Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

July 11 2006

Finally, A Post About Coffee

With all the car hoopla over the past few days, I haven't posted much about coffee. I've been drinking the Carmen Estates 1800 for the past few days. I roasted it to a City+, and have not blended it with any other beans. It's good coffee, but it hasn't knocked my socks off. Now that I have tried it this way, I'll play a bit with the next batch, trying a little darker roast, and also blending it with some other beans. In fact, later today, I'll probably take the Carmen I have left, and throw in some Mandheling that are ready and see how that goes.

My sinus/dental problems are back, and I'm on antibiotics again. It may very well be that this has affected my sense of taste. I'm ready for this reoccurring nonsense to stop. I can deal with the pain, but when it starts to decrease my enjoyment of coffee, well, that cannot be allowed to continue.

I decided on the iRoast-2 roaster, for several reasons. One of the big things it has going for it is that it is easy to vent it, using a dryer kit, to the outside. Coffee roasting creates a whole lot of smoke, and our fan over the stove, oddly enough, is not vented to the outside. When we do a remodel of the kitchen, we will remedy this situation, but until then, being able to throw the dryer contraption out of the kitchen window is a plus. Many people roast outdoors, but in Central Alberta, that really isn't an option for a good part of the year.

I was concerned because the maximum you can roast in the IR2 is about 150 grams (that's 1/3 of a pound for you Imperial types). I'm finding though that with the relatively small coffee consumption around our house, and my propensity to either blend different beans or create a mélange of the same beans at different roast levels, this is not a real drawback. I often will roast 150 grams of one bean, and then roast a second batch of some sort of different bean or variation of the same bean, and combine the two when I am grinding and brewing.

That being said, I am intrigued by the roaster mods I see. Yesterday, Jason Montgomery (from the Sweet Maria home roasting mailing list) finished building his SC/TO roaster. This is a modification of a Stir Crazy popcorn maker and a table top convection oven, known generically as a Turbo Oven. He has posted a pictorial of his mod that is comprehensive and easy to follow by mousing over the images. Good job!!

Now, I don't know that I need something that can roast 3/4 of a pound of beans at a time, but I long to try something like this myself. It's silly really, because I am totally un-handy, and RT is worse than I am at such things. We also couldn't use it for six months out of the year, until I deal with the ventilation issue.

It's still, to my coffee addled brain, a thing of beauty.