new home roaster here. i am using a poppery II type popcorn popper (not actually a poppery II, but like it). it is mildly modded -- just clipped the wires to a thermostat that was turning off the heat. i am running it with 25 feet of ext. cord to get total roast time up to between 7 - 8 minutes (was around 5 minutes w/o the ext. cord).

this picture is a bean from a batch i just roasted. i started with 85 grams of green beans (SM consonanza blend). first crack at about 4 minutes. stopped the roast at 7:50 with second crack rolling pretty good. visually the beans look to me on the whole to be light vienna to vienna. throughout the roast the beans were moving quite well.

i'd say maybe 3-5 % of the beans show something like this. is it a burn? is it avoidable with a popper?

ugh. sorry, i should have read the faqs first.

"Crater. Generally due to too much heat from 1st crack to 2nd crack"

still would be grateful to know if anyone knows a way to avoid this with a popper. anyone have any tricks?

There are a couple of suggestions on Sweet Maria's air popper page under "Modifications and Refinements". When I was using my "poppery", I would usually keep the top off, unless it was really cold out (I always roasted outside). That slowed the roast. Also, the amount of beans affected temps. Less beans seemed to lengthen the roast time. I never did any real logging of those roasts. It was always on-the-fly, so I don't have any numbers to throw at you. Just my perception and memory.

Hello and welcome to the roasting world.

The divots you are seeing a pretty normal at the speed of roast that you are doing. As far as I can tell they do not affect the taste too much. The dark spot is a little charring of the interior of the bean and this will taste a bit if the roast is light but with a rolling second crack roast I doubt that anybody could taste them. This is only my humble opinion and I am sure that someone else could say otherwise.

If you slow the roast down the divots will reduce. But do not let removing divot be your goal. Concentrate on taste. 7-8 minutes is a little fast for a dark roast on a popper.The 1st to 2nd crack period is pretty good at 3.5 minutes but the 4 minutes to first crack may be where you could want to stretch it a little.






I

thanks for the responses and the welcome. i will do the taste-test on that batch tomorrow morning. good to know those divots aren't necessarily a deal-breaker because the roast looks and smells pretty good to me.

hudsterboy wrote:I would usually keep the top off, unless it was really cold out (I always roasted outside).

Whale wrote:If you slow the roast down the divots will reduce. But do not let removing divot be your goal. Concentrate on taste. 7-8 minutes is a little fast for a dark roast on a popper.The 1st to 2nd crack period is pretty good at 3.5 minutes but the 4 minutes to first crack may be where you could want to stretch it a little.

i was really happy to have extended first crack to 4:00 instead of the 2:00 i saw with 100g of beans and without using the ext. cord. next batch i will keep the top off (and suffer the chaff all over the garage) and see what happens if i add another 25' of ext. cord. i'll have to fashion one of those chimney cans to keep the beans in the popper with the top off.