The original iRoast home coffee roasting had this annoying problem. About every 3rd or 4th roast the lid would pop off during the roast or cooling cycle. It didn’t affect every unit, but it did mine. When I moved to the iRoast 2, I was happy that I didn’t have to slap tape to hold [...]
A royal screwup led to my first major home-roasting success.
I just put out a full article on the economics of home roasting coffee on INeedCoffee. The article is titled The Quick Economics of Home Roasting Coffee. Check it out.
Photo 2 Pounds of Green Coffee Beans by INeedCoffee / CoffeeHero
Is the Robusta bean inherently inferior to the Arabica bean? It was time for me to make up my own mind.
INeedCoffee just published my interview with Chris Arnold about the Green Coffee Buying Club.
While researching the economics of home coffee roasting, I wanted to learn more about a green coffee buying cooperative. Green bean coffee cooperatives are groups that pool their money together to buy sizes of unroasted coffee that are usually only available to commercial roasters.
Here [...]
I’ve used several Westbend Poppery machines to roast coffee. I’ve roasted with some form of a Westbend in Tampa Bay, Northern Virginia, San Diego and now Seattle. Paul from the Caffination is using his Poppery in Philadelphia. Alex is roasting with his in Cape Cod. Ryan, who resides in Columbus, also has [...]
My safety net is gone. Last week, I ground and brewed the last of the professionally-roasted coffee beans in my home. Waiting in the on-deck circle are five pound-bags of green, unroasted beans.
Pat McGarraugh from Caravan Coffee Roastery of Newberg, Oregon sent me photos from the 2009 Dancing Flames Home Coffee Roasting Festival. The results for the event were:
1st Place winner is Fred Shipley of Newberg, OR
2nd Place winner is Curtis Byers of Salem, OR
3rd Place winner is Dick Van Noord of Newberg, OR
The event raised [...]
Surprises are always in store a novice coffee home-roaster, but nothing prepared me for the creatures that swarmed my fourth-ever home-roast. My first home-roasting experience was a certified fiasco, and the second one had its bumps as well. But yesterday, my fourth attempt finally produced the dark-roast I craved. That’s not the reason I’ll remember [...]
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Ounces of coffee in the bag of roasted coffee beans on the left.
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Ounces of coffee in the bag of unroasted coffee beans on the right.
A pound-bag of roasted beans and a pound-bag of unroasted beans.
Identical weight; radically different volume. It reminds me of the brain-teaser about carrying 100 pounds of bricks versus 100 pounds [...]
