expensive geisha coffee, you might absolutely nail it. And still not like it.

Personally, I agree absolutely that people should like what they like and not worry about what others think. Whilst I do follow all of the geekery, the latest processes, stuff that people are using for barista and brewers' cup competitions and auctions like cup of excellence and best of panama, there's a lot of coffee that is very expensive, very highly scored, praised by people who are prominent in the industry, and that I find utterly revolting.

The problem is that when we write about things that we subjectively like, it can influence others into spending money when their subjective view is different and they might not have otherwise spent the money. When a vendor does it, if it's an out and out lie, it's probably illegal. For example, if they sell you brazil pulp natural catuai and then what's in the bag is actually washed ethiopian heirloom. If a vendor tells you it will taste like berries and flowers and it tastes like hay and socks, it might be a lie or an honest mistake, or it might be illegal, but, regardless, no one is going to hold them to account in a practical sense. If they are charging a premium for the berries and flowers, I'd argue that's pretty reprehensible. The consumer may or may not realise. If they're selling it cheap and arguing that it's extremely high quality and the consumer doesn't realise, but they're happy, maybe who cares; victimless crime and no real harm to anyone. If a consumer raves about that coffee as the "best" with no context, they may induce other consumers to go and buy it. That other consumer might be very happy with it, or they might think that they would never have spent money on it in a million years had they known what they are getting. There aren't straightforward solutions to these issues.
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Ypuh
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#24: Post by Ypuh »

Did notice a few regional differences in this topic. I just started roasting 2 weeks ago and went all-in with an Artisan controller 1kg home roaster.

- Freshness matters, but in our small country you'll find at least 50 specialty coffee roasteries that roast-on-order and have it delivered to you the next day
- That makes for some competitive prices as well, 1kg/2lbs ranges from €20-35 incl. shipping
- Greens are similarly widely available, 1kg/2lbs of those same coffees costs about €8-12 depending on if you buy in bulk (note that you lose 15-20% in weight after the roast). In general you could say that a roasted bean costs twice that of a green bean, meaning you save about €10-15 per kg. A little less if you calculate for electricity and bags
- I'm biased due to my recent purchase, but I'd say the fun starts at a roaster that has a logging feature and some thermocouples, and ideally also a drum. That makes it more of a science with some data and repeatability. As an IT-guy that's probably what fascinated me the most. Auto-roasting is more difficult than it sounds, but at least the data is an useful tool in trying to replicate a profile

All in all it's a fun hobby and I can really recommend anyone to try it (maybe even with a popper, although that doesn't interest me personally). In my situation however the business case for home roasting is horrible. With about 3kg's a month for personal consumption, you'd save about 3 * €10 * 12 months = €360/yr.

With the price of my equipment and some accessories, the payback period is approximately 8 years so really not worth it. Although, roasters are quite popular here so re-sale value might be higher than you think. If you take that into account, it might be more like 3-4 years and then it does become interesting :). Again, it's a fun hobby and I can still recommend it!
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BogongTiger
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#25: Post by BogongTiger »

luca wrote: The problem is that when we write about things that we subjectively like, it can influence others into spending money when their subjective view is different and they might not have otherwise spent the money. ...

When a vendor does it, if it's an out and out lie, it's probably illegal. For example, if they sell you brazil pulp natural catuai and then what's in the bag is actually washed ethiopian heirloom. If a vendor tells you it will taste like berries and flowers and it tastes like hay and socks, it might be a lie or an honest mistake, or it might be illegal, but, regardless, no one is going to hold them to account in a practical sense. If they are charging a premium for the berries and flowers, I'd argue that's pretty reprehensible. The consumer may or may not realise. If they're selling it cheap and arguing that it's extremely high quality and the consumer doesn't realise, but they're happy, maybe who cares; victimless crime and no real harm to anyone. If a consumer raves about that coffee as the "best" with no context, they may induce other consumers to go and buy it. That other consumer might be very happy with it, or they might think that they would never have spent money on it in a million years had they known what they are getting. There aren't straightforward solutions to these issues.
That's true (consumer beware), but it's no different in any line of activity (work or leisure). Over the years I've been learning who to take heed of in online coffee forums, blogs etc (such as luca and others here and elsewhere). There's a mountain of good information available and a lot of experts who are very generous with their knowledge and time.

I've only come back online recently (re coffee) and see that I've missed out on a lot of developments in home espresso over the past decade or so. When I started out there was no WDT or RDT and everyone was buying gaggias and rancilios, breadmakers and heat guns. Now it seems if you're not paying $15,000 for a home espresso machine and $10,000 for a home roaster, you're not in the game. Maybe I exaggerate a little but not by much :D

I don't know if the change is old-timers now being in a position to spend the wealth they've accumulated, or newcomers on big salaries jumping into coffee, or terrific marketing. I hope it lasts because innovation at the high end generally means improvements and innovation at entry and mid level, which I'm also seeing.

I think I'm straying a bit off topic. Sorry about that. I will say that roasting green beans is a fantastic way of learning more about the beverage we all know and love - and in my case at least, has been a considerable cost saving. I looked at it recently and if I'd gone out and bought as many coffees as I've had at home (home roasted), I'd have spent ~$25,000 more over the past 15 years or so. That's including the cost of equipment, energy, water, milk, coffee beans etc. But at the time I got into it, it was more to have freshly roasted beans and experiment a bit. Saving $$ was a secondary consideration.

Mbb
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#26: Post by Mbb »

luca wrote:Not only that, but if you roasted a super expensive geisha coffee, you might absolutely nail it. And still not like it.

.
Yup. Son gave me some geishas for christmas from some good roasters.
Maybe some people are just in love with flowery coffee, not me.

This stuff falls under novelty in my book. No way is it worth $$$ to me.
Not interested......at all. Certainly not worth any premium. People confuse different with desirable, imo.

My criteria for what's good, is ...do you want to drink this all day long, everyday?

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LBIespresso
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#27: Post by LBIespresso »

rrahman wrote:I am interested in starting to roast my own coffee beans, but have some reservations about it. I was hoping some experience home roasters could validate my reasons for doing this and address my concerns...

The main reasons I am interested in starting to roast are
1) Despite being a very steep learning curve, I am someone that enjoys the details and prefers full control of the entire bean to cup process.
2) My wife and I drink lots of coffee, ~1600$/year. In the long term this may pay for itself w/ the amount we consume.
3) We drink decaf or odd ball types of coffee infrequently. It would be nice if we could keep a stockpile of green beans to roast little by little to keep freshly roasted beans on hand.

My main concerns are
1) I am concerned about the challenges I would have in sourcing as diverse of an array of green coffee beans as I currently have access to buying from subscription services and professional roasters. Is this a legitimate concern?
2) As I mentioned before we use subscription services like Moustache and purchase coffee from professional roasters like counter culture, onyx, wild gift, JBC, etc... As a home roaster enthusiast will I ever be able to roast beans as well as or better than their roasted beans?
3) Once the learning curve is climbed, how much time does it take to roast a batch? Do coffee roasters have lots of maintenance costs? Clean up time/costs?

Thanks for looking!
I apologize for any repeats here as I will admit to not reading all of the responses before mine but, here's my thoughts:

Reasons:
1: Good for you! Take control of yet another step in the process. It's fun, rewarding, and intellectually challenging in a good way.
2: My personal opinion is that I don't believe ANYONE that says they saved money by starting to roast. (Please withhold all retorts to this as I both don't believe you and admit that I may be wrong...still don't believe you though :lol: )
3: This is a good thing. It will help you learn faster by eliminating another variable.

Concerns:
1: Greens Alert and Greens Suppliers threads on here have you covered!
2: 2 years in for me and I have some coffees that I roast that in my mind are on that level (Unblinded and completely biased)
3: I set aside 2 or 3 hours each time from setup thru cleanup but I take my time. If I needed to I could do it in less. If you do your own maintenance it shouldn't be too time consuming or expensive but that will vary machine to machine.

Bonus answer:

HB is and endlessly useful resource as well as a place to get most of you money back if you decide to bail and sell your roaster.
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Capuchin Monk
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#28: Post by Capuchin Monk »

luca wrote:The problem is that when we write about things that we subjectively like, it can influence others into spending money when their subjective view is different and they might not have otherwise spent the money. When a vendor does it, if it's an out and out lie, it's probably illegal. For example, if they sell you brazil pulp natural catuai and then what's in the bag is actually washed ethiopian heirloom. If a vendor tells you it will taste like berries and flowers and it tastes like hay and socks, it might be a lie or an honest mistake, or it might be illegal, but, regardless, no one is going to hold them to account in a practical sense. If they are charging a premium for the berries and flowers, I'd argue that's pretty reprehensible. The consumer may or may not realise. If they're selling it cheap and arguing that it's extremely high quality and the consumer doesn't realise, but they're happy, maybe who cares; victimless crime and no real harm to anyone. If a consumer raves about that coffee as the "best" with no context, they may induce other consumers to go and buy it. That other consumer might be very happy with it, or they might think that they would never have spent money on it in a million years had they known what they are getting. There aren't straightforward solutions to these issues.
That seems to be a given in human society. I frequent audio electronics and cycling forums. I see the same dance with different tune. Some vendors will join forums and pretend to be average Joe and post bunch of praises on the products they sell while badmouthing the competition.
LBIespresso wrote:3: I set aside 2 or 3 hours each time from setup thru cleanup but I take my time. If I needed to I could do it in less. If you do your own maintenance it shouldn't be too time consuming or expensive but that will vary machine to machine.
2 or 3 hours each time with Cormorant? :shock:

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LBIespresso
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#29: Post by LBIespresso »

Capuchin Monk wrote:
2 or 3 hours each time with Cormorant? :shock:
That is taking my time setting up and cleaning up with lazy BBP and 5 roasts. I can get 2 roasts done pretty quick if I needed to and on very rare occasions I do just that.

Might also be a symptom of retirement...I can turn any task into most of a day :lol:
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yakster
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#30: Post by yakster »

Of possible interest is the 5thwave Magazine podcast, Episode 41: Home coffee roasting: A slow burn market with guests Kenneth Davids, Andrew Stordy (Ikawa), and Tom Owens (Sweet Marias).

https://www.worldcoffeeportal.com/5THWA ... ng-at-home
-Chris

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