Sunday, November 15th, 2009...10:25 pm
Home-Roasting Heretic: Happy Accidents
By: Alex Scofield
A royal screwup led to my first major home-roasting success.
Well, I should be more specific – the right kind of screwup led to success. My first few home-roasting endeavors (particularly the first) were chock-full of screwups, and none of them yielded great results. On my fourth or fifth attempt, however, despite thinking I had under-roasted the beans, I experienced my first “Daaaaaaamn, that’s good!” batch.
The light-roasted beans on the left were the result of a botched roasting operation — which proved to be a very happy accident.
A roasting emergency forced me to prematurely halt an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe/Sidamo roast. Using the Westbend Poppery, I had placed a soup can atop the popper as a chimney (a suggestion from MAS’s Roasting Coffee in a Popcorn Popper tutorial on INeedCoffee). The problem was that the can I used was coated inside. I noticed a couple of beans sticking to the can, apparently because the heat was softening this coating and making it adhesive. I switched the power off, to end the roast and save the rest of the beans.
I’ve long preferred darker roasts, so I was disappointed that this session ended with the beans just barely at a Light Roast stage. Still, I wasn’t going to let this batch go to waste.
I drip-brewed a pot, expecting mediocrity. Instead, I was blown away. For the first time, I could recognize distinct tastes in the beans I roasted (“floral, earthy”). This was the first batch I roasted that I would have been able to identify in a blind cupping. Accidentally, I roasted Ethiopian beans to perfection.
The morals of this story are twofold:
The trial-and-error involved in learning home-roasting can lead to some fortuitous discoveries.
Home-roasters using a soup can on the Poppery should make sure the can has no interior coating.
Tags: ethiopian, home roasting, homeroasting heretic, poppery
4 Comments
November 18th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Home roasting is on my list of things I want to do. However, I was afraid I would be making too many mistakes and wasting too much good coffee. Who knew mistakes could be a good thing. lol
November 18th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
One of the good things about home-roasting is that, roasting in batches of 4-6 oz., a mistake only costs about $1.50-$2.00. I still hate the idea of dumping $2 down the drain, but I’ve only brewed one batch that was so bad I couldn’t drink it. When the risks are that low, I’m more willing to experiment — the results, as I’m discovering, can be a pleasant surprise.
November 19th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
It seems like another lesson here is that lighter roasts are often a good thing. I might take it farther and assert that medium to light roasts certainly reveal more about the bean and are nearly always yummier than darker roast, especially oily ones. Either way though, I’m happy for your discovery.
November 19th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
At this point, I’m definitely a believer that the lighter roasts reveal more about the bean — even with beans that are supposed to hold up well in the darker roasting levels. A huge part of the fun of home-roasting is having a dozen or so different types of beans to try. If you roast them all to the point of same-ness, it kinda defeats the purpose. Lighter roasts are definitely beginning to grow on me.
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