Hey there,
A thread that is near and dear to my heart! I have now been home roasting for just over a year and have about 50 odd roasts under my belt (well, in my iPhone app, but that's a whole different story).
Living in Pakistan, both green beans and roasters were next to impossible to source. I burnt more than my fair share of SM beans in locally sourced popcorn poppers but due to a difference in voltages (we have 220V in the wall, as opposed to 110 in the US), I was getting terribly fast roasts... Like 2 and a quarter minutes, iirc. So I ended up importing a GeneCafe and am extremely happy with it.
Feel free to PM me if you think I can help. Will give you two bits of advice though:
1) Try the Espresso Monkey Blend at Sweet Maria's if you're gonna have espresso... Its an amazingly tasty blend and very easy to roast and hear the cracks.
2) Maintain a roasting diary. For every roast I ever did, while the Genecafe was pre-heating, I would write the time / temp profile that I was going to use for that roast, and give tons of temp readings during the roast.
#2 may not be applicable for popcorn poppers, but just for the heck of it, especially to maintain a time and result profile (i.e., with abc blend, I got to 2nd crack in 4 min 30 sec, and reached a Full City color).. this can give you a reference for the future should you like a bean and decide to order more of it.
And if you really want to get anal about it, look up Roastmaster, an iPhone app in the apps store. If you like to maintain a Roasting Diary, then this is the app for you. YOu can set a target of the color you want, and based on your past roasting history, will forecast FC, SC and give you an indication of when you should stop.
One more thing: someone above mentioned that they lose 5-6 % of the green bean weight?!?! Really?!?! I wonder if beans vary that much, because everything I have roasted brings me down by 15-20%. Am I doing something wrong? or Do the beans vary that much?
Great thread... Will be following this one.
Fauzi
A thread that is near and dear to my heart! I have now been home roasting for just over a year and have about 50 odd roasts under my belt (well, in my iPhone app, but that's a whole different story).
Living in Pakistan, both green beans and roasters were next to impossible to source. I burnt more than my fair share of SM beans in locally sourced popcorn poppers but due to a difference in voltages (we have 220V in the wall, as opposed to 110 in the US), I was getting terribly fast roasts... Like 2 and a quarter minutes, iirc. So I ended up importing a GeneCafe and am extremely happy with it.
Feel free to PM me if you think I can help. Will give you two bits of advice though:
1) Try the Espresso Monkey Blend at Sweet Maria's if you're gonna have espresso... Its an amazingly tasty blend and very easy to roast and hear the cracks.
2) Maintain a roasting diary. For every roast I ever did, while the Genecafe was pre-heating, I would write the time / temp profile that I was going to use for that roast, and give tons of temp readings during the roast.
#2 may not be applicable for popcorn poppers, but just for the heck of it, especially to maintain a time and result profile (i.e., with abc blend, I got to 2nd crack in 4 min 30 sec, and reached a Full City color).. this can give you a reference for the future should you like a bean and decide to order more of it.
And if you really want to get anal about it, look up Roastmaster, an iPhone app in the apps store. If you like to maintain a Roasting Diary, then this is the app for you. YOu can set a target of the color you want, and based on your past roasting history, will forecast FC, SC and give you an indication of when you should stop.
One more thing: someone above mentioned that they lose 5-6 % of the green bean weight?!?! Really?!?! I wonder if beans vary that much, because everything I have roasted brings me down by 15-20%. Am I doing something wrong? or Do the beans vary that much?
Great thread... Will be following this one.
Fauzi