I have always loved good coffee, though my preference over the years has

been towards a darker roast.  Well, the folks at the Bull Run coffee bar in

the new Rustica Bakery location served me some fabulous, lightly roasted

Ethiopian Beloya, brewed through their Siphon.  Wow – flavor notes in the

coffee that I never knew existed!  The process of brewing through the

Siphon, by the way, is almost a piece of performance art – highly

recommended just for the fun of watching, as well as the delight of drinking

afterwards!  Then during my next visit a week or so later, I had some

Dogwood Espresso.  Again, not overly roasted, and the flavor was amazing.

What’s the deal here?  I never used to enjoy lighter roasts!  So, I did some

research.  It turns out that, as you progress towards a darker roast, the

original character of the bean is overtaken by the flavor of the roast.  Now

this may be a good thing, if the beans you start with are good but perhaps

not great.

Well, Ethiopian Beloya is a great bean.  And Dogwood is a great blend.  The

folks at Bull Run have figured out what the best roast profile is for each

of them, and presumably for their other varieties as well.

But, I got to thinking, what if my tastes were different from theirs?  What

if I’d prefer my beans just a tad darker, or a bit lighter?  And the beans

themselves, once roasted, have a relatively limited shelf life (which is why

Bull Run tries to roast just before they sell their beans) whereas green

beans can sit around for a year or more.  I was now intrigued by the whole

notion of roasting.  More research: turns out that it’s not that hard to

roast your own beans!

To make an already long story only slightly shorter, the folks at Bull Run

have looked into home roasters, and they decided to sell one – the Gene Café

Home Roaster.  And, well, I, er, bought one.

Now, if you go out on the web, you see all sorts of references to roasting

profiles, times and temperatures for different beans.  Some folks suggest

that you pre-warm the roasting chamber (but don’t burn yourself!).  You need

to listen for the “first crack,” you should pay attention to the roast smell

of the exhausted air, look at the bean color, watch out for chaff fires and,

above all, DON’T SCREW UP!

Um.  Time to step back.  The Gene Café is basically an overgrown hot air

popcorn popper.  Relax.  You get a bunch of green coffee when you purchase

the roaster, so don’t worry about it if you actually do screw up a batch or

two.

There are a few things to consider.  First, don’t roast in the house unless

you live alone, have the worlds most tolerant spouse or roommate, or the

world’s most powerful exhaust fan.  It’s winter at the moment, so I roast in

the garage.  It makes the garage smell very good for the next day!

Now, it will probably work perfectly well to just set the machine at its top

temp (482oF), set the timer for something like 15 minutes, and enjoy

watching the beans roast.  I liked the idea of pre-warming things to try and

remove any variability based on room temperature (cold garage in winter

versus warm patio in summer).  So, this is what I did for my first roast,

using Bonkawan Coop beans from Sumatra:

-        weigh out 220 grams of green beans (so you need a scale)

-        put the beans in the roasting chamber, and turn the Gene Café on

-        set the temperature to 300, and the timer to 24 minutes (this is the pre-warming step)

-        hit ’start,’ and watch the beans turn ’round and ’round in the chamber

-        at 20 minutes on the timer (so the beans have been warming for 4 minutes),

turn the temperature up to 482F.  Let the roasting begin!

-        Watch the beans slowly darken.  Smell the exhaust – the scent

changes from a ‘green’ smell to some scents of roast

-        I think I heard 1st crack at 10 minutes (so 10 minutes of roasting)

-        Hit ‘cool’ at 9 minutes

It takes about 8 minutes for the roaster to go through its cooling cycle,

and during the first few minutes the beans are still probably roasting a

bit.  So, you want to stop the roast while the beans a bit lighter than you

want.  I really didn’t know what I wanted, but this was a great place to

start.

Once the cooling cycle is done, pour the beans into a colander.  I use 2

colanders, pouring the beans back and forth to remove the chaff.  Now, about

those chaff fires – prevent them by cleaning out the chaff trap.

And that’s it.  There are lots of variables, lots of ways to tinker with the

roast, but the basic idea is really pretty simple.  In fact, I am finding

that it’s easier to make a good roast than it is to make a good espresso!

Author: Jon Peterson (Bull Run customer)

Photo by: Jon Peterson