Has anyone here ever played with roasting your own coffee beans?

As someone who probably enjoys coffee a bit too much (I can totally quit any time I want, lol) I've been curious about trying it for myself.  But now I have a research project that involves coffee analysis and it's time to turn that curiosity into a reality because science.

So what sort of roasting methods have you tried?  Any pointers? 

Once.... with some sort of machine that toasts them that belonged to someone else. The result/mess was so bad, I pretended it hadn't been me using it and have not dared to try again.

LOL!

I imagine I might do the same thing the first few times.  Thankfully I can do it in a lab fume hood so at least the smoke alarms won't go off.

There's the old 'roast in a cast-iron pan' routine, with constant careful stirring and temperature control.  One of the neatest hacks I've seen is modifying a manual stovetop popcorn maker to be a coffee roaster:
https://stag-komodo.wired.com/2013/12/build-a-diy-coffee-roaster/

Some folks have used hot air poppers to roast coffee, but from what I've heard, they don't last long!  Coffee beans are bigger and heavier than corn kernels, and don't pop.  The machine has to run more than twice as long as for its design purpose of popping corn to roast beans.

I saw the air popper idea as well but you're right that they seem to melt down pretty fast because coffee needs to be way hotter than corn.  ~450F is pretty darn hot for a plastic air popper if you like dark roast.

That whirley pop conversion is pretty clever.  I would be tempted to motorize it because I'm an engineer at heart and can't leave well enough alone if it means I can be lazy later.

Time for you to see how much of a nerd I still am. One of my favorite web sites put a post out a few days ago that works with this topic. Look at Coffee Roasting for Fun/Evil Mad Scientist.

Quote from: Dena on May 11, 2019, 02:38:14 PM
Time for you to see how much of a nerd I still am. One of my favorite web sites put a post out a few days ago that works with this topic. Look at Coffee Roasting for Fun/Evil Mad Scientist.

LOL. Such a site exists. Awesome.

Yes those Behmor roasters look pretty nice but the price tag is kind of rough. I ended up ordering a smaller less expensive unit which won't take up half of my lab space.

I have to say this little machine is pretty neat. From green to a nice medium roast in less than ten minutes.

Quote from: Colleen_definitely on May 14, 2019, 01:34:56 PM


I have to say this little machine is pretty neat. From green to a nice medium roast in less than ten minutes.

What makes this home roasted coffee better than a quality store bought coffee?

Quote from: Linde on May 14, 2019, 10:48:15 PM
What makes this home roasted coffee better than a quality store bought coffee?

What makes fresh out of the oven bread better than store bought bread? Fresh baked has volatile compounds that enhance the flavor. Unfortunately they can escape in a matter of hours decreasing the flavor. The flavor compounds last longer in coffee beans but even store bought beans aren't going to be as good as fresh roasted.

Quote from: Dena on May 14, 2019, 10:59:07 PM
What makes fresh out of the oven bread better than store bought bread? Fresh baked has volatile compounds that enhance the flavor. Unfortunately they can escape in a matter of hours decreasing the flavor. The flavor compounds last longer in coffee beans but even store bought beans aren't going to be as good as fresh roasted.

I think to be able to taste the difference, you must be pretty heavy into coffee drinking.  I drink one cup a day, so I will be not a candidate for this.  My ex was a coffee drinker, we had one of those Jura coffee makers, any coffee made in lesser equipment was not good enough for her.  She got the Jura, I am living well with my Nesspresso machine!

Yes freshly roasted coffee beans can taste amazing and it lets you roast them as light or dark as you prefer.  Some beans apparently need to sit for a few days after roasting to allow some of the less desirable components to evaporate off though.

The reason I bought this one is to have better control over my experiment.  Since I'm using these beans to create a baseline library of spectra so I can screen off the shelf coffee, I want to be able to be as certain as possible that the beans I am using are what I ordered.  The other benefit is that my lab has never smelled so good.

Quote from: Colleen_definitely on May 15, 2019, 07:59:44 AM
  The other benefit is that my lab has never smelled so good.

And that is the biggest benefit.  Even the best and biggest fume hoods were no able to get that constant solvent smell out of my lab!

Thankfully my lab space is in a mass spec lab so it doesn't reek of solvents and wonderful thiol compounds like a synthesis lab does.

Quote from: Colleen_definitely on May 15, 2019, 09:01:26 PM
Thankfully my lab space is in a mass spec lab so it doesn't reek of solvents and wonderful thiol compounds like a synthesis lab does.

We were mixing all kinds of questionable stuff together, and were hoping it would not blow the building up!

LOL

Which reminds me that in my previous research lab we were doing azide chemistry and had several kilos of sodium azide on hand at all times.  I'm glad none of us had slippery fingers.

The previous user of my current fume hood left a bottle of potassium cyanide right next to a bottle of picric acid 

Picric acid seems to be a stuff, labies prefer to leave behind for the next occupant!
When I moved into my lab way back when, there were overhead cabinets full of old chemicals, and we had a clean sweep team come in to clean them out.  Among the stuff was a really old container with piric acid, and to safely remove it they evacuated the building!