Home Coffee Roasters

Roasting Tips for Home Coffee Roasting Machines

Start with a clean coffee roaster. Always remove the chaff from the last roasting. Excessive chaff can be a real problem and build up of it can cause poor ventilation. A small stiff brush can work well for removing small chaff particles that build up over time. Cleaning is essential to the upkeep of your home coffee roaster. Over a period of time, the coffee machine can build up a gunk that resembles brown tar. Excessive gunk can cause the hinged door on the Alpenrost to either stay shut or not close- resulting in improperly roasted coffee.

For cleaning instructions, see the owner’s manual for your model.

Make sure your roaster is plugged into an 110V outlet. Home coffee roasters need full juice to operate properly. If your coffee roaster is not roasting adequately, especially if you are having trouble getting a dark roast, it could be that it is not receiving enough power to roast properly. Do not use extension cords or outlets that share other appliances with your roaster. If all else fails, try another outlet to test your roaster.

A note about electricity: During seasonal times where high usage of power is common, certain geographical regions can experience black outs or lower wattages. This too can affect the proper power needed to operate a roaster.

Ambient temperatures can affect roasting times as well. Some home roasting models have computer chips to help offset this to some degree. However, we do not recommend customers roasting on the back patio in 35 ^o temperature.

Roasters will find that certain coffees will roast differently and at different time lengths. Beans grow at different elevations, range in different screen sizes and are processed during harvest differently. This can cause a slight difference in the roasting process. This is especially true for decaf coffees. Their moisture content is about 15-20 % less due to the decaffeination process; so roasting time will be quicker than other coffees. A dry processed coffee such as Yemen Mocha will roast differently than a Costa Rican SHB variety.

Keep a roasting log: this helps determine specific characteristics of each variety tried. Our recommendation is that the customer roasts a single variety to become familiar with its roasting profile and flavor characteristics, making notes if necessary on time to get to the first crack & second crack. Other advantages to having a roasting log give the roaster specific information that would be useful in the event one tries blending – such as how that variety cupped at different roast styles.

Do not use your roaster for anything other than green coffee beans. I know this sounds strange to some of you but this question comes up more than we like it to. Roasters are not designed to roast anything other than coffee beans; doing so will jeopardize the warranty and proper use of your machine.

Proper amount of beans is recommended. If you are not getting consistent results with the roaster it could be due to not using the recommended amount of green coffee beans with each roast. A good scale helps eliminate this guesswork.

Allow some cool down time between multiple roasts. This insures the heating elements have cooled down enough to prevent over-heating and/or damage to any surrounding plastic parts that can be affected.

Roasting coffee does emit smoke. Larger capacity roasters will have more smoke associated with it. Coffee Storehouse recommends using a roaster in a well- ventilated area with a good vent exhaust or outdoors on a patio in normal weather conditions. All roasting should be well supervised and should never be left unattended.

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