Home Coffee Roasting, Revised, Updated Edition by Kenneth Davids

Author:Kenneth Davids
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

The Arabian coffee ceremony. The word ceremony may have originated with European commentators, who remarked on the similarities between this Arab (and the similar Ethiopian and Eritrean) practice to the better-known Japanese tea ceremony. The coffee ceremony is a bit less formal than its tea-drinking counterpart, but also technically more complex, since the coffee is not only brewed and drunk during the course of the event, but roasted and ground as well. Here the coffee beans, having already been roasted, are being pulverized in an ornate wooden mortar, while water for brewing is being heated in the open fire pit. The long-handled roasting ladle and spatula for stirring the roasting beans are neatly laid out on the far edge of the fire pit. From an early twentieth-century photograph.

Roasting Requirements

For orientation, let’s review what needs to take place during coffee roasting.

• The beans must be subjected to temperatures between 460°F and 530°F (240°C and 275°C). These temperatures can be considerably lower if the air around the beans is moving faster, as in hot-air or fluid-bed roasting apparatuses, or higher if the air is moving sluggishly, as it does in home gas ovens.

• The beans (or the air around them) must be kept moving to avoid uneven roasting or scorching.

• The roasting must be stopped at the right moment and the beans cooled promptly. (Prompt and effective cooling is an often overlooked but crucial element in coffee roasting.)

• Some provision must be made to vent the roasting smoke.

Here are some of the machines and methods for achieving these simple goals at home.

Overview of Methods and Machines

Roasting machines transfer heat to the beans in three fundamental ways.

• By convection: Beans are roasted by contact with rapidly moving hot air.

• By conductivity: Beans touch a hot surface.

• By radiation: Beans are bathed in heat from a hot surface or heat source.

In addition, the world may soon have its first genuine microwave coffee-roasting system, which works by a combination of microwaves and radiation.

Although no roasting method or machine works absolutely exclusively by any one of these three (or four) principles, they form a good starting point for understanding the differences in home-roasting technology and how they affect final cup character.

HOT-AIR OR FLUID-BED ROASTERS

Such devices roast coffee almost entirely by convection. Fast-moving currents of hot air surge through the beans, both heating and agitating them. The smallest and least expensive home-roasting devices work on this principle, as do hot-air corn poppers pressed into service as improvised coffee-roasting machines. These devices, which blow off roasting smoke and roast beans rapidly owing to an efficient transfer of heat, tend to produce a relatively bright, clean, high-toned cup. Both sweetness and acidity are accentuated, while body may be somewhat lighter than with coffee roasted by other methods. At this writing, hot-air roasters on the market include the Fresh Roast (here and here), the Brightway Caffé Rosto (here and here) and the Hearthware Gourmet Coffee Roaster (here and here).

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