Not sure how to word the question except as I posted. Beyond ensuring fresh roasted coffee and controlling your own roast preference I want to know if there is a point in which there is a savings to roasting your own beans. I understand it would depend on how much is spent on a roaster. Outside of that would more than 2lbs a week / 8lbs a month be a deciding point ? Has anyone done the math here with regards to saving purchasing green beans vs already roasted.

It all depends.

My Corretto roaster (heat gun/bread machine) with probes cost about $125 in parts. The data logger and probes so I could track roasts in Artisan cost about another $120. Greens cost roughly $6 - $7 shipped. I already had the computer. Time spent building the roaster is a hobby write-off. Depending on what you spend for roasted beans, you could quickly make your investment back.

My North TJ-067 cost at the time about $3500 delivered, including parts, probes and upgrades. There's the attraction of buying higher cost greens to roast more exotic coffees. The sky's the limit there, but an example of a fair priced, more interesting coffee is the Yemen Haraaz Red Marqaha at Mill City for about $16 - $17/lb before shipping with cost dependent on quantity. There's a learning curve, so you'll be discarding some coffee and drinking some in capps or with milk and sugar. Let's say you occasionally want these more interesting coffees, your price per lb. of greens may be comparable to buying lesser roasted beans.

In the end, I think the best justification is whether you want to get into this aspect of the hobby, gaining more understanding of what brings those varied flavors to your palate, and enjoy a learning curve that never ends. Fortunately it isn't expensive to try roasting with one of the less expensive small batch air roasters that run a couple hundred USD or less.

Thanks Gary, I foresee another slippery slope.

redbone wrote:Not sure how to word the question except as I posted. Beyond ensuring fresh roasted coffee and controlling your own roast preference I want to know if there is a point in which there is a savings to roasting your own beans. I understand it would depend on how much is spent on a roaster. Outside of that would more than 2lbs a week / 8lbs a month be a deciding point ? Has anyone done the math here with regards to saving purchasing green beans vs already roasted.

For me, it's not about cost savings...it's about quality of coffee.

The variables are too uncertain to give a blanket answer to your question. Besides cost of greens and roaster, your cost of roasted coffee acquisition is also a big player. Shipping costs or locally acquired? Ease and effectiveness of storage?

When I plunged in with greens and a $4 air pop popper, I got better coffee than was otherwise available easily, and it WAS cheaper than shipping coffee in every week. Now, I'm not so sure.

Generally, well-roasted coffee runs 2-3x the cost of greens, so 2#/wk= $12-18/wk = $600-900/year savings VERY ROUGHLY, without the costs of roaster etc. But, you can botch roasts, there's the cost of your time, and to be worthwhile you have to LIKE the coffee your producing.

Btw, I roast for 500 gms of coffee/wk, half of your questioned amount. Worth it for me, because of the education, the control, and the community.

redbone wrote:Thanks Gary, I foresee another slippery slope.

Talk to me about that

22yrs ago i started making home made wine, mostly to save vs store bought. I did start with cheap equipement like plastic fermenter and carboy, renting a filter when needed,etc... But soon enough i was using SS tank, oak barrel and producing 1000btls/yr and participating in many competition accross the country. I finally end up as a professional winemaker and still doing it since then

Because i was making so much wine at the winery i decided to stop making wines at home. But the basement was now empty and it took not too long before i began roasting coffee because i found out there was a lot of similarity with the winemaking. 5yrs later i am now also a very small but still commercial coffee roaster! So talk about a slippery slope!

IMHO! forget about saving money. You will most probably not save money. Do it if you really want to learn more, have access anytime to fresh coffee, to experiment with much more coffee variety, to do your own blend, but not to save money. Because once you have a roaster it is not finished....you will many more items and you might decide to upgrade the roaster, the coffee quality, etc....But for me it is huge fun, i love it so i still recommand to do it if you have the time and some money to start investing in the equipments.

Thanks SAB & Séb. Sounds like it's not about the money here but all the other factors. I think a 1kg would suffice for me. Don't want to go too small or too large.

redbone wrote:Thanks SAB & Séb. Sounds like it's not about the money here but all the other factors. I think a 1kg would suffice for me. Don't want to go to small or to large.

You could go as low as a 500 gm roaster, I think. Any commercial style roaster will need preheating and cool down times, and are typically best utilized with back to back roasts. I'm typically doing three to four batches whenever I fire up the roaster.

There is also value in learning the basics of roasting with smaller batch sizes. Mistakes are less expensive...

But, a 1 kg roaster may fit your needs better...

LOL. If saving money is your objective, just forget about roasting your own.
Just buy what you like and thank your lucky stars that you avoided the rabbit hole.

However, if you do want to get into roasting, I agree with SAB that a 500 gm roaster is probably plenty, and that more than that is probably too much.

I can definitely confirm the rabbit hole narrative. I started looking into home roasting in January, bought a Behmor 1600+ in May, I roast for my wife and I's morning cup of coffee and give out extra to family here and there so the batch size of the Behmor is pretty appropriate. But..... over the past 2-3 months my mind has been wandering into the land of Hukys and Quests and 1kg roasters.

At my current state I probably save money (and that was one of the "reasons" I convinced myself to get into homeroasting), but man do I just love doing it. Homeroasting and experimenting and scribbling notes madly in a journal is just fun for me. And to think I hated science in school.

redbone wrote:Thanks SAB & Séb. Sounds like it's not about the money here but all the other factors. I think a 1kg would suffice for me. Don't want to go to small or to large.

With my 1 Kg roaster, I feel no need to upgrade. The limitation on roast quality is me. I can go down as low as 130 gm and as high as 1.5 Kg with this thing. The trick to roasting such a small sample is having the probe pointed down to the front edge of the drum and using one's senses. The largest amount is possible because my roaster's overbuilt, and I have a high pressure regulator.