Hi all.

I just did a roast with wood chips in the beans. I have several wood types but the mildest ones I have are alder and apple. So I did a roast with 4 small chips of apple wood in the beans (~300 grams) of Ethiopian Harrar. At dry-end the wood chips already give out a lot of smoke (probably humidity). I thought it caught on fire, but it wasn't smoke fire. I'll give a try and if it is something I like. I'll also try with alder wood. I will also use maybe 2 chips instead of 4 if the flavor comes out very strong. I was surprise to see all the smoke come out of the exhaust pipe for only 4 small chips!

Cheers

Hi

Sorry to say that it came out ashy (espresso prep). I did a very fast-aggressive mid phase (from 250F to 400F in 3 minutes) and I think that messed up the roast. Yesterday the beans tasted woody (chew on). But today the woody flavor was not there (espresso) and instead I got ashy flavors.

Cheers

Barbecued beans!

Arpi wrote:Hi all.

I just did a roast with wood chips in the beans. I have several wood types but the mildest ones I have are alder and apple. So I did a roast with 4 small chips of apple wood in the beans (~300 grams) of Ethiopian Harrar. At dry-end the wood chips already give out a lot of smoke (probably humidity). I thought it caught on fire, but it wasn't smoke fire. I'll give a try and if it is something I like. I'll also try with alder wood. I will also use maybe 2 chips instead of 4 if the flavor comes out very strong. I was surprise to see all the smoke come out of the exhaust pipe for only 4 small chips!

Cheers

I tried it once also, however did not enjoy the weird taste it put into the brew. Kind of bitter; just weird. I used oak, a traditional BBQ wood.

Len

Arpi
Try buffing the smoked beans a bit with a cotton towel to remove any surface ash. Only a guess while you have them.

Wood imparts a good flavour for cooking when it burns cleanly - which generally means at a high enough temperature and with enough airflow. Some of the combustibles in wood start to burn at around 400, but others won't burn much below 500. What's the internal temp of a coffee roaster?

Fruit woods are by far the best for cooking most foods. Fruit woods are much more delicate and sweet. Apple is a good choice, and so might be cherry - both of which are readily available.

The only hope of this working is if you use well seasoned wood. It should be cut at least 1 year prior to use, which if stored decently would have a moisture content of 22-25%. More moisture in the wood will lead to more creosote and off flavours.

I suspect to only way to make this work as you would like would be to use the wood as a fuel and heat source so that it can actually burn.

It would interesting to try other materials, like an orange peel or lemon, chick-peas, an spice, etc. They could be introduced at a later time to avoid maybe burning (maybe at the last 3 minutes of the finished phase)

Cheers

There are plenty of roasters that use wood as their fuel and from what I read it imparts a subtle flavor. Unlike smoking foods the smoke is not really going to be absorbed by the bean but leave some flavor on the outside of the beans. Make sure you do some extra cleaning to your quest, I can say that my smoker gets very coated from the resins. A thought I had is putting chips in the roaster may not be the best method to get smoke to the beans, maybe there is a way to use your heat gun method to blow smoke in with the wood already combusting.

Hello Doug hope all is well,
years ago I worked for an italian roaster here in Oregon, he used to make a wood roasted espresso,
I can say that was the smoothest espresso I ever had ,
the flavor of the wood was definitely present versus the same blend roasted on the "gas" one,
I believe (and I really do not know anything about the roasting part of the business)
you will master the perfect flavor
best of luck
S

germantown rob wrote:Unlike smoking foods the smoke is not really going to be absorbed by the bean but leave some flavor on the outside of the beans. Make sure you do some extra cleaning to your quest, I can say that my smoker gets very coated from the resins. A thought I had is putting chips in the roaster may not be the best method to get smoke to the beans, maybe there is a way to use your heat gun method to blow smoke in with the wood already combusting.

I agree with all that is said here with the exception of the comment about food absorbing smoke or smoke flavour. The red smoke ring that is typical of barbecued smoked meat and that penetrates up to 1/4 inch into the meat is the result of a chemical reaction, and does not affect the flavour of the meat. The only smoke flavour that is in food is the smoke flavour that is on the surface.

Smoking wood will definitely 'season' a roaster, and I would imagine that it might be very difficult to return that roaster to its original state.

Mark