How To Roast Great Coffee Consistently

today we're going to be answering the question how do we roast great coffee at home consistently this is the fourth in a series I call the secret sauce of roasting coffee at home and basically they're foundational videos and we started out with where the Journey Begins just using a hot air popcorn popper or a frying pan and roasting coffee for the first time but quickly we learned that we aren't really able to control the roast well um and in my example I used the hot air popcorn popper and we realized that we couldn't manage the Heat and so we used the popper uh from sweet maras and that allowed us to control the heat over time and that allowed us to get a pretty decent roast going U with a Costa Rican natural processed coffee and then we talked about how important temperatures are we used the beore and we were able to monitor temperatures now they weren't Bean temperatures it was an environmental temperature tempure but temperatures were used to help us reference the roast progress and we talked about that in our last video well in today's video we're tying all that together and we're going to be looking at roasting coffee in a timeline with our events and our temperatures so the events we're talking about are really there's four or five events depending upon how you're roasting there is the charge event and that's when the beans go into The Roaster that's when the roast begins then there is the dry end event or the yellow event that is when the coffee beans turn yellow then there's first crack that's when the beans are in this Browning phase and then they get to the point where um they have dried out enough pressure has built up where the structure of the bean cracks open and that's called first crack some of us roast till second crack and then uh the last event is the drop event which brings us into the cooling phase and that's when the coffee roasts the coffee leaves the rooster and the roast ends so we're going to be using those events in a timeline and we're going to be using this worksheet and it's going to end up looking something like this and you can see it on the screen I'll put it up there for you but on the left I have my timeline and then next to that I have a series of temperatures written down and then you'll notice that I have um the different phases highlighted during the timeline so up till 4 minutes is the drrive phase and then from 4 minutes till 7:30 is the Browning phase and then there's the development phase how do I know the times and how do I know when these events are going to occur at these times we're going to get to that you're going to see how this unfolds But ultimately the punchline is is that I'm fam familiar with the hive rooster I've used it enough where I understand how the temperature readings display and what they represent so I know that dry end gets U happens between 330 and 340° on my hive rooster I know that first crack happens between 375 and 390° and my best guess is it's going to happen around 386 de so here here I have on my graph uh my event times and I've circled them 4 minutes dry end 7:30 is going to be first crack in 9 minutes the roast is going to end let's get roasting and then we'll talk more about all of this and we'll put it together all right so here I am charging my raser uh as we begin to speak it's 393 de is what I'm charging my rooster at and I'm pouring the bees in beans in it's 150 gram of green Costa Rican natural processed coffee it's the same coffee that I've used and quickly you'll see that 393 degrees is dropping and it's going to drop over 100° and that's because the bean probe that is inside the hive coffee roaster is reading the cooler bean temperature against the probe and that's why this temperature is dropping in uh about a half a minute that temperature will stop dropping and it will start to climb and that is a way point that we'll call Turning Point you'll see that I'm moving the hive around and this Hive rooster it's a great roster I'm going to show you the inside of this thing here in just a minute as we're talking but the hive roaster is uh keeping the beans moving because the inside of this rooster has a kind of a uneven bottom and the beans tumble and so I have to keep moving this rooster to keep the beans moving and it's going to keep them from burning I'm um working this Hive roaster above a flame and you'll notice while I roast that I will change the height of the raster away from the flame and that is how I'm managing my heat with this uh with this flame so we are at 1 minute approaching 1 minute and 30 seconds my target temperature is 297 de and I'm going to be behind um and I'll tell you why I'm going to be behind here here as we as we go along but ultimately I had to choose a temperature I thought we were going to be at at turning point and I was off a little bit and then also I was calculating my rate of Rise during the dry phase I don't want to lose sight of the fact that I want this coffee to be yellow at 4 minutes and we basically have a little over 2 minutes to get the coffee dry so I'm moving the rooster around keeping the beans moving so that they don't burn and the temperatures are consistently climbing we are at 2 minutes right now at 278 de and at 2 minutes I wanted to be at 305 so I am about uh 25 to 30° behind where I need to be but I still had have um you know a minute and 45 seconds left so I'm confident that I will get to this temperature or close to it by the time we should be getting close to the dry end event all right as we're working towards dry I want to show you the inside of the hive so here is the inside of the Dome and you'll see the probe that's in there and that is sitting inside of this bed where the coffee is is going to lie this pan holds the coffee and you notice the bottom how the bottom of the pan has these bumps on it and that is as I'm moving this it's keeping the coffee be tumbling so that's why I'm moving this roster around I don't want it to get burned the hive is displaying the temperature it's plugged in with this little USB um plug and this roster is a very affordable roster you can they start at uh just under $100 and um that's without the temperature display with the temperature display it's just under $200 all right we're at the 3 minute Mark right now and at 3 minutes I wanted to be at 325° and I'm at 307 I'm really happy with that so I'm only about 15° off from where I want to be uh in my goal to be uh dry at 4 minutes I'm going to start to look at the color here and I'm already smelling the the the grassy and and uh some of those notes that tell me that I'm definitely starting to dry the coffee it's starting to smell a little sweet and and it's uh close for me to check this I've got a flashlight on the um phone that I have down on the display here so I'm going to check that in just a second and I'm going to see that I'm very close to dry by the way I am using the coffee roasting Timer app you can see it there in the display it's a free app that you can use um and here we're calling dry at 358 right now all right so we have gotten to the dry phase this app is helping me track the time and if when we get to First crack I'll also Mark first crack event and then I can man monitor the development time and and percentage during the development phase notice how I have raised The Hive higher up away from the flame now my temperatures are moving quickly now because I was rushing to try to get this coffee dry but now I need to slow the roast down and that's why I've elevated The Hive away from the flame to slow the rate of increase um my wayp point that I'm headed towards next my next event is first crack so we've got the coffee to the dry event at four about 4 minutes like we wanted to and our next goal on the worksheet here is first crack that takes place at 7 minutes and 30 seconds and it's going to occur around 38 86° how do I know that as I mentioned earlier I'm familiar with this roaster and first crack usually takes place around 386 de um it can vary uh 5 or 7° and it all depends on the pace of the roast so if I'm moving too quickly first crack is going to come a little faster than I want it to and if I move slowly then a may be a little longer we're at 5 minutes and 30 seconds and my Target Temp was 360 and we're at 357 de I'm only 3° away from where IID planned and I'm able to control the roast based on where I have the hive near the flame you can see now I'm a little closer to the flame than I was earlier and that's because I was able to slow the roast down at least I thought I was able to slow the roast down I'm still moving a little quicker I think than I want to be but that's because I already know the outcome of this roast because I'm narrating and and I I did this roast earlier uh several days ago as a matter of fact um still moving the The Hive around I got to keep the beans moving because I don't want to have roasting defects I don't want to have scorching and I definitely want to have an even roast and moving the beans around whether it's a drum roaster or an air roaster that's moving the beans you need to have good Bean movement we're at 6 minutes and 30 seconds and and I wanted to be at 374 de and we're at 370 uh we were at 372 or 373 at that time we were only a couple degrees off but watch the temperature now it's quickly starting to move quickly quicker than I had expected and now I'm starting to hear an outlier there's another crack and first crack is going to happen sooner than I anti ipate we're already past 386 Dee Mark and I'm hearing another outlier and there it is first crack has started at 7 minutes and 13 seconds so first crack came a little earlier than I wanted to we were about 15 seconds earlier and that completes the Browning phase the next phase that we're working in is the development phase and that's from first crack till the end of the roast I wanted to take this roast to 9 minutes and and I wanted to have a development of around 177% temperatures have really gone up more than I expected and I'm not exactly sure why I think one reason is because this Costa Rican coffee this natural coffee during first crack has gone exothermic it's kind of giving off heat that's affecting the probe I think the other thing is because I got a little excited about uh first crack arriving a little earlier than planned and I started moving the hive around even more and so I think that the bean probe isn't necessarily in full contact in the bean Mass I think I've got a little bit of hot air kind of mixed in there so the temperatures were elevated but now I've kind of um got things kind of back in control a little bit here and you can see the temperatures have kind of come back down I'm at 395 but I've lowered my flame a little bit because I don't want the temperatures to keep increasing right now I'm in this development phase I'm getting near the end of it and I don't want temperature spikes and I don't want a huge crash and so I'm just trying to keep the temperature about where it is right now I'm happy with that temperature and I'm going to be dropping this coffee in about 10 seconds look at the app you'll see the percentage there it's at 18.6% right now and I start dropping the coffee and I'm going to end the roast right now and 9 minutes and 1 second is where I ended the Rope uh roast and look at the bean color the bean color is really nice I'm really happy with the the bean color um and so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that cooling tray bring it down here from the kitchen and get the beans cooled so we'll have the beans back up here in just a minute to take a closer look at them but I wanted to spend a minute and I wanted to talk to you about what just happened this moved quickly this was a a 9 Minute roast and we were able to guide our roast through way points or event times uh and events so we talked about dry end happening at 4 minutes it happened at 3 minutes and 58 seconds we were 2 seconds off from our goal of 4 minutes first crack happened at 7 minutes and 13 seconds uh 7:15 713 and that is um 15 seconds faster than I wanted and you know that's just the way that this roast happened every roast that I do is not a perfect roast and I learned from um how the beans reacted near first crack and um the next thing I would need to do if I want to do this roast differently is to be more cautious with my heat as I approach the first crack event and that way um the temperatures may not rise as quickly and then during development I was hoping to have about a minute and a half development and that got extended to about a minute and 44 seconds 20% rather than 177% development and that's okay um so really what this comes down to is what happened to the beans what was the roast level of the beans how far did I take these beans and I base that on two things well three things temperature is one and we were at 395 de actually it went up a little bit and then came back down the other is Bean color we're going to take a close look at the color in just a minute and then the third is the development percentage and that is 20% development I'm sorry it's not just the percentage but the weight loss is going to tell me really what the roast level of these beans are so we started with 150 g of coffee green coffee and now we are weighing out our cooled coffee that has been roasted and it weighs 129.4 gam so we're going to take the coffee roasting Timer app and it has a weight loss calculator it built into it 150 g of green ended up 129.4 gr of roasted coffee gives us a weight loss of 13.73% that's almost exactly where my roast was with um the other roasts it was um close to 14% And it was in the around the 13 14% range and that is really important because this is telling me the true weight loss and the true roast level based on the weight loss percentage and the color that I'm looking at let's take a look at the color of these beans if we take a closer look these beans have a nice consistent color there it is look at the um look at the wrinkles that are on the beans first of all that tells me that as far as development goes these beans are developed but they are not um they did not swell to the point where they got smooth and shiny so that's one indicator that I am definitely within the medium range and maybe a little bit on the Lighter Side the weight loss confirms that also take a look here let's look at the uh the color itself I love that color this is this is awesome because for me my goal is to be able to taste the origin of the coffee I don't um my goal is not to have the roasty side of flavor in my coffee um it is to have more of the origin so I want to be able to taste a little bit of the acidity of this coffee and that was my goal when I roast this take a close look you'll notice some roasting defects uh there are a few that are on here and I'll highlight those for you that's because um it the bean scorched along the hot metal surface because probably when I first put the beans into the hive it was 393 de preheat um and it took me a few seconds to get the beans loaded before I started stirring them you know mixing them shaking them and I've got a little bit of uh scorching that's there not on many beans I see a few that are here that are scorched but not enough to be concerned with at all um I do see a tiny bit of tipping on one or two beans but that's probably because I push these beans pretty hard during the uh first phase all in all it's not a disaster of a roast um it is a I like the color I like the weight loss the the weight loss which is the ultimately the roast level of this for the U beans and then really what it comes down to now is taste and I roasted this coffee about 4 days ago I drank this coffee this morning and it was wonderful it was super fruity very very clear clean there was no real roastiness no burnt uh or ashy notes at all it was not underdeveloped there was no um woodiness there was no uh vegetable type notes there was no tinny notes um the acidity that was there was a a nice uh juicy fru that was uh part of the acidity there was also some sweetness there was also some chocolate notes in there um of all of the roasts this has been the best roast so far um better than the beore better than the popper and better than the hot a popcorn popper uh but again you know if I would have made some mistakes maybe the beore may have been better I just I did a a pretty good job with this Ro even though my middle phase was 15 seconds faster than I had wanted it to so then what I do is I I take this worksheet and I make more notes on it so I took a look at the um percentage calculations on this I took a look at my all of my times and I thought to myself well how would I do this roast differently I was really happy with the flavor honestly even though I made a mistake and it went a little quicker than I anticipated in this middle phase I'm I'm glad that that happened and the outcome was really good um I don't think I would really want to change the roast and so the beauty is is that I can now repeat this roast maybe with some practice um but I can repeat this roast I know where I need to be for my times and temperatures so that I can uh have this roast happen again and again and I can enjoy this coffee over and over that is the beauty of logging our roasts and that is the beauty of being able to replicate or repeat these roasts and and that's why a worksheet like this is so important we're going to talk about the temperatures here in just a second but if this is the type of content that you like uh this is what I do here on this channel all the time hit the Subscribe button be sure to hit the like button that really helps others find this content as well and I've produced over a 100 videos on this channel that is is amazing I really uh I got notice of that uh not long ago and it's kind of hard to believe um there's some content here that is really helpful on my channel go ahead and look through my videos especially look at the comments because there's a lot of discussion there's questions that are asked and there's a lot more depth than just my videos uh in the discussion so check that out so the next question is how did you determine your temperatures based on um you know this roast how did you sit down Mike and you chart all these temperatures uh and the I'll answer that first I started with the events so I started with the dry event the first crack event and then my end temperature uh end event and I put those in a timeline so the timeline is from the beginning of the roast at zero to 9 minutes that's the timeline that we have and I determined that I wanted dry to take place at 4 minutes first crack at 7 minutes and 30 seconds and then to drop the coffee at 9 Minutes how was I able to determine that truthfully experience um so the more you roast the more experience you'll get you'll be able to um find the times and temperatures that work best for you but my videos are set up and they're designed to help give you a starting point so this isn't the only way to roast this isn't the right way to roast but I'm giving you a starting point a place where you can get to and um roast some coffee that's going to taste decent and then you'll be able to with experience and with practice you'll be able to make changes and you'll be able to find the best roast level the best temperatures the best times for your uh roasting profile so how did I pick 300 and 40° at 4 minutes well I know that I needed to have enough time to get this coffee to the dry event and so I guessed how long it would take me based on how my familiarity is with this roaster how long would it take me to get this coffee dry and the same thing for first crack I know that I wanted to have at least 3 and 1/2 or close to 3 and 1/2 minutes in this middle phase for my roasting and depending upon how much coffee I'm roasting at a time the type of roaster that's going to vary but that's how I landed at 7 minutes and 30 seconds at 386 de I know that my coffee reaches first crack around 386 de I know that my coffee in this roster gets to the dry end event between 330 and 340 degrees I'm familiar with my roster and then as far as the drop temperature based on experience again color temperature and ultimately the proofs in the pudding with the weight loss percentage get me to the roast level that I really enjoy to drink okay so next time we do a video here what are we going to be doing I'm going to have I my plan I hope is to have a raster that I've never used before a type of rooster that I've never encountered I've never used I have not laid eyes on one or hands on it I'm going to be able to use this roster and we're going to go through this exercise of trying to understand how to know what temperatures and what times to use to roast our coffee so no matter what roster you have this is an exercise that you would do to learn learn how your roster performs how it behaves and then how you're going to set up your roasting plan with your raster that's what's going to happen at the I hope in the next video so stay tuned for that if you've got comments or questions about things that I've shared in this video please ask those in the comments I really appreciate you guys being here if there's something that I said um or if you've got some experiences that May um help in the conversation share those in the comments as well and I appreciate you guys watching this video thanks for being here today and I hope that you have a great week roasting we'll see you next [Music] time

Channel: Virtual Coffee Lab - Home Coffee Roaster

Views: 3,844

Keywords: how to roast coffee, roasting coffee, home coffee roasting, coffee roasting, coffee roaster, coffee roasting at home, specialty coffee, coffee roasting basics, specialty coffee roasting, home coffee roasting for beginners, home coffee roasting tips, how to roast coffee beans, how to roast coffee beans at home, behmor 2000ab home coffee roaster, hive coffee roaster, Can I roast good coffee at home?, roasting plan, charting coffee roast, how to roast great coffee consistently

Id: j6JVHkCs2es

Length: 26min 51sec (1611 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023