Welcome to the CoffeeCrew forum for registered users. - feel free to make yourself at home. This forum is dedicated to coffee and espresso based issues.
Forum spammers, link referrers, link placement, scam artists, confidence artists, crooks and obvious commercial shilling is discouraged. Violation of this one simple rule will result in you and your immediate geographical region being banned from the site so do not post ads or links to your site here unless approved by me! Violators of this one simple rule will find their firm, employer, and your pitiful self invoiced $1000 per violation of this simple rule. Enjoy!
The coffeecrew guestbook and forum has been alive for more than 10 years! Please consider it your one-stop resource for finding out about all things coffee, espresso, specialty coffee and all associated gear and equipment.
We welcome long posts - there is no word limit in fact. Keep in mind that you can only type for 15 to 20 minutes in the forum-post submit window (session timeout)- so consider composing your posts or responses in a text editor - then cut and paste! Thank you and enjoy the forums!
Home Roasting manifesto - 2007/10/28 11:22Here's a passage from the website of coffee expert Kenneth Davids on why on earth anyone would be interested in roasting their own:
"Why Home Roasting?
A few minutes ago I roasted several days' supply of coffee in a stove-top popcorn popper. The whole process took about ten minutes. The popper can be purchased for about twenty to twenty-five dollars. The retail price of the coffee I roasted (a fancy Sumatra) might cost anywhere from five to six dollars a pound green. The same coffee purchased roasted at the corner coffee store would cost eight to ten dollars a pound. The coffee I produced was fresher than almost any I could have bought, and its freshness by far compensated for any small failings in roasting procedure. Green coffee beans keep well without special handling, so the modest effort required to acquire them doesn't need to be undertaken often.
Nor was the stove-top popper my only option. I could have chosen to roast the coffee in a gas oven, for example, or in one of a certain design of hot-air corn popper, or in a device specially designed for home roasting.
Given its simplicity -- once you know what you're doing basic home coffee roasting ranks in difficulty somewhere between boiling an egg and making a good white sauce -- why don't more people do it? Why isn't home coffee roasting already as popular as home baking, for example, or home pasta-making, or -- for that matter -- home corn popping?
First, because most people simply don't know how vibrant truly fresh coffee tastes when compared to the partly-staled version we usually drink. Almost everyone knows how exquisite fresh bread is, or how much better home-popped popcorn is than the chewy, rubbery stuff that comes in bags. But the fragrance of coffee a day out of the roaster is a virtually forgotten pleasure.
Second, people don't know that roasting coffee at home is easy, fun, and something that everyone did before the victory of advertising and convenience foods."
There ya' go. Roasters of the world, unite!!! Cheers, Donna
| | Forum posting/replies are available to registered users.
colin
Admin Admin
Posts: 782
Karma: 21
Re:Home Roasting manifesto - 2007/10/28 12:04I have this book, Donna... and thanks... with conditions.
The book is "Home Roasting - Renaissance and Revival" by Kenneth Davids - master coffee taster, writer and San Francisco resident.
A few words about coffee roasting from Whole Foods
You can buy the book via Amazon.com here for about 12$.
If you have any intention of tackling the home roasting experience, pick up a copy.
There does appear to be a better selection of home coffee roasters than ever before. My opinion remains: Go buy a corn popper for 9$ and modify it. A few hand tools and you are done - and it is no more dangerous than all other methods.
That said, Green Beanery in Toronto, Canada has a remarkable selection of home roasters - and everything else. Look here for their selection -- and DO shop and compare prices. Canadian prices on most coffee equipment is still unusually high relative to our American counterparts.
Have fun.Colin is the Senior editor and creator of the CoffeeCrew.Com Website
| | Forum posting/replies are available to registered users.
Actually and although I don't doubt the pretiness of your tamper, if you are tamping something, thus exercising pressure you really want something that weighs as much as possible to have a good feelin...
Hi,
I'm a college teacher, young coffee lover from Montreal.
If you come by, you have to try the Olympico - Open Da Night on Bernard St., close to St-Laurent Blvd.
I'm glad I found out about th...
You should pop by Reg and have him whip you up something custom and colorful -
My Titanium tamper is a 58MM with a Rosewood handle - other than the fact that it wears less than a feather and has so...
I may be interested and I am in town, no less. I was thinking of popping by to see Reg but... What kind of $ are we talking about here? Fifties...Hundreds...
:whistle:...
I actually agree with the long negative review of the Technivorm - there are some OBVIOUS fixes for some simple problems with this machine - and yet, it seems that the bean counters nixed the suggesti...
If you really want to get into it, take an 8 oz cup of hot water and put it underneath a bottomless portafilter and pour it that way. Goes straight from the pf to the water, no cooling down from the ...
Got this grinder earlier this year, but it's too big for my kitchen and more grinder than I need.
The ginder is in good shape, but before arriving in my house I think it had a past life in a coffee...
Could bad taste come for poor maintenance?
Heck yes! It is the cause of 99% of taste problems with espresso coffee (all other mechanical things being normal and the coffee being fresh...)
Dried le...
Forum 
