Hi, I am
Thompson I
have been roasting coffee for a long long time and
This last weekend. I lent out my air popcorn popper that I use
When I'm at home when I'm not at sweet Maria's
[to] a friend and had no coffee
so I decided I would roast some coffee on the only thing I had which was a cast-iron skillet [and]
to be honest, we
[talked] on their website about roasting coffee in a skillet
And I haven't done it [for] a really long time so I actually had
What I thought was some pretty good success roasting coffee in a skillet, and I thought I would go over
How I approached it this last weekend
given
The long Hiatus I have been doing it and the experience
I have roasting coffee so many other different [ways], so I'm going to try to
Make this whole video myself and make the audio not completely sucky which is kind of difficult
Given that, I need to turn on my fan. Which is up here
and
that's the lowest setting but the problem with roasting inside is you're going to need a
You're going to need some exhaust and I've got my skillet here
Which I've been heating up, so I'm going to go ahead and pan down the self-made video
And I was checking the temperature
and we're about
250 I want to get up a little [bit] higher. The conventional wisdom
for dropping coffee into a roasting drum is 300 degrees
350 s fine
to prevent scorching and
So that's the big issue with
Roasting coffee in a pan is scorching
[I] would say in general. It's impossible not to scorch coffee in a pan
and
Pretty much scorch coffee is not well roasted but given the fact that roasting in a pan is just using
just what you have and
Costs nothing, but the coffee. I think we should really try to do [our] best with this
I'm up at 262
I'm going to turn on my other little
camera over here
and
You'll notice one of the most important things to have
"Hello" oven mitt. I've also got a baking pan here and what I have is about a cup
I actually don't have a good scale here right now either
I loaned that out too. So this is a cup of a really nice dense coffee. This is
Ethiopia Yukiro Coop from
Agaro area of the West and that's good because a
Really soft coffee like a Brazil or something like that is going to scorch a lot easier so a coffee
That's dense and super high grown is a good choice for
roasting in Pan [and]
My temperature is good
and
I'll set a timer
And we're going to start
So the first thing I want to do is just not have
constant contact with the coffee, without moving it in some way and
Golly Gee I
Had a wooden spoon here, and I just misplaced it. So I'm gonna grab what I've got
So one of the things I discovered this weekend when I was roasting
Was that you know shaking and shaking the pan is really the best way to do this
Not necessarily stirring with the spoon the problem is a cast-iron skillets incredibly heavy
So if you've got the technique where you can sort of you know flip over a flapjack in a pan
That being a pancake
That's probably one of the best ways to agitate the coffee in here
So what I was doing where I got that good roast. I was moving the coffee from one side of [the] pan to the other
Shaking it out letting it lay flat
for you know 15 seconds and then
flipping it around
And the problem with this roasting method is you have to be very patient and it takes a long time and [a] lot of work.
But your reward is minimal scorching and
Actually a very good tasting coffee
in fact
Here is my coffee from the weekend. [I] can see that. It's got a quaker, but that's a light roast of a Kenya and
I do see some signs of scorching there
But it's fairly minimal
so I think coming at this from some the experience of roasting and
drum roasters and all kinds of different machines and sample roasting
is
Understanding a little bit about how you want to see this bean development
happening
And what you don't want to see which is early scorch marks and here's a here's a very light bean. It's actually a
sort of a defect bean, and I saw a little bit of
what you call facing. Facing is scorching that happens on the flat side of the beam and
the two places you're gonna see scorching are going to be on the flat side as
Well as on the tips
called
amazingly enough "tipping".
So I'm starting to smell some some light roasting smells. I'm going to turn up my burner little
That's what I've got right now
But I'm basically seeing some good development here. We're getting a little bit of yellowing
I can smell a little bit of that bready pleasant flavor
slightly Herbal Flavor
So as I said I had a kind of a bias against this type of roasting this is not
For me the first type of roasting [I] would want to do I would want to do roasting in a hot air popper
hot Air stream
[and] the reason is because of the heat transfer the sort of
Thermodynamics of...
Heat transferred through a hot air stream rather than this which is conduction
Now you might say to yourself well
All those coffee roasters you see at shops, It's a big
Metal drum spinning coffee around and it's a lot of those actually the good ones are cast iron
drums
Because they don't warp
Over time as you roast in the heat and and cool
but actually
Roasting in a shop roaster is really not
conduction you're not conducting heat from the hotter metal to the beam and
The reason is is that if you look carefully at a shop roaster,
You'll see a lot of blades on the inside of the drum a sort of a structure there
As well as along the outside of the drum and what's happening is as it turns
Coffee's dropping off the side of the drum in through the air
hitting that structure in the middle and what it's doing is keeping the coffee as Airborne as possible, so
The coffee is basically touch. They're trying to have it tumble in the middle of the drum essentially it may come up the side and
fall
and
When they've sort of been able to measure
how heat is transferred in a drum and the thermal dynamics of
Even a cast-iron drum roaster and test that Probat did, what they were finding was that it's actually convective heat
its
Transfer of heat between
coffee
between the coffee and itself so coffee is essentially sharing heat by heating the warm air around it and
[there's] a lot of care in those types of roasters to not heat the drum directly most of those roasters
Have if they have a gas flame they have a thermal shield
That's deflecting the heat, and you're really heating the air that's going into the drum anyway. I'm getting some nice browning
You'll see that. It's uneven it's not
Exactly what I would see
if I was roasting right now in the our
probot Roaster however, it's really not that bad and
What you'll [find] out in roasting in any kind of roasting is that you can get some really big problems in these?
development Stages of the Roast
That later on you [won't] see in the roasted coffee
All the coffee will be brown. It'll look fine however that coffee is essentially hiding
defects
make sure my other little cameras going here, so
you can see the is what looks like an even roast at the end of a roast [where] coffees brown like this and yet, [the]
[signs] of
Roasting defects early in the roast are sort of obscured
but you will have those signs in the form of
bad roast tastes skunky Roast tastes kind of unpleasant
Like Harsher bittering skunky is a roast defect flavor. You can have biscuity flavors of sort of
Under roast where the inside of the coffee beans not as rested as the outside
or
Sort of wheaty, oaty flavors oat oat oat like flavors. See a defect being, take that out
Or you have the scorched flavors?
and a lot of those are this kind of baked or roast taste, but without sweetness, so sweetness is really a sign of
the quality of the roast
[but] tell you what's so cool about this, and why I got so excited to
roast again this weekend
There's not another roast process that I can think of where you sit and it all happens right in front of you like this
Even in a big roaster where you have a sample trier
Where you essentially can put a spoon in and pull out a portion of the coffee like this and look at it
You never get to sit
And see all [of] the coffee roasting right in front of you
So I'm going to adjust my heat a little bit
The other thing I really liked
what I did
On the weekend was I had a very long extended first crack
Which is something that I like to do without stalling the roast in a drum roaster?
so I felt like I had really good control of it, so
[there's] a lot of value in this for people of any roast
Experience of coffee roasting even somebody that's roasted 20 years to roast in a pan and see the whole process
Happen right in front of you
And I feel like this development is
quite
quite good
quite even and I don't see
marks
Of high heat I put I put the coffee in at 300
So the one issue, I'm going to have is that especially as we hit first crack
[we're] going to be releasing more chaff from this coffee
And chaff being the skin you can see some in the bottom of the pan there
and
I'm kind of limited with my options about [how] to get rid of the chaff
I think this coffee is fairly low chaff, but others are going to have quite a lot more and
I'm going to go ahead and [adjust] my heat up a little a
little bit more
So I'm going to get a little bit of a mess what I did the other day
I just take the pan over to the sink and the sink is kind of I wet the sink down and
Let the chaff kind of blow the chaff out and it sticks to the wet surfaces
So I go ahead in between these agitators [and] let the coffee sit and gain some heat
Like I said, this is probably the most conductive roasting process that of of any type that you would do at home or or in a
or in a commercial roaster
Without there being an Airflow passing through the coffee
either part of moving the coffee as it is in an air roaster or fluidized bed roast system or
mechanical movement of the coffee as you would have in a, in a drum roaster with
an Airflow moving through the through the drum and
every drum roaster has air flow moving through the drum, so
but what I loved about this is A. I roasted some pretty good coffee and was kind of stoked the next morning and
B. there's zero investment. [I] mean I had to get the green coffee.
I got a good deal on [that].
But I didn't, there's nothing else. I need to buy and I consider that to [be] pretty cool
So I went a little flat there for a while on the warm up and now I think it's progressing a little bit better
but I think the other issue here is is um, is that this takes especially with a cast iron pan [a] bit of
Fatigue on my arm to do this, but I really feel like this shaking is the best way
I just don't feel like with a spoon I can do a good job.
Now in Ethiopia, they drink a lot of coffee and they roast a lot of coffee still in the traditional coffee ceremony
which is essentially like this roasting in a small,
Oftentimes, it's Clay or metal pan
Using a an implement. That's kind of like a wire with a little hook
and they use that and pull against it and
I think it's probably better. It looks more like something [you'd] have in a fireplace
rather than a spoon
And if you can hear that I'm starting to get a little bit of first crack here
And I'm seeing a little more chaff releasing
What I like is that it's a very slow controlled first crack
So I talked about the arm fatigue. So why am I using a cast iron skillet rather than stainless steel or something much lighter?
There's some first craft real snap
Well, I just like the way that cast iron distributes the heat and if I took it off the heat here for a while
And put it back on
I really wouldn't be
Losing anything
in terms of the heat
Retention so it's it's a even
distribution of heat through the coffee
I'm sure there's other types of materials and pans that would work well, I think an induction burner with a
you know a
correct type pan that has a kind of a heat distributing bottom would be fantastic [for]
for roasting coffee
and I really like how much this just involves seeing it I can see the whole batch and
Sensing it and hearing it
[besides] the sound of my fan above my stove. There's really no distractions
We've got some nice first [Crack] going very slow controls [I]
Definitely see a few quakers here, but those aren't really from the roast process those are
part of the how the green coffee is with this batch I
can just pick those out and
No to the [eye]. It's not the most even roasting. I think we'll see a more even roast color later on but
as I said
Even roast color in the end is not an indication. Here's a quaker right here
[even] [roast] color in the end is not an indication that the roast
necessarily happened even through the first stages of the batch
And you have to admit that if you roast copy yourself this way
Take some labor my arms getting a little bit tired here
You kind of feel [like] you earned it I?
always call [that] the kraft macaroni and cheese effect you go backpacking with Kraft macaroni and cheese and
It's a taste like the most incredible
meal
after a long day in
[a] remote camp and then you say why why don't I eat this more often at home and you you get them and you make?
It at home you think
How could I possibly have thought this was the best stuff?
And then of course you realize [that] the the box of Kraft macaroni and cheese that [you] got
Was probably a one of their specialty [reserved] lots?
certified Fairtrade
Specialty Macaroni and cheese, and that's why it tasted so good
That's a joke. I'm kidding
So we're still in first crack. I haven't heard anything of second crack yet
and I'm not going to roast this coffee - second Crack [I]
Do see that I've got a couple darker
beans in here
it's definitely a
even at its, best a crude way of roasting
And I feel like I'm starting to hear just some signs of a first crack blended with a second crack
I'm definitely going to cut my heat. [I] think it looks really good
Just for the sake of this video
go ahead and put [my]
Half pound batch Sizable batch on this cookie tray right here
and
That's what we got
And it's probably going to be delicious
It's probably not going to be the finest coffee. I'm probably going to enjoy. It's probably not be best roast
But what's really cool is I did this myself
In a cast-iron skillet, [it's] a half pound so it's bigger than most home roast batches
And you know it looks pretty good
I'm going [to] pick out a couple of
These light beams and a lot of the other things you see in here that look light or chaff because I did not do any
Chaff removal you can see the chaff there
That's blowing off now. I got to clean that up
that's the kind of
Roasting [that] you can do with the only cost being some green coffee
Cool. I'm going to take this out and
Maybe switch it to another cookie sheet. That's cool, but
I want to share that with you [home] roasting doesn't have to be expensive
coffee roasting I
Think at any level a coffee roaster. Who's done this for a long [time] or
Somebody who's just starting could learn a lot from?
roasting this way and
unlike myself who didn't do it for like 15 years [I]
highly recommend
roasting
in a cast-iron skillet
Thanks, a lot
