Episode: 3573
Title: HPR3573: Home Coffee Roasting, part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3573/hpr3573.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:36:09

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3573 for Wednesday the 13th of April 2022.
Today's show is entitled Home Coffee Roasting Part 2.
It is part of the series Coffee.
It is hosted by Dint and is about 21 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is how I've roasted and brewed coffee.
Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This is DNT.
Again I've recorded this using solo cast and it's been working out really well now that
I'm into the edit.
So thanks Todd Norris for providing that and I recommend other hosts and prospective
hosts give it a try because it does make this process quite a lot easier, especially
to record something where you want to actually cover certain things.
So this is going to be part two of my two part episode about home coffee roasting.
The first episode came out about two weeks ago.
So if you, if this sounds interesting, you may want to go back and listen to that one
if you, if you missed it.
So thank you for joining us today and here we go with the recording.
So now how I roast and how I have roasted coffee.
So I started out with the classic popcorn popper.
It's one of those countertop things that is like an air roasting thing that's designed
for popcorn.
There are certain designs of that kind of machine that works very well for coffee roasting.
So it, and it's, it's kind of good.
It blows the chaff away and on neat way so you can have your, your bowl to catch all the
chaff that's flying out of the thing through the chute that kind of directs it down, you
know?
And, and of course, there's no smoke suppression.
So you, you really have to do it under an oven stove hood or something like that.
So, but then that is okay.
I used to do this in a, you know, one bedroom apartment with just under the hood and, and
it's just absolutely fine.
It doesn't even set off the fire alarms in the apartment, but it does make a lot of smoke.
So it just be aware of that.
So yeah, that's a great way to start roasting.
It's, it's, you know, you pay almost nothing.
So if it doesn't work out for you, if you don't like it, you know, you didn't lose a bunch
of money on it, you, but the thing is you can only roast a really small amount.
Also, it's supposed to roast very, very fast.
So because there's no temperature control at all.
So it's harder to, I mean, again, all of this is very subjective.
But one of the things that many people think is that it's, if you roast coffee slower,
you'll develop certain more desirable flavors in it.
So that's something people say about the popcorn popper, but you will get great coffee out
of it.
And it's wonderful that there is this option for people who are interested in starting
out.
I don't think I would have started roasting coffee if I didn't have this option to try
it out.
The next I bought this thing that's called stove pop, it's a, it's like a pot, one of
those pots that have a crank on top that you can make popcorn with.
It's designed for popcorn, but again, it works very well for coffee as well.
So that one is cool because you can roast a lot more coffee.
You can roast even up to one pound of coffee.
And yeah, I recommend trying.
It's kind of crazy.
You have to crank really fast.
And it makes a ton of smoke because you're roasting a lot of coffee with no smoke suppression.
But I think for learning about roasting coffee, I think it's really nice to have it and
try it out.
So yeah, I had that for a while, that was my roasting machine.
And then after that, I decided to buy an actual machine that was designed for roasting
coffee and that one was what's called the fresh roast SR700.
So that's, it's almost like taking the popcorn popper and just redesigning it specifically
for coffee.
And it's the same kind of idea, it's an air roaster.
And what was cool, what was really cool about the fresh roast SR700 is it had some kind
of Arduino thing in it and it had a USB port and then you could connect it to your computer.
And then the company that made it, they, they have their own software that's not very
good.
I never even tried it because it doesn't run on Linux.
And there is actually, there is something called open roast that it's, so there are two
things.
There is open roast, which is like a graphical user interface application in Python.
And there is something called, it's a Python library called fresh roast SR700.
Those together allow you to control your, your roaster from the computer.
So then yeah, there are lots of other kind of higher end roasters that are controllable
from the computer.
You can, you know, you can map out the roast temperatures the whole, the whole way.
So this thing allows you to, to do that with the fresh roast SR700.
It'll basically, it'll alternate between the, there are three heat levels in the open
roast low medium and high.
So it'll, it'll rotate from high to low or from high to, yeah, I think it's from, by default,
it's supposed to be from high to low, it'll rotate between those really fast to regulate
the temperature based on the thermometer that's in it.
So, so yeah, you can create your, your roast profile, you know, how your temperature rises
over time in the roast.
In, in this case, that those are the two variables that you have.
And, and then it, it just, you just basically hit run and it, and it does it for you.
And then all you have to do is be there to remove your coffee and move it to something
to cool as soon as it's ready.
So yeah, my unit of the fresh roast SR700 actually had an issue where this application
wasn't working because whatever signature you used to identify the low level when it
was switching between high and low to regulate the temperature, the low level didn't work
on my unit.
And then I found on, on GitHub, there's a bunch of other people had the same problem.
Apparently some SR700 units have this issue.
And then somebody on GitHub actually wrote a change to the, to the fresh roast SR700 library.
So that instead of rotating from high to low, it'll rotate from high to cool, which is
off basically.
So then it made it work and then I could use the, I could use open roast on Linux with
my SR700.
So yeah, I use that one for a long time and, but I have since moved to another one that
allows me to roast more coffee at all at once.
Now since I mentioned cooling, like you, you, you have to be there to remove the coffee
and dump it into something to cool.
So yeah, ideally the best way to do that is having like a colander.
I think that's the right word, yeah.
The thing you, you know, for straining your pasta or whatever.
And then just put it on top of a fan.
I have this fan that you can rotate it, you can tilt it so that it's pointing straight
up.
And then I can just set the colander right on top of it, dump the coffee on it.
And then in like two minutes, it's cool to the touch.
And that's another thing a lot of people say it's important to cool your coffee quickly
because otherwise it keeps cooking, right?
So that's that.
And then the fresh roast SR700, for example, when you hit the cooling cycle, it will just
turn off the heating element and it will just blow air.
But of course, the, you know, the whole thing is still very hot.
So it's going to take a while to cool.
And yeah, actually, I should say with the fresh roast SR700, there are three variables.
There is the, you can set the heat, the time of course, and also the air speed, the fan
speed.
So that's another thing.
For example, I used to use the cycle I used to, the profile I used to use.
It started like the fan setting a little lower because you know, the coffee is all cool.
And then the fan setting goes up towards the end when the coffee is getting really hot.
Usually that's a common thing, whatever, whatever way you have to move the beans, you want
to increase it towards the end to kind of prolong the end of your roast.
That's supposed to be a good thing to do.
So then I moved to the Bemore 2000 AB plus.
That one is a great machine.
I don't get to use the laptop to control it, but it has its own programs in it.
And it has manual control.
So you can just be there and kind of execute your roast manually.
And yeah, I really like the Bemore because it's, it's got to like these buttons, ABCD.
And then you just kind of had to know what the buttons do at certain times.
So because the design, it's like the design, the interface, let's say, it really makes
sense to someone who's using it and who knows how to use it and who maybe someone who has
a little bit of experience roasting coffee.
It makes a lot of sense to someone like that.
But it probably doesn't make any sense to anybody else is my point.
And also another thing is Bemore sells a lot of the parts.
So you can repair your machine on your own and even they, they actually sell the, like
if you had an older model, they came out with a newer model kind of recently that had
some new features in the electronics.
And you could actually buy just the electronics and replace them, you know, I mean, you know,
that's the kind of thing you want to keep a company that does that, right?
So, yeah, with, so with the Bemore, you can roast up to one pound at a time.
I usually roast one pound when I'm roasting a decaf, I roast half a pound.
It's a drum roaster.
So it's, it's basically like an electric oven that with a fan and then it just has like
a drum in it that spins in your coffee sits in this drum.
And so you can control the temperature, the, not, not, not the temperature, you can control
how much power you send to the heating element.
And those are zero, 25% 50, 75, 100%.
You can also, there are two speeds for the drum.
So you can increase the, the drum speed towards the end of your roast to make your beans move
more and help them withstand the temperature and extend the roast towards the end.
And also the Bemore AB, 2000 AB has some smoke suppression, it has this kind of thing kind
of like a catalytic converter that you really reduces the smoke.
You still get plenty of smoke, it will definitely set off your fire alarm if you don't do it
like right by a window or under the hood, but, but it's much less than it would be
otherwise, especially if you're roasting a pound, right?
And now brewing.
So I'll start with the grinder.
I use a grinder from Baratza, the name, the model is on core, it's their cheapest one.
Again, this is a company that sells tons of parts for their machines.
They support their machines, I just ordered a couple of gaskets for my grinder.
So yeah, great to see, you can basically rebuild the entire thing, anything, you can buy
the motor, you can buy every single part in it separately and rebuild your entire grinder
if you have to, great thing.
And it works really well too, it roasts fine enough for espresso.
So I recommend the Baratza grinder on core.
And they have other, more expensive ones too.
And then for actual brewing, when I first started drinking coffee, I used a mocha pot and
I still love it, it's, you know, absolute classic, it makes great coffee, one of the best
home coffee making machines you can have really.
Then after a while, when I spent some time in the Dominican Republic, I took a French
press with me.
And that was okay, I don't, I don't love it that much, I have since got rid of it and
I don't use it anymore.
Later I used the pour over for a while, which also I don't love it, it's okay, it can
make kind of good coffee, but I like the stronger stuff.
Then I made the, I got this, I got this thing that's called the brewer, it's from making
cold brew.
It just controls the dripping so that you fill up this reservoir with water and it
just slowly drips it into the, the bed of, of grounds and you're supposed to do this
in the fridge overnight.
And yeah, it's really delicious, I kind of look forward to summer for having cold brew
like that again.
So next, I got this flair espresso machine.
So this is a, it's a hand with a lever espresso machine.
So you have this brew head where you put your coffee grounds, you tamp them, then you,
you fill it up with hot water and then there's this contraption that you can just push the
coffee, push the water through and it has a little pressure gauge so you can control
the pressure that you apply to it because you may know the espresso is, you know, you
push water through coffee at pressure and so the, the, the, the, the bed of coffee is
what puts up that pressure, right?
So the, the bed has to be in a certain way, it has to be a ground to a certain degree
of, um, find this and it has to be tamped in a certain way, it has to be fairly level
so that the water doesn't kind of find channels through it and other things can affect it
too.
Uh, like if you, if you grind it to find, then the, the bits can actually clog the basket
below and then no, you cannot get much coffee through, uh, that can happen if you accidentally
grind it to find, uh, also I think sometimes I think the, the level of moisture in the coffee
can affect it too, like sometimes I'll be making, I'll be grinding coffee for espresso at
one level and it's working great, then I get a new roast and I try it and then it does
not work it.
I cannot pass any water through that.
I have to change the grinder setting to grind a little, uh, more, a little coarser, uh,
so that I can make coffee.
So, uh, yes, something happened between this roast and the last one that's making this
work different.
So there's other factors too, um, but anyway, basically, yeah, the coffee effect, um, how
much pressure you can get, um, to push the coffee through and for espresso, you have to
get it to a certain level of pressure, uh, but if you go overboard, then you can put
it in a pressure to pass the water through it.
So as you can see, it's a whole thing.
Anyway, so the flair espresso machine, uh, I have the one that's called, I think it's
called pro signature pro, something like that, as the one that has, uh, the pressure gauge.
And the machine is really irritating.
It's like not really well designed, it can kind of slip on the, on your countertop.
The lever is like shaped so that that's like, I think it has to be shaped that way for
balance, but at the same time, the shape really makes it hard for you to get a decent grip
on it.
And, uh, so yeah, it's, it's kind of a pain in, in many ways, but the coffee you get is,
is absolutely, it's excellent.
So for that, it's worth it.
It's, it's a pain, but I mean, at this point, uh, you understand that my tolerance for,
um, having to do stuff for my coffee is quite high.
So there we go.
Uh, and then since this, I have also bought an arrow press.
Many of you, I'm sure, know the arrow press, um, it's a great little thing.
Uh, it's a similar principle to the espresso machine or the, the mocha pot where it
tries to push a water through the coffee at pressure, uh, which is supposed to extract
more from the coffee and make a stronger cup of coffee.
Uh, now the arrow press is really nice because it's so small, it's really light, um, like
I have brewed coffee for myself, uh, in the car, uh, on a road trip, you know, just stop
at a QT, get some hot water, uh, grind your coffee with your, your little hand-cranked
grinder and put in your, um, arrow press and you've got coffee, you've got good coffee
on the road, uh, for that alone, to me, it's worth it.
But I am using it a lot these days too.
I usually have one of my first coffee in the mornings, usually out of the flair espresso
and then the rest of the day I have usually two more from the arrow press.
So that's that.
That was my two-part episode about home coffee roasting, uh, talking about brewing as well.
Now I just want to say that, you know, drinking coffee, like a lot of people like coffee,
we have drunk coffee for a very long time, uh, and coffee is, is a great thing.
So you, you know, you can drink, I guess my point is you can drink coffee however you like.
Um, there's no better or worse coffee.
This is how I like my coffee and I've made it a kind of a thing for me.
But, uh, you know, there's absolutely nothing wrong with, uh, just buying your folders
at the store or whatever other kind of industrialized coffee is available in your area.
I've done that myself many times.
I have my favorite industrialized coffee, uh, from Brazil that I used to drink back there.
Uh, and, uh, and I still think it's good.
I would buy it and I would, I would drink it.
It was good, you know, I would boil the water with a little bit of cinnamon with a, a cinnamon
stick in it, uh, and then it would kind of taste a little bit like cinnamon.
I remember in the Dominican Republic when I was there, a lot of people would put, um, nutmeg
in their coffee as well and a drop of vanilla extract.
You know, all wonderful ways to consume this wonderful thing that nature has given us.
So enjoy our coffee the way you do, uh, you know, to give that we have and, you know, if
you found all this stuff that I've talked about interesting, then by all means pursue it.
It's been fun for me.
Um, but if not, keep your coffee because it is perfect just the same.
Thank you for listening and tune in tomorrow again for another exciting episode of Hacker
Public Radio.
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