I recently started watching ‘Breaking Bad’ on Netflix; I quickly became addicted and managed to watch the complete series in about 3 weeks, I loved it! It got me thinking about my days of ‘cooking’ (roasting coffee) and I realised how much I missed it. Now, I didn’t roast out of an RV but was not too far from it. I use to roast in a little shed, out the back of my office, on a 1KG roaster. Just like Jessie and Mr. White I had many an adventure learning the process (although mine did not include murder, hookers and millions of dollars) it was still a little adventure every time I fired up the Cafemino.
It has been 6 years since I roasted any coffee and things have moved on a lot in that time. After a bit of research I quickly realised there is only one ‘real’ home roaster on the market, the ‘Gene Café’. I ordered it from www.bellabarista.co.uk (great website) and it arrived two days later…oh the anticipation… it’s a long time since I was excited about new coffee equipment. Coffee roasting is not like baking or cooking it’s more like alchemy and chemistry. You have to take many things into consideration like ambient temperature, how and where your green bean was grown and processed, moisture content of the coffee and so on. You also need to take safety into consideration too as fires are easy enough to start when roasting.
Bella Barista supplied a great little guide to roasting which they wrote themselves, I studied this and decided on a profile that I was going to use. I cleared the kitchen, covered the fire alarm, found my old roasting log, weighed the coffee and most importantly sent my wife and child out; nothing more certain than burning down your house if you don’t pay attention during roasting. I was prepared!
The most nostalgic trigger for me is smell, the right aroma can bring me back to any point in my life. As I fired up my new roaster, the grassy aroma of coffee beginning to roast, started to fill the air and it brought me right back to my little shed (man cave if I’m honest) and I quickly began to remember the little roasting skills I had, great!
My first roast was terrible, which was fine and expected, my second roast was better but still a long way off what I want. This is the beginning of a long journey, I’ll keep you posted!
Craig
www.coffeeshop.ie
