Are there any other home-roasters in the community? I live in an area where the commercially available coffee tends to be pre-ground and stale. Over the years, I’ve started roasting my own coffee. Feel free to chime in to this post if you do the same or if you’re curious about it and we can compare notes on technique!
I use the Freshroast sr800 and greens from happy mug. There are roasters near me but it’s much cheaper to roast at home and I can buy larger amounts of green and keep it around the house for a lot longer than roasted coffee.
I’m still trying to dial in the roast times I’m not sure exactly how long it should take me for the various types of roasts and I’ve been thinking about drilling a hole in my chaff collector lid to add a thermal probe so I have more information to work with.
right now I’m doing light roasts anywhere from 6:30 to 7 minutes and dark roasts are taking me about 10 to 12 minutes but I usually only barely get to rolling second cracks in the darkest roasts.
Interesting! I’m seeing online that it has a range of temperature settings. Among my local friends who roast, that’s where I see a lot of variation. What’s your typical roast temperature?
I roast a few pounds at a time at 385F/196C on the bottom rack of my oven. It all roasts evenly that way, no need to stir. It takes a whole lot longer than your roasts do, but the volume makes up for it.
I roast 200 to 225 grams at a time I just leave the temp on the max setting and the fan starts on max and i turn the fan down throughout the roast to increase the temp while still keeping the beans moving.
I’ve done a batch in the oven before and it only took me about 10 to 15 minutes for a batch but i was worried about scorching. I got a lot of pitting in the oven but I think that is because my charge temp was really high like 430-450 if I remember correctly but I believe pitting happens in most dark roasts anyway and does not effect flavor.
I agree with you on the pitting. I can’t avoid it whenever I go dark with my roasts, regardless of roast temp or method.