My Roasting Process
As a micro-roaster i’m often asked about my roasting process. How i’m able to batch roast and what equipment I use to push those nice Parliament Roasting flavours. Well here it is, i’m going to take you through my process and give you a sneak peack into some of the equipment I use.
Spoiler alert, my roaster is the Genesis by Gene Cafe or the Gene Cafe CBR 1200. It’s a small scale 1kg commercial electric roaster that lets me push out about 6 pounds of coffee per hour. It’s a very manual roaster no roasting programs or software hookups, I use my tried and tested recipes, my eyes, and my ears to make sure my roasts are as consistent as possible. It’s a workhorse for me able to go back-to-back-back and because I was able to get it used at a very reasonable price i’m able to keep my overhead low and pass on those savings to you!
The Process
Start with the Green
And I don’t mean money…I mean you’ll want to source some high quality green beans. I focus on Guatemala because I really love the region, the terroir and the flavour profiles. For Parliament it makes sense to really focus on one region and dial in those roasts. I use Common Goal Coffee as my importer and procurement specialists to get me high quality micro lots from some of the best producers in the region. They are some of the very best and everything i’ve gotten from them has been excellent.
Preheat and Charge
Depending on what i’m doing i’ll push a long or short preheating phase to get the roaster ready to take the first batch. The first preheat always take a bit longer. For my flagship medium and dark roasts I tend to set my roaster at 242C and preheat it up to 200C knowing that as soon a I drop the first batch of beans it’ll drop the internal temp to around 150C and then i’ll get my gradual climb up to the 205C mark where things will really start happening.
Note: For the honey-processed roast i’m doing a much less preheat and charge and a more gradual temperature climb so I don’t scorch those beans and bleed the flavour.Drying and Maillard Phase
The first 8-9 mins of my roasts are the drying phase. That’s where you’ll see some big colour change from green to yellow to light brown. It’s also where your Maillard reactions start happening (yay science!) that’s where amino acids and reducing sugars in the beans start to react and create your complex flavours, aromas, and body. Some folks want to push through the Maillard phase fast and get to the next stage, I like to prolong it a bit because that’s where those tasty notes of toffee, caramel, and hazenut get formed.
First crack and ride
This is your first auditory clue that things are progressing the way they should. It’ll start to sound like popcorn popping in the roaster. For me it happens around the 10:30sec mark when the internal bean temperature hits about 205-207C. This will carry though to about 11:15sec and I tend to pull the heat down to about 237C and let it ride to the 14min mark for my medium roast and 15min for my dark roast. When I pull my dark roast I hear a second set of popping sounds called second crack.
Cooling and bagging
The beans hit the cooling tray for about 3 mins to pull down the temp and stop additional cooking of the bean. I also inspect all the beans taking them from one container to another to make sure thy all look the way they’re supposed to be. From there I bag and seal them immediately to start the off-gas process. I talked about the off-gassing and resting phase in an earlier article you can read more about that in ‘Stay Fresh'‘ When should you crack the seal on your coffee
So there you have it a bit about my roasting process and the way I take my beans from green Guatemalas to deliciously roasted coffee.