5 ms·

I always thought that roasting beans is it's own science. Isn't 'beans roasted with heat gun' quite a weakest link in this pipeline to great coffee?

greggsy 4y ago
‘Blowing hot air’ is possibly the least technical aspect of the whole process.
- readbeard 4y ago
  Haha but what about "pumping hot water?" Both of these things are surprisingly difficult to do properly, with enough consistency and control. I believe temperature profile can noticeably affect the roast, and being able to consistently hit a profile (and thus experiment and improve) is really difficult with something like a heat gun. I did the heat gun thing for a while, and the air popper thing for a while, and even modified the air popper to be able to control fan speed and heating element separately. I got good results but hit a wall and needed more control. I started building an Arduino-controlled air popper to be able to get more consistent results, then decided brewing top-quality coffee coffee was challenging enough when roast quality was delegated to experts. Since then, I've been buying from local roasters.
  - greggsy 4y ago
    ‘Pumping a precise volume of near-boiling hot water at high pressure’ is orders or magnitude harder than ‘blowing hot air’. Sounds like you need a popocorn maker :)
HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
As opposed to a hot-air popcorn popper or a skillet on the stovetop?
lostlogin 4y ago
Quite possibly. I’d say it’s just how I like it 80% of the time, and amazing 10% and terrible 10% of the time. My go to is Yirgachefe. Every so often I buy beans to see what I’m missing and I’m usually very underwhelmed. It’s time I did this again. New Zealand is lucky as the importers don’t bring in much crap coffee and so the average is good. A large bulk is brought in by just a couple of companies and all seem to have high standards. The key to home roasting for me is freshness. I like coffee a couple of days after it’s roasted. I can control this and struggled when I was buying beans.

greggsy 4y ago

‘Blowing hot air’ is possibly the least technical aspect of the whole process.

readbeard 4y ago
Haha but what about "pumping hot water?" Both of these things are surprisingly difficult to do properly, with enough consistency and control. I believe temperature profile can noticeably affect the roast, and being able to consistently hit a profile (and thus experiment and improve) is really difficult with something like a heat gun. I did the heat gun thing for a while, and the air popper thing for a while, and even modified the air popper to be able to control fan speed and heating element separately. I got good results but hit a wall and needed more control. I started building an Arduino-controlled air popper to be able to get more consistent results, then decided brewing top-quality coffee coffee was challenging enough when roast quality was delegated to experts. Since then, I've been buying from local roasters.
- greggsy 4y ago
  ‘Pumping a precise volume of near-boiling hot water at high pressure’ is orders or magnitude harder than ‘blowing hot air’. Sounds like you need a popocorn maker :)

HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago

As opposed to a hot-air popcorn popper or a skillet on the stovetop?

lostlogin 4y ago

Quite possibly. I’d say it’s just how I like it 80% of the time, and amazing 10% and terrible 10% of the time. My go to is Yirgachefe. Every so often I buy beans to see what I’m missing and I’m usually very underwhelmed. It’s time I did this again. New Zealand is lucky as the importers don’t bring in much crap coffee and so the average is good. A large bulk is brought in by just a couple of companies and all seem to have high standards. The key to home roasting for me is freshness. I like coffee a couple of days after it’s roasted. I can control this and struggled when I was buying beans.