Marshall wrote:I think the best decision for you will depend on your motivation. If you plan to home roast so you can explore the varieties of roasting profiles and bean origins and develop a new skill set, that may be reward enough to home roast. But, if you just want to upgrade your home coffee, then, at the cost of a high-end home roasting machine, you could simply upgrade your coffee buying.

While I agree that one's particular motivation plays a large role, I will politely disagree about cost. If a home user goes through 2 pounds per week then (by my loose calculation) a person could buy the latest and greatest HotTop roaster with less than 1 year's savings from home roasting.

For myself it's a no-brainer because I roast 4-6 pounds per week and I've been home roasting for over 6 years. On a week when I choose not to roast then my normal coffee order is $80-$100, and my home roast cost is generally less than half that amount.

As for the "best and freshest artisan beans"...I totally agree that the vast majority of home roasters probably never reach the level of the best roasters in the country. But I would also assert that with some practice and coaching, many home roasters will develop enough skill to produce pleasing results and that the ones with natural aptitude can possibly even get good-to-great results.

In the end it's a choice, as you pointed out. I'll never claim to be as good or as consistent as the best roasters out there, but I do get good (and sometimes great) results. Of course I enjoy the hobby for the learning and for the experimentation and the variety and that's probably the main reason I home roast.

There's an important additional factor that speaks for home roasting. Your capacity to enjoy other people's coffee is increased by roasting and cupping it at home.

I'm very much a DIY kind of person whenever I can. There's something about turning a raw material into a finished product that has always been a pleasure. Whether it be some chunks of wood into a piece of furniture or some green beans in my homebuilt into my cup of morning bliss.

I think the HB Home Roasting Challenge that Jim so graciously put together showed that you can achieve great results at home, with basic equipment (HG/BM roasters faired well). I think it also showed that the results of home roasting are fairly inconsistent and the home roasters that faired well were folks who have invested a lot of time and effort into home roasting. For me it is about access to fresh roasted coffee. There are no decent roasters within 200 miles from my house and constatly ordering and shipping coffee is a pain to coordinate and a pain in the wallet. If I lived in NYC or Seatle and had easy access to artisan roasted coffee, I would likely not home roast.

jammin wrote:I had somewhat of an opposite experience. I waffled on buying a roaster for quite some time, and on whim, ordered a hottop basic. After some advice on how to get started and a lot of reading - I got off to a pretty good start. I've been getting some terrific roasts lately for espresso, and honestly, have not been interested in ordering professionally roasted beans. I get great results at home and have access to beans I would normally not be able to try. I also enjoy being able to roast the beans to my taste rather than what the roaster had in mind. Sharing a good roast with friends and family is priceless as well. Home roasting is a very rewarding experience imo and if you are a "hands on" type of guy, I suspect you will find a lot of joy in it.

Me too, only I have a Behmor. In blind test I have made some roasts that my friends preferred over some artisans. Let it be known that I haven't been able to get anything even remotely close to 49th Parallel's Organic Espresso. That's killer espresso!!

As much as I love it, I don't drink that much coffee, so by home roasting 8oz at a time, I find that I can keep a rolling stock of beans in their prime, as well as roasting a different bean each time for variety's sake. I'm still pretty new at this, and although I don't come close to good artisinal roasts, it's great to have that steady stream of fresh coffee and increase my understanding and enjoyment.

Thanx for the replies. I am still thinking about what to do, but I think it will be great to turn a 'raw' product into something finished. And keeping a couple off kilo's in stock to roast whenever you need fresh beans will be great to. Very very curious what the taste will be like!

One can roast in many different ways
As with most of us it started in baby steps and the more adventurous built there own roasters

What I am trying to say is just start roasting

If you are good a DIY you can follow my freely available pictorial build of my roaster that roasts 300 to 700 grams

https://docs.google.com/present/embed?size=l&id=dc5qt26s_0c97xkwgg
KK

actionhost wrote:Thanx for the replies. I am still thinking about what to do, but I think it will be great to turn a 'raw' product into something finished. And keeping a couple off kilo's in stock to roast whenever you need fresh beans will be great to. Very very curious what the taste will be like!

It is a little more than that. If you ever start playing the piano, the first songs will most probably suck but with time they will get better. When you home roast, every cup will be a lesson at first. With time, you may be able to tell the difficulty of doing things and appreciate in a different way. Learning to play the piano is not mutually exclusive to enjoying other performers other than yourself.

Cheers