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coffee for mags - a coffee roasting trip report (& free mag coffee)
hey guys - in the espresso making mags thread, jm2e asked if someone would make a TR on roasting coffee, and i thought i would put one together. since this isn't about espresso, i felt it deserved it's own thread.
so - here's the deal, i love coffee, and i love roasting coffee, and i'm also super stoked on sharing coffee. i am happy to send coffee to any mag who meets the following criteria:
- you are unemployed and need coffee (i'll send for free)
- you are a frontline worker (whatever the fuck that means, you have to deal with people, bonus if you're medical) - i'll send you coffee for free
- you just want nice coffee - if you chip in to Protect Our Winters (or whatever nonprofit you want) - i will send you coffee.
i am not a professional roaster, but i do roast a ton, and i figured i'd just get a list of people who want coffee and then work down the list. there are a couple mags I definitely still owe some beans too (Hutash is top of mind), so I'll include those by default. so yeah if you want coffee hit me up, tell me what you like, and i'll send you some beans. i won't be super timely but i will mail you some cool shit.
okay so on to the coffee roasting trip report:
this is what we start with - these are green coffee cherries, separated by origin and put into sharpie-labeled mason jars. i told you i'm not a professional...
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coffee is technically a cherry, and it grows around the equator, mostly in volcanic soil, at higher elevations (between 1,200 and 2,500 meters above sea level, usually). what we roast is the seed of the cherry, which first needs to be separated from the fruit itself. here is some stock image of the cherry proper:
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the way the seed is separated from the cherry REALLY matters - the three things that make a difference in how coffee tastes are:
1 - where it's grown (different regions grow different varieties of coffee, all of which taste different)
2 - how the cherry is removed from the seed (how the coffee cherry is dried and processed)
3 - how it's roasted
everyone always focuses on #3 but that is maybe the least important aspect. how the coffee is processed is maybe the biggest and easiest to understand difference. there are two main ways of processing beans (and a half dozen less common ways), and any roaster worth their weight will tell you how a particular bag of coffee is processed:
washed process - the cherry is washed off of the seed in a big old tank - these coffees are clean tasting and have bright acidity, usually. this way requires a bunch of water though, so in some growing regions it's not feasible to wash coffee.
natural process - (sometimes called dry process) the cherry literally rots off of the seed, and the flavors of the fermentation are what the coffee ends up tasting like. these coffees usually have less acidity but have crazy big fruit flavors, like blueberry and strawberry and mango. most people who try a natural for the first time are usually like "holy shit i had no idea coffee could taste this wild". the trick here is though - the processing has to be really good to be worth a damn - processing natural coffees requires a lot of skill to do well, otherwise, the coffee ends up tasting like gym socks
here is an example coffee label for hipster 3rd wave coffee -
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the only things you need to pay attention on a label are the origin and the process. idk why they include all that other shit in there - it's important to roasters but not to consumers. i guess it just gives them street cred, but as a consumer, none of that really means anything.
here is a very quick guide to coffee origins - you can find better information online but this is a pretty quick summary:
ethiopia - floral or fruity, light
kenyan - super bright, grapefruit, lemon, cranberry
burundi - tea like flavors, close to ethiopian coffee
rwandan - similar to burundi, sometimes raisin flavors
columbia - apples, big body/mouthfeel
indonesia - dirt, tobacco, grass, big body, dark chocolate
guatemala/honduran - good body, chocolate/nut flavors
brazil - chocolate/nuts
yemen - tobacco, banana cream pie, cherries, orange, leather (no i am not making that up).
so - if you like flavors like blueberry and strawberry and fruit, without much acidity, get a natural/dry coffee. if you like flavors like orange and lemon and cranberry, get a washed coffee. there's one more processing method - called giling basah - but that only happens in indonesia, and it's what makes their coffee so rich and earthy.
anyway, on to roasting. here is my roaster:
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the way it works is there's a drum that spins around a heating element, and a fan that blows cold air through the chamber. i can control the amount of heat and the amount of fan and that's it. if you want to roast at home on the cheap, a lot of people use popcorn poppers.
it's basically a small scale version of big shop roaster, and i use a datalogger connected to two thermocouples that give me real time data on how much heat is in the roaster, and what temp the beans are. that datalogger outputs to a graph which looks like this:
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roasting coffee is pretty much like popping popcorn (no, seriously, the coffee pops just like popcorn after 7-9 minutes) - with the part after popping being the most critical moment of the roast. the "popping zone" (called first crack) is the yellow bar on my graph, the red check mark shaped line is the drum temp, the blue checkmark is the bean temp. this coffee is a very, very light roast.
here the beans go down the hole:
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different coffees roast differently (higher grown coffee has more fiber and can therefor take more heat, lower grown coffee is delicate, naturals are also a little more delicate), and there are two things that matter when roasting: roast level and development time. everyone knows roast level - light/medium/dark - that's how dark you let the coffee get before you dump it out. but development time is how long you let it roast for, and how big of an opportunity you give for caramelization and sugars. more developed coffees = sweeter, bigger body, but they often times lose out on some delicate flavors - this is why good coffee from ethiopia or kenya (the holy grail of the coffee world, largely) is usually light with little development time.
in general, if you roast anything for long enough, it'll all taste like toast. it doesn't matter how nice of a bean it was to begin with, they all carbonize just the same. for that reason, MOST good coffees are done to a light or medium range. there are exceptions - coffees that are done to a dark roast, but really, speaking broadly, most good coffees should be on the lighter side of the spectrum. that's what allows you to taste what makes them unique.
for many roasters, the holy grail is a light, well-developed coffee. that means the coffee is sweet while still retaining it's cool, unique flavors
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for calibration sake, here is what i mean when i say light to medium - the furthest left coffee is a true light coffee. the one in the middle is a light-medium, and the one on the right is medium. i don't often go darker than the one on the right, but sometimes it's fun. dark coffee only really works with certain origins, too (indonesian and yemen coffees do well super dark). notice how the center line (the chaff) changes color from light tan to medium tan as the roast gets darker. but also notice - none of the beans are oily or gross, that shit is rank, you should not drink coffee like that. obligatory fuck starbucks. i'm sorry, you can do dark coffee well, but that is NOT what coffee should look like. go collect ashes from your firepit and brew that if that's what you are into.
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okay once coffee is roasted it needs to be cooled down as quickly as possible - here is the coffee in the cooling tray. you want to stop the coffee from cooking any longer as fast as you physically can.
once coffee is cool, it needs to rest before it is good to drink. most people do not realize this, and they think that fresh is best - that is NOT true. a good roaster will always tell you the date that a particular coffee was roasted, and most coffees are best somewhere between 3 and 14 days after the roast, after which point they gradually decline. this is because coffee needs to off-gas co2 that is released when the coffee goes through first crack (popcorn popping). once it has finished degassing, it's good to drink.
as for brewing coffee - whatever works - as long as you grind fresh before brewing. burr grinders are best, and i like pourover. french press is also great. espresso is fun but somewhat finicky and expensive as shit.
anyway, thanks for coming to my tedtalk, hit me up if you have any questions or want some coffee.
