The Fresher, The Better? Coffee Roasting Examined
There's so much to say about coffee roasting and so much to learn for a novice that it can seem quite intimidating. Sometimes, even the basics are contradictory. For example, everyone knows that coffee should be ground moments before brewing for the freshest taste... and one could assume the same about roasting, except for one would then look foolish. Because you're supposed to let your roast sit, actually rest for 2 hours-2 days for optimal flavor, as the CO2 vents or some other chemically (ob)noxious process.
Roasting your own coffee will, eventually, result in a better cup of coffee (or, at least, a fresher cup you have more control over). It can also save you money, because unroasted beans (so-called "green" beans, which smell like barley and look exactly like green coffee) are much cheaper than roasted.
But before you rush into roasting, there is more you should consider. Roasting takes time; ten or twenty minutes to roast, a day or two to wait, not to mention all of the cleaning and setup and waiting for your green coffee to arrive and throwing away lots of coffee that wasn't roasted quite right. Not to mention the bane of every roaster- chaff, which is the skin of the bean that comes off during heating (think peanut skins). You get the idea: it's not a walk in the park and it will never be. Roasters still can lay claim to it being an art more than a science and though the i-Roast 2 does a lot of the work for you and handles the chaff quite well, you still need to keep an eye on your coffee the whole time!
We bought our coffee from the best place online: Sweet Maria's. Any coffee roaster worth their beans will talk about Sweet Maria's, with it's large list of interesting green coffees and excellent resources for those trying to roast at home. They have a $15 minimum order, so we bought one of their samplers (4 small bags), their Espresso blend, and a bag of "junk coffee" simply to serve as our first roast test.
After unpacking the Hearthware i-Roast 2, we read the manual and learned that you can program your own "roasting profiles". We also learned that roasting will produce smoke, and many people do it outside or in a garage (we chose an area next to a window, and used a powerful fan to avoid problems). It's noisy as well, loud enough to necessitate shouting in the immediate area. And if that wasn't enough, we saw that roasting can depend on the temperature of the air, humidity, size of the beans, prevailing trade winds, and whether or not you've been a nice person.
OK, well, maybe not that bad. But it *is* a sensitive process, and hard to get the same results consistently without quite a bit of practice. Some of you might not even know what kind of roast you like- most Americans seem to like a mid-dark roast, maybe a Full City (yes, seriously, there is also the City, City+, and a whole lot of other new terms you'll need to learn). You might not know what type of coffee you like, and we're not talking "latte" or "grande" here- we're talking Ethiopian versus Colombian. There's peaberry coffee, which happens when the coffee tree produces a single bean per cherry instead of the usual two. And there's things like "wet processed" and "dry processed" to think about. If you do it wrong, and roast too lightly, you'll end up with doughy coffee, which has an odd bready flavor.
Or you can just roast, use the presets, and see what happens. The iRoast can handle what seems like a small amount of beans, but will make around 8 cups of coffee in the end. Toss the green beans in and it'll blow them around and heat them up to around 450 degrees F. When you see them get to the appropriate color, simply hit the cool button.
We have no real complaints about the i-Roast 2- it's a good introduction to roasting. Our real complaints are reserved for the idea itself- what sort of fool decided to pick these weird cherries, heat this stuff up to the right temperature and blow it around, then grind it, add hot water, filter it all, and drink the resulting brew? Roasting is fun (in a "do-it-yourself" sort of way) but is not for the faint of heart, those with small apartments, or anyone who is OK with Folgers or (god forbid) Sanka. But if you treat coffee like wine, and are comfortable talking about "body" and "subtle aromatics", you owe it to yourself to try roasting. At the very least, you'll learn a lot in the process.
But let's step back- we promised you that we would take a look at coffee roasting and specifically the Hearthware i-Roast 2, which is one of a handful of consumer-level home coffee roasters. And we fully intended to simply do our normal look at this pretty nifty gadget, until we realized that some of you may want to know a little bit more about the item than whether it works (it does) and how much it costs (around $200).
Roasting your own coffee will, eventually, result in a better cup of coffee (or, at least, a fresher cup you have more control over). It can also save you money, because unroasted beans (so-called "green" beans, which smell like barley and look exactly like green coffee) are much cheaper than roasted.
But before you rush into roasting, there is more you should consider. Roasting takes time; ten or twenty minutes to roast, a day or two to wait, not to mention all of the cleaning and setup and waiting for your green coffee to arrive and throwing away lots of coffee that wasn't roasted quite right. Not to mention the bane of every roaster- chaff, which is the skin of the bean that comes off during heating (think peanut skins). You get the idea: it's not a walk in the park and it will never be. Roasters still can lay claim to it being an art more than a science and though the i-Roast 2 does a lot of the work for you and handles the chaff quite well, you still need to keep an eye on your coffee the whole time!
We bought our coffee from the best place online: Sweet Maria's. Any coffee roaster worth their beans will talk about Sweet Maria's, with it's large list of interesting green coffees and excellent resources for those trying to roast at home. They have a $15 minimum order, so we bought one of their samplers (4 small bags), their Espresso blend, and a bag of "junk coffee" simply to serve as our first roast test.
After unpacking the Hearthware i-Roast 2, we read the manual and learned that you can program your own "roasting profiles". We also learned that roasting will produce smoke, and many people do it outside or in a garage (we chose an area next to a window, and used a powerful fan to avoid problems). It's noisy as well, loud enough to necessitate shouting in the immediate area. And if that wasn't enough, we saw that roasting can depend on the temperature of the air, humidity, size of the beans, prevailing trade winds, and whether or not you've been a nice person.
OK, well, maybe not that bad. But it *is* a sensitive process, and hard to get the same results consistently without quite a bit of practice. Some of you might not even know what kind of roast you like- most Americans seem to like a mid-dark roast, maybe a Full City (yes, seriously, there is also the City, City+, and a whole lot of other new terms you'll need to learn). You might not know what type of coffee you like, and we're not talking "latte" or "grande" here- we're talking Ethiopian versus Colombian. There's peaberry coffee, which happens when the coffee tree produces a single bean per cherry instead of the usual two. And there's things like "wet processed" and "dry processed" to think about. If you do it wrong, and roast too lightly, you'll end up with doughy coffee, which has an odd bready flavor.
Or you can just roast, use the presets, and see what happens. The iRoast can handle what seems like a small amount of beans, but will make around 8 cups of coffee in the end. Toss the green beans in and it'll blow them around and heat them up to around 450 degrees F. When you see them get to the appropriate color, simply hit the cool button.
We have no real complaints about the i-Roast 2- it's a good introduction to roasting. Our real complaints are reserved for the idea itself- what sort of fool decided to pick these weird cherries, heat this stuff up to the right temperature and blow it around, then grind it, add hot water, filter it all, and drink the resulting brew? Roasting is fun (in a "do-it-yourself" sort of way) but is not for the faint of heart, those with small apartments, or anyone who is OK with Folgers or (god forbid) Sanka. But if you treat coffee like wine, and are comfortable talking about "body" and "subtle aromatics", you owe it to yourself to try roasting. At the very least, you'll learn a lot in the process.
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