homecoffeeroasters

Well, it has been a long, hard process, but I think I am finally getting the hang of the Behmor. I have done around a dozen roasts so far and have tried most of the profiles available (except for the fifth profile which I have not got around to using yet). So, far I have gotten the most consistent results with P3 and find myself as using in as the go to button on many of my roasts.

However, I keep thinking that those other buttons are there for a reason and I have been trying to force myself not to play it too safe and use the rest of the profiles. I even want to give P2 another shot even though the 8 oz  Indonesian Flores Organic Manggar that I roasted on it came out really bad.

Really, really bad.

I had roasted it for 14 minutes on the P2 profile. It had started cracking 13:30 into the roast, and for some reason I let start to cool a mere 30 seconds later instead of adding the extra 30 seconds I had in the bank.

The roast came out patchy and light. Not pretty at all. I did not know whether it was the profile, the organic nature of the coffee or my own stupidity. The beans looked cooked, but there was just something about their look that was really off putting.

The resulting brew was far from great and left me feeling both sour and gassy. It had a very “foresty: taste that might have came out better if it was darker. It tasted somewhat more palatable when I mixed it with lemony Guatemalan that I roasted afterward but that gassy sour feeling was still there. The negative experience has forced me to let the rest of the bag sit around, not wanting to waste any more of my precious  roasting time on it. Perhaps, I will try making a dark roast in my Nesco, to see if was merely the setting not the bean. Although it was a free pound that came with my Behmor, I really do not want to waste it.

I will be sure to let you all know what I do.

     Here is a updated pic of my little coffee plant which I am discreetly growing in my apartment.  It is still pretty small, but it is pushing out some new growth at a nice and steady pace.It might even be growing a little too fast.Those top two pairs of leaves appeared in just under a month and I can see another set forming already. I am wondering if I am maybe giving it too much light. On the left you can just make out the Aerogarden (in which i am growing some basil and oregeno) . I placed Cherry (the name I gave my coffee plant) next to it thinking that it would benefit from the plant light of the Aero Garden. The only thing is that this lamp has a 17 hour light cycle and coffee plants like to thrive near the equator. Perhaps finding a way to give it a steady 12/12 light dark cycle would be more optimal.Anyways, I am no longer afraid that cherry is going to wither away, but I still need to be careful if I want her around long enough to give a crop in five to six years. Of course, if it keeps growing like this, I am either goingto have to  build a green house on my little balcony or take some Bonsai classes. 

“Enough beans to get the entire high school jazzed off thier asses several times over sheriff.  Either those kids were really going to party, or we are looking at an intent to distribute….”

Deputy Dan glanced over at the  bag of beans that he had placed on the top of the truck of the patrol car. He had never seen unprocessed ones outside of the law enforcement training seminars before, but his instincts told him that he had made his first big time bust. He had pulled over the minivan for having expired tags and then stumbled upon this big bag of coffee beans.

“Yeah I am sure, I mean, sure enough to hold them.” The deputy said into the phone after an extended period of listening to the sheriff mull the situation over. He still needed perform the caff test in order to make sure, but he knew it was going to come back positive.  Most of the stuff he had confiscated had already been cooked and ground  long before it had even made it to the county line. This was some unadulterated stuff worth a small fortune on the street. Some real Primo gourmet coffee.

He  looked past the bag of beans and into the seat to make sure the two young punks that he had arrested were not doing anything overtly stupid. Hopefully, they were talking too each other, spilling valuable secrets to embedded backseat microphones that DARE had financed the department to further fight this war on Caffeine.

“Who are they? Well sheriff, I guess thats where it gets a little tricky, It was two local boys.” Deputy Dan breathed a deep sigh and then told the sheriff.

“It’s Seth Jorgenson and Donald McAnsky,” He said and waited as the sheriff finished swearing into the phone.”Which is why I figured I better call you before calling it in.”

The two jackasses were probably doing a bean run for the big  party at Bare ass creek that every kid in the county was going to be this weekend. They were probably planning on cookin up the beans themselves and then brewing up some hooch to hawk to the kids for 10 bucks a cup.  This type of entrapeneurship was typical of Seth and Donny who were both known for dabbling in illicit activities much to the chagrin of their parents.  

Judge Jorganson and Blake McAnsky were pretty powerful guys in town and would not be too happy about their boy doing time. They were also the sheriff’s biggest supporters. Deputy Dan already knew what was going to happen.

The beans were probably going to have to disappear somehow…

He began to wonder as to whether or not the beans could actually be processed using just a oven and a cooking sheet. He had tried the stuff as an experimental teen and found even the low grade stuff to his liking and he began to wonder what ”fresh coffee” would taste like. If it was as good as all the Caf-addicts said it was. Like sipping pure heaven.

It would be a shame just to waste the stuff.  

Upon hearing that a buddy of mine, whom I turned onto home roasting, went out and bought  himself a fancy schmancy Hot top coffee roaster, I just could not wait any longer. I went ahead and cashed in a few hundred thousand shares of GM stock that I had laying around and bought me a 300 dollar Behmor Roaster from Sweet Marias. Now, my girlfriend does not  have to hear me yammering on about how much I want one. While, Behmor is not as fancy (or schmancy) as the Hot Top, it seems to have quite a following in the homeroasting community. Also, this highly regarded machine is capable of cooking up a to a full pound of coffee beans, which is almost double that of Hot Tops 9 oz capacity.This gives me the ability to produce more than three times the roasted coffee in one sitting than I can with my Nesco.

And Perhaps I went a little overboard during my first two days. Just a little.

Within two days, I was up to my elbows in beans having roasted three 8oz batches within that span. The first two were from the eight  pounds that SM included with the machine and turned out pretty good, but then I went got and too bold. I decided it was time to try some of my precious Tanzanian in this baby.  I set it to 8 oz and the P3 setting.  They started cracking 12 minutes and 20 seconds into the 14 minute roast and were still going as the count down began prompting me to add 30 seconds to the time.

Something told me that they were not finished, and I had not heard them hit the second crack  when the cooling cycle kicked in, but being a little weary of starting a fire in my new machine, I hesitated on adding more time. The beans came out too light and the resulting coffee ended up being too bright and lacking any of the delicious caramel like undertones of slightly darker roast of the bean.