I've been home roasting for years using a couple different inexpensive home roasters for the hobbyist. I was never good with changing the times and temps during a home roast. Not sure what a charging temp is. Is there anything in this forum that explains these finer points? Love my home roasting but I'm a total spectator in discussions like this. I'd like to up my skills.

Moderator note: I split off this topic so it can be easily found. drgary

You can let the beans run wild but with a bit of heat manipulation, the finished product should taste better.

Charge temp is the temperature of the roasting environment. If you fill the machine to its maximum capacity or close, the charge temp should be within 30° or so of the finish temp. Fewer beans and the charge temp should be lower. Our unit has a solid drum your mileage may vary.

You may want to start a different thread or buy a few books.

clynch wrote:I've been home roasting for years using a couple different inexpensive home roasters for the hobbyist. I was never good with changing the times and temps during a home roast. Not sure what a charging temp is. Is there anything in this forum that explains these finer points? Love my home roasting but I'm a total spectator in discussions like this. I'd like to up my skills.

Hi Charlie:

On any of our forums, like this roasting forum, there is a FAQ section. That's a great place to start. Go here, and you will also find a link that has a glossary of roasting terms.

FAQs and Favorites

If you have other questions, please search the forum and if you don't find what you're looking for, you can start a new thread, and you'll get lots of help here.

Thank you!! Just went through some OLD FAQs. They were awesome! I'm not too savvy with forum FAQs and such. Appreciate the help.

In a nutshell what many people do....

Preheat to 400° F
Charge beans with heat off, let the beans soak the heat in for 1 minute
Start applying heat, The heat you need to reach first crack in under 10 minutes.
Will probably reach end of drying in about 5 minutes
Ramp your heat down in increments after end of drying to keep your rate of rise curve declining
Manipulate the heat as needed to avoid a crash and flick at first crack.
Drop somewhere in the 20 to 25% development time range for most medium roast types. It's probably up to 1 minute after The end of first crack.

Avoid environmental temps over 500F they can produce extremely bitter coffee. I've actually experienced this it was horrible. I'm not talking about a little bitterness to the coffee I'm talking about such a bitter taste that stayed on the cup. Malfunctioning thermocouple.

Is this chiseled in stone.... Well for some people yes.... For others no.
In the end what really matters is what tastes good to the person drinking it.

I have actually gotten better results with longer heat soak times at the start. I've used up to 2.5 minutes And what I get ....is reduced bitterness of the coffee. They typically say what happens before end of drying doesn't matter...... Has no effect on the coffee. I'm not sure that's true anymore.....

I found these videos from Mill City Roasters to be super helpful when I started. They pretty much hit every point.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... zOzieMXJJg

This plus Scott Rao's two books, pretty much gave me 90% of what I know. Can't say I'm a stellar roaster, but I think I make some nice coffee.

I agree with the comments above. One difference is I'm now preheating to less than 400°F and find that it makes a lot of difference in retaining acidity and origin flavors. As Martin wrote, this isn't chiseled in stone.

Rickpatbrown wrote:I found these videos from Mill City Roasters to be super helpful when I started. They pretty much hit every point.

video

These videos are invaluable to any roaster looking to understand the process more deeply.

Scott Rao's "The Coffee Roaster's Companion" is pretty much the gold standard for approachable basic roasting knowledge. He also has "Coffee Roasting Best Practices" which expands on the first book and goes into more detail. Both are highly worth the price of admission. IMO it is more useful to have a text to learn from than sitting back and watching videos. Youtube videos are much more helpful once you have solid foundational knowledge to build from.

I agree. I'll be getting the first book. Can't decide if I want digital or paper. I do like to thumb through paper