Category: Coffee roasting

just like a fine wine. Let the journey begin!”

I found that quote, but I can’t find whom to credit.

We are roasting peaberry today. Peaberry is our 5%. Mutant coffee. But it’s all natural mutant coffee! Normally coffee fruit has two seeds with flat sides that abut, like a football sawed in half vertically. But in about 5% of the fruit, you get the whole football. That football is denser than the two half-footballs, so it roasts and tastes differently than usual coffee. When you look at the red cherry fruit, you can’t tell if you have a football or a halved-football inside. So the mutant coffee seed football peaberries are revealed during dry milling, when the coffee parchment is milled and graded.

If you’re on our mailing list, you should have received an invitation to order roasted peaberry. We don’t have much, and we tend to offer it during the holiday season and sometime April-June.

One of our customers, when prompted about peaberry, orders his green (regular) coffee which he roasts himself. Another customer ordered green (regular) coffee in addition to roasted peaberry. I’m always curious about any of our customers that roast their own coffee. I like to see photos, hear stories, etc. I thought maybe the customer who newly ordered green beans got a new roaster or was going to borrow one. He wants to roast for the experience, and he plans to use a popcorn maker.

The long-time coffee roaster, whose wife is from Eritrea, had earlier generously shared his experience:

Here in the U.S. they first roasted the beans in a pan on the stove, as they’d do in Eritrea. Then they used a popcorn machine, which had better results in terms of uniformity. But soon it broke from the weekly use. Finally they bought a good roasting machine, which had been working well for more than 10 years, at the point I asked. They buy five-pound bags of green beans, and they roast maybe 250 g or so for the week. When the mom visits from Eritrea she roasts the beans in a little pan to have the smell in the room, before she serves the actual coffee.

I asked for an update on his roasting and/or tips for a newbie, and he shared that he’s still using that same roaster. He did have to replace the heating element last year. It was nice that the part could still be ordered without any problems well over ten years later. 

As for tips, he said to keep an eye on the roasting process in case a fire develops. After their popcorn maker died they first bought a cheap roaster which died after a while. During its last run it developed thick smoke. The reason for this was that the roaster used a plastic wheel to drive an auger that loosened the beans so that hot air could be circulated through them. The plastic wheel deformed through thermal stress over time. Finally, the auger did not loosen the beans anymore, the hot air did not sufficiently circulate through the beans, and the heating element overheated. The wire insulation for the heating element started to go up in smoke. Such a thing has never happened with their subsequent and current  “good” roaster. It also has thermal sensors for protection and is generally much better built. 

(Does it surprise you that he has a PhD in Electrical Engineering?)

He has the Gene Cafe Home Roaster. The new version of the roaster has a mechanism, where one has to push a button half way through the roasting to ensure that one watches the machine. If the button is not pressed the machine aborts the roasting process.

Here are some links for roasting coffee at home, in case you’re interested:

Two from Perfect Daily Grind:

“Beginner’s guide to roasting coffee at home”

“Eight Common Mistakes That Home Roasters Should Avoid“

Sweet Maria’s is a great source of info.

The beanpoet’s “Best Home Coffee Roaster“. (They are an Amazon Affiliate, so there are a lot of embedded ads, which I find annoying)

And because no post would be complete without ’em, photos taken at dusk on Memorial Day …

In my email inbox very early Saturday morning a customer asked, “Why is the coffee wet?” This was from one of our mainland customers several timezones away. We had a little exchange not too long ago about shipping delays. Once in a while he buys beans from different farms “to see what they are all about.” (Kona coffee farmers thank you!) It’s nice to hear the customer’s perspective and infer how one’s business seems to compare with other similar businesses. He had recently experienced a long delay in a shipment from another Kona coffee farm.

Most of the months since the pandemic shutdown, we fortunately haven’t experienced any significant slowdowns in shipping.  It surprised me, in fact.  But lately, just in the past couple of weeks, things have noticeably suffered with USPS.  Two packages that went out on the same day reached the mainland West Coast in two days.  One reached the recipient the day after that; the other stayed stuck in a San Jose, CA, USPS facility for days and didn’t get moved along for a week and a half!  The recipient was IN San Jose and could have driven over, could have WALKED over, to get it.

In any case, we do like to hear from customers. Carl asked why our coffee was wet. It stuck to the sides after grinding. He found the same thing with others’ coffee. He wanted to know if that was natural.

I answered, “The coffee appears wet because of its natural oils. The more you roast it, the more oils come out, making it look wet.  If you have a darker roast of ours or other coffee, you might want to note if it seems to be ‘wetter’ in your grinder.”

Before being in the coffee business, when I’d just drink coffee and not think much more about it, I used to think that oily, dark beans meant that oil was used to roast the coffee. But, no, roasting longer brings out more of the beans’ oils.

Beans are roasted within a certain range.   Sweet Marias specializes in helping home roasters and has a lot of tutorials and interesting info.

This one might be particularly useful for the topic of roasting and visual signs. It’s one of several articles that can be found in their library about roasting basics.

FYI, we roast to 425 degrees for medium and 433 for medium-dark.

Let us know your other coffee questions …

I mean roasting your coffee, not yourselves. It is summer, after all. The Norwegian in-laws that live north of the Arctic Circle have been enjoying temperatures above 90F. That’s hotter than Hawaii. This is related to the news about Siberia recently hitting heat records and the permafrost melting. Scary.

This will be another short post, and takes the Coffee at Home post from two weeks ago a little further. Why not roast your own coffee? This is a nice introduction to roasting coffee at home. And here’s another similar article from the same source. We do sell green (unroasted) beans in small amounts (pound or more) for individuals. Use our contact form to inquire.

Bea’s Knees Farm uses a fluid bed roaster. This article delves a bit into fluid bed roasters, as opposed to drum roasters: Fluid-bed roasting, the path less taken.

Many of us think a dark roast is required for espresso. Why might you roast differently for a pour-over versus for an espresso? I read this article months ago, but it was interesting to read again after writing about home roasting. If you do make espresso at home, AND you have a home roaster, you can experiment with some of the parameters mentioned here, from the Perfect Daily Grind, “Roasting For Filter Coffees vs. For Espresso.” We do sell green beans (unroasted coffee); contact us.

Filter/pour-over and espresso methods extract the coffee at different rates. Dark roasted coffee is more porous than lighter roasts. With espresso, you’re quickly pressing water through a puck of coffee. However, professional roasters might roast to the same end-temperature, but they can still develop different roast profiles. For a rough analogy in the kitchen, you can rapidly pan fry onions on high heat, or you can use low heat & cook the onions more slowly until browned. Another example: you can rapidly bring ingredients in water to a boil, or you can use moderate heat to slowly bring them to a boil.

One customer wrote to say he didn’t seem to taste as much “soil or volcano” with the espresso brewing style with our medium-dark roasted coffee. Yet I know at least one couple (he’s from Italy; she’s from Belgium) who regularly purchases our medium roast to use in their Italian espresso machine. We do have expectations for tastes and flavors, and we do get accustomed to foods/drinks we regularly consume. It has probably happened to you that you initially don’t like something, maybe because it’s different or unexpected, and you later like it.

I’m always interested in learning of your experiences with our coffee. I highly recommend having someone help you with blind tastings, even if it’s just clarifying for yourself if you prefer A or B. Taste is subjective. You’re allowed to like what you like!