Pan Roasting

For me, I usually roast about twice per week, sometimes only once per week.  I roast small quantities, usually 1/4 to 1/3 pound of any variety.  If it’s a coffee that I have a large stash of, then I will do up to a half pound on a single roast.

Why such small batches?  For a couple of reasons:

• I find it easier to control the roast process when I roast only a very small batch of beans.  If I get too big with the quantity, I end up with more of an uneven roast (some dark, even burned beans, and some light beans).  When I roast a small batch, I find that I can more evenly roast the beans.  I have heard the opposite of this from some other roasters, but this is my experience.
• When I roast very small batches, I can roast more varieties of beans for use at that time, giving me a good variety of what I can choose to drink each day.  If I roasted like one pound of 3 or 4 different beans, I could not use them up before they would start to go stale.

I personally go through about a pound of coffee per week.  I’ll use a bit more than that if my wife or one of my neices or nephews who is living with me has an occasional cup.  But, generally one pound per week will keep me in coffee whenever I want a cup.  Having a variety of beans available, which have been roasted, lets me choose something that sounds good.  If you are not a home roaster, you may not realize how different the taste of different beans is, but it is a huge difference.  Some beans taste like fruits.  Other beans taste earthy.  Some beans taste smokey or leathery.  So, by having 5 or 6 different beans all ready to drink, it’s like walking into a restaurant and choosing what kind of soft drink you want.  I mean, you get variety.

Right now, I have 6 different beans that are all ready to drink.  Roasted, rested and still fresh:

1. Barangay Bobok, Philippines.  This bean is a sort of middle of the road bean.  No special flavors to it, but kind of smooth.
2. Sulawesi.  I really like this bean.  Very earthy, my wife says it is “muddy” and I like it.
3. Rwanda Cup of Excellence.  This bean is sort of molasses/brown sugary.  Very nice.
4. Kenya Eegads.  Grapefruit to the max.
5. Ethiopia Yirgacheffe.  Citrus fruit and spice.
6. Mexico.  Nice cup with a bit of spiciness to it, maybe a bit of salt.

See, by having so many different beans available, I can choose what I feel like!  A couple of these beans are left over from last week’s roasting, 4 of them are recent within 2 to 3 days.  The ones from last week are almost gone now, which is good, because they will start to loose flavor soon.

How about you?  How many different roasted beans do you keep on hand to satisfy your coffee urges?

Well, as you know if you read this site, I am pretty new at coffee roasting, and specialty coffee beans in general.  When I roasted the yirg beans, I thought I did an OK job, given that it was only about my 3rd or 4th time to ever roast coffee.  I e-mailed a photo of my roast to my best coffee buddy, Bobby.  Here is a picture of my initial roast:

Well, Bobby e-mailed me back and told me that the roast was “ugly.”  As I scrutinized the picture, I couldn’t help but agree.  It wasn’t evenly roasted, some parts looked burned, other parts looked under roasted.  There was still a fair amount of chaff on the roasted beans too.  OK, it was ugly.  So much for my sense of pride.

Yirg Roast on March 31, 2009 - Ugly but delicious

Well, after the roast had rested for about 3 days or so, I made a cup of coffee with it.  My first cup of Ethiopian coffee!  Hmm… it didn’t taste like coffee at all.  I told my wife, Feyma, that it tasted like Spice Tea.  I could taste the spice so clearly, and I loved the flavor.  I told Bobby that it was so good, and the spice flavor was so strong.  He told me that the cupping experts had said that these beans tasted fruity.  So, I went online and read the cupping reviews of the bean.  Fruity.  But, Bobby was only half right, because the cupping experts did say fruity, but they also said there was a distinct spice flavor.  Yes!  I felt good to have picked out that spice flavor myself!  And, as I continued drinking, I could also identify the fruit flavors as well.  I was really happy with my ugly roast!  Hey, taste is a lot more important than the looks anyway, right?  My coffee had the flavors that the experts said should be present!

Well, I have roasted more yirg beans three times since, and the results have not been good.  No spice.  No fruit.  First two subsequent roasting attempts were too lightly roasted.  Next attempt after that was over roasted.  I was trying to roast a half pound at a time, and the results were not good.  That wonderful tasting first roast was a quarter pound.

So, today, I decided to go back to roasting a quarter pound again, and I monitored the roast very closely, and tried to duplicate my first yirg roast.  I really want to have that flavor again.  Today’s roast, I felt was going pretty good.  The first crack (popping sound of the beans while roasting) occurred at almost the same time as that first time I roasted yirg.  The results after roasting?  Here is a photo:

Yirg Roast on April 18, 2009 - Ugly but will they be delicious?

Hey, they look very close to the same!  Well, I’ll let these beans roast for a few days before I give them a try.  I am encouraged, though.  These look so close to that first roast that I did, I am anticipating that the flavor will be similar too.

What do you think?  I’ll report back when I taste them.

There are a lot of better ways to roast coffee beans, but I am a bit of a simpleton when it comes to coffee, and I enjoy pan roasting.  You can do a better job with commercial roasting equipment, but pan roasting is fine for me, for now anyway.

If you like coffee, but have never roasted your own beans before, you probably don’t know what coffee really tastes like.  The coffee you buy in the grocery store was roasted months ago, and it’s stale.  The coffee that I roast and drink is used within 1 week or so after it is roasted.  I store it in special bags that keep it fresh.  The coffee I roast and drink tastes nothing like what you will taste from a can you buy in the store.

To roast coffee beans, there are a few steps:

• Personally, I pan roast no more than a half pound of coffee beans at a time.  I do this because I feel I can better control the roast on a small batch, and also by roasting a small batch I can drink it while it remains quite fresh.
• You will roast the coffee in a pan, as I show in the video.
• After the roasting is complete, you need to cool the beans as soon and as quickly as possible.
• Let the beans rest for at least 24 hours before drinking the coffee, as they will develop more flavor after having rest time.

I hope you enjoyed the video!  Enjoy the coffee too, I know I will!

First, I roasted some Natural Yirgacheffe Worka beans that came from Ethiopia.  I got these beans from my Sangay, Bobby Timonera.  Bobby bought these through GCBC, but he didn’t like them as much as some other varieties of beans, so I bought them from him.  These are some excellent beans that I really enjoy.  The roasted beans have a combination of a fruity and spicy flavor, which I really enjoy.  My first attempt at roasting the beans, I thought that I went too light with them, so on my second roast I went darker, to a Full City + darkness.  When I tasted the FC+, I decided that they weren’t nearly as good as the lighter roast.  This morning was my third time to roast these yirg beans, and I throttled back to a lighter roast this time.  I took them right to the end of the first crack and stopped.

Lighter roast on the yirg

One thing I noticed on roasting these yirgs is that the chaff comes off the bean much earlier than on other beans I have roasted (which is only a limited number so far).  Today, a lot of chaff was coming off after about 5 1/2 minutes of roasting, while the beans were still fairly green.  First crack started at about 8 1/2 minutes, and first crack was rolling nicely by 9 1/2 minutes.  I stopped the roast at 12 minutes today.  Last time, I roasted until about 17 minutes, so today was a lot lighter than before.  After a few days rest, I’ll taste them.  I hope to get a similar taste to my first yirg roast, because those were so delicious!  That second darker roast was still good, but not outstanding like my first roast of yirg.

For my second roasting this morning, I decided to roast the remaining beans that I had from Mt. Matutum, South Cotabato.  Mt. Matutum is a special place to me, because I used to live in General Santos City, and Matutum was somethat that I saw every day, unless it was too cloudy.  It’s a beautiful volcanic mountain, and I love the place.  Unfortunately, these Matutum beans are not too special, though.   As a matter of fact, I don’t like them at all.  However, they are good for guests, who always say that they taste good.  They are also a favorite of my Bisaya Teacher, Bebe, so I will cup some for her whenever she is here.

The Matutum beans are much larger than the yirgs.  The yirgs are actually pretty tiny, based on the beans that I’ve dealt with in the short days that I’ve enjoyed coffee roasting as a hobby.  The Matutums, I’d say, are average sized beans from all the beans I have seen.  I only had about 1/4 pound of Matutums left, so I decided to finish them off today, and that is actually a pretty small batch.  I usually roast about a half pound at a time.  The Matutums took about a 14 minute roast today, and I took them right up to the second crack, quite a bit darker than the yirgs.  But, the Matutums, I find, taste best at this level.

Roasting beans is something that I enjoy.  I’ll write in another article about my current roasting method, and why I enjoy it.

Magkape ta ba?

Unfortunately, that was a small batch that I roasted, though, and I’ve already drank all of it!  You see, I was tired of wasting good coffee beans when I wasn’t doing a good job of roasting, so I decreased the batch size until I hit on the proper results!  And, I did it!

Like I said, those beans are gone already, but I just finished roasting a little over a half pound, and they look quite good too.  As a matter of fact, I am expecting this latest batch to be my best yet.  They just have a “good look” about them, so I am confident.  And, this time the beans will last me for a lot longer, since it’s a bigger roast.

I was very close to buying a coffee roaster recently, because I was tired of my poor roasts.  Problem is, I enjoy the pan roasting.  It is challenging, and it is just something that I find kind of fun.  Putting beans in a machine and pushing a button doesn’t appeal to me as much as roasting on the stove top, so for now, I am going to stick with what I am doing.  I will, most likely, get a roaster someday down the road, but for now, I want to perfect my pan roasting technique.

So, just to reiterate, I’m happy to report delicious results on the Yirg!  How do you tell if it is good?  Well, for me, it has a hint of a Chai Tea flavor to it, and some fruitiness to boot!