the home roaster

since the silvia appeared, i've been taken on a journey into the world of coffee... to the point where roasting my own beans becomes necessary. yes, necessary. i would not say it's more economomical because it does take up time and effort but home roasting is definitely the way to go. advantages that come are: you can roast as much as you want, or as little as you want and to your preferred roast level. also, green beans are cheap (even though they do lose about 15% of its weight due to the roast).

you could start out with a simple popcorn popper (costs $5 from ebay or $15 from the shops) or go the way of the 'Corretto'

.

However, i found an old 'turbo' convection oven in my garage and so hacked up my own roasting setup based on the basic requirements for roasting: heat up to 250C and stirring mechanism.

I came up with the 'wild' roaster. behold:



ok, it's not very inspiring, but it does do the job.


found a $3 SS bowl at a asian all-in-one shop. yay. drilled 2 holes. one for the stirrer to go thru. the other for thermometer.



the stirrer was the tricky bit. i thought about a fan motor. but that's too weak. so thought the old cordless drill would work. problem is it needs to be under the bowl. for that a stand was required. got a few bricks and timber pieces as makeshift stands either side. stirrer was metal from clothes hanger twisted to shape. hehe.

here's the green beans being taken for a test spin in the bowl - a peru/ethiopian blend (300g)...


the result:

roasted a bit uneven. think the stirrer wasn't very good. had to make another one (not a problem, we have many clothes hangers in the house.).

the other bad part about the initial setup was that i needed to put my hand on the drill to make the stirrer go. so back into the garage i went - found a small G-clamp! woo! yay. (it's my family's garage - never know what stuff you can find). so i clamped that on for the second roast - a straight dominican roast (500g). hands free action. also, i can vary the stirring speed. made sure it was faster this time


worked great! and the roast turned out not too bad either. certainly more even than the first roast...



last issue to face is chaff removal. i had to lift the turbo every now and then to release the chaff from the bowl :S besides that, it is so satisfying to be able to roast a greater mass than the popper and also the control.