http://www.action-electronics.com/variac.htm

Get one with a capacity LARGER than your load so it will last a long, long time

Thanks, Ian- ordered the big one.

Ray

another_jim wrote:Fewer beans usually means a better roast. The problem with many home drum roasts is that they are too slow. Using less beans speeds it up and gets a more vivid cup. The problem with many airroasters is that they are too fast, the beans are uneven, perhaps even charred, at the first crack, and one cannot get a good light or espresso roast. Using less beans slows down an airroaster, since the higher airflow reduces the blow-in temperature.

So experiment with reducing the amount you roast. Do some homework, try the alternatives side by side, and see which one you like best.

Absolutely agree, people should spend a lot less money on fancy coffees and a lot more time working on roast temperatures (if possible) and duration. My personal experience has been to aim for less than around 18m and more than 14 (if you use a popcorn popper or a whirly pop....sorry!). Some home roasters take far too long at 19-22 minutes and need some serious reductions in batch sizes. Once that's nailed....then comes the time to spend a bit more on coffee.

Many blind taste tests I have done with people have proved that people don't like long drawn out roasts compared to those done in 15-18 minutes.

Buy 6kg of Brazilian Santos (nice cheap flexible coffee), so your not worried about throwing any away. Is a soft bean, so doesn't like too much temperature abuse (but that teaches disciplines in that area). Doesn't mind being roasted medium to pretty dark, so again can experiment to stages just after 1st and into a rolling second. It's also a coffee that gives immediate and obvious taste feedback if you have screwed up the roast. You can go very dark with almost no bitterness being evident, and quite light with minimal acidity.

Cheapo Santos roasted (Medium Dark) in the butter zone and served often elicits a response of "that was the best coffee I have ever had"...of course it might be, but it certainly won't be the best coffee you can produce, it will just be the "best you can get from the coffee". if you cant get "cheap old" Santos to taste good, then you might need to change your roasting technique. Sure you won't taste awesome raspberries or blueberries or watermelons or even roast beef. What you will get is a sweet, bright, caramel, pleasant coffee that tastes...well of coffee, with low acidity and low bitterness. it will work well in milk, americano, or even okish as espresso (although it's not overly complex).

Sure doesn't sound as impressive as:

Green Brazil Inglaterra Special Fazenda Toca da Onca
Green Brazil Sitio Das Jaboticabas-Jose Antonio Nascimen

But until you are roasting in line with Jims posting, then you might be wasting your money on the more exotic and exciting sounding coffees..

One of my friends didn't like certain coffees, until he tasted them from my commercial roaster, he can now pretty much get the same tastes using his hottop, just with much smaller batches than he was using before. the revelation to him was watching how much faster my roasts were, and for him was the key factor in obtaining improvement.

P.S. Don't forget to slice a few beans open with a very sharp "we call them stanley" knife and check the interior, for evenness, look for spalling, burnt spots etc..

Thanks for the shop roaster POV. I think most of the roasters here in the US who's coffees we like to buy are also roastig in that 14 to 18 range.

Air roasters should go a bit faster, 7 to 13 minutes seems to cover the sweetspots. That's a much wider range in percentage than good drum roasts, and the sweeetspot each particluar airroaster will be narrower, around 3 minutes.

Rainman wrote:Anybody know where to find a variac? It appears that both sweetmarias and coffeebeancorral no longer carry them.

Hey Ray,

Have you tried http://variac.com/

Also, I typed in "variac" on ebay and got a list of 109 items.

How's the project coming along?

Cheers,
Ken

Hey, sorry- forgot to post back what I found- I ordered one from Action Electronics. A bit pricey ($200 shipped), but I got it quickly and have roasted about 6 batches so far (150 and 200 gm batches). I found that I needed to further mod the stiring arms (made a quad w/ extra humps rather than threading different pieces of hardware- worked better for me), and it's turning out some very even roasts (but I'm roasting easy beans so far- I'll roast some Harrar tonight, though.. ). I've figured out that 1. I can't follow Jim's roast curve (because like he said, my machine is different than his, and I'm sure temp measurement may be slightly different methodology as well). It's fun- I've got around 115 lbs of beans to burn through in 6 months, so I've got lots of learning to do (and lots of coffee to taste).

I'll send you an email here directly.

Ray

Rainman wrote:It's fun- I've got around 115 lbs of beans to burn through in 6 months, so I've got lots of learning to do (and lots of coffee to taste).

Whoa! I'll say you've got some coffee to roast and drink. Let's see if 115 lbs of green beans yields 100 lbs roasted and there are 180 days in six months, then that translates into 0.55 lbs per day or 250 grams per day. If a double shot contains 20g and you waste 5g per shot, then you have to drink about 10 double shots per day to consume all this coffee.

Ray, I think you can do this - let me know how it goes. You probably won't sleep at all, but think of what this could do for your productivity!

Cheers,
Ken

P.S. If nothing else, you'll get your money's worth out of the King Kony.

We probably won't drink ALL of it- Dana will down about half of what I consume, and there is a little waste each day cleaning out the grinder (around 10-15 grams)- I've also opened up the grind on the rocky for the press pot and am grinding more for that than I used to.. I'd say we use around 120-130 gms/day. Using this rough guesstimate, I'd say we're half way there.

Ray

I actually got around to roasting that Harrar just yesterday evening in my new sc/to- it came out looking fairly similar to what I had been used to via the iRoast as it roasts unevenly. I popped a couple of beans in my mouth to crunch on, and had that blueberry explosion that was mentioned in the cupping notes (this bean came from the GCBC last year about this time- it's almost all gone, which is a shame as it's easily my favorite). This is something that I'd notice only occasionally w/ the iRoast, and it was completely absent after it was brewed. This morning I brewed a triple shot through my Brewtus, and the taste finally came through-- all that was promised from those notes was there waiting for me this morning- what a treat!

For me, the biggest breakthrough in learning how to roast is being able to hear the cracks and having some (albeit difficult) control over the temperature. I'm able to get to 1st crack with most beans fairly quickly, the trick is figuring out how to prolong it once there and going into 2nd. I'd love to produce the curves on a graph, but I don't have this down well enough yet to produce a plot.. maybe soon.

Still got lots to learn, though.

Ray

I'll add to Jim's fine suggestion a very small tip, though I'm sure many in this forum already practiced it: Sort your beans after the roast. Look for and throw out beans that are: burned, under-roasted, broken shells with nothing in, fragments of beans, and clearly deformed beans. It is usually 1-2% of the roasted batch but they make a huge difference in the cup. One burnt bean may give your cup an ashy note and throw you for a loop to adjust brew parameters. The rest of them can give funky notes, bitter, sour and vegetable notes.