Anyone who has read my blog knows that one of my favorite hobbies is homebrewing. I derive a lot of pleasure from creating something of quality like that, especially when my efforts are as good as or better than what I can buy at the local store. In all fairness, my homebrewing efforts have been as good as some of the better beers you might find at your local liquor store, but they don’t quite reach the level of quality you’d find in serious craft brews like Dogfish Head, Deschutes or Allagash. (What? You’ve never heard of any of those? Heathen!) Fortunately, I can’t say the same for my other hobby, which is coffee roasting. I’ve been roasting my own for years and there’s almost nothing commercially available that comes even close. OK, to be honest. there is a little roasting company in central Maryland that produces some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. As far as I’m concerned they’re the gold standard and I give The Daily Roast all the credit they deserve. I wish you guys still sold small lot wholesale.

But enough about somebody else. Today, for the first time in a while, I had a chance to get some serious roasting  time in. I use a machine call the i-ROAST, which is a fluid bed roaster. There are two basic techniques for roasting coffee–fluid bed roasting and drum roasting. Drum roasting consists of heating the green coffee beans in a rotating metal drum. The actual roasting occurs through contact with the hot drum’s surface. The single biggest drawback of drum roasting is that beans tend to scorch if they remain in contact with the drum too long. Fluid bed roasting consists of heating the green coffee beans with a steady flow of very hot air (think hot air popcorn poppers). The airflow is great enough that the beans are kept in constant motion. The heating in a fluid bed roaster is more uniform than in a drum roaster and, because the beans are kept in motion, the possibility of scorching is greatly reduced. The drawback of fluid bed roasters is that they  typically have a much smaller capacity than drum roasters do.

So, anyway, today I broke out the trusty i-ROAST and spent a few hours on the back patio. The coffees of the day were a Sumatra Blue Batak Peaberry and a Costa Rica Dota Tarrazu. (What? You’ve never heard of either of those? Heathen!) Here is a picture of my results, with the Sumatra on the left and the Costa Rica on the right:

It may not be very easy to see in this photo, but the Sumatra has been roasted about one step darker than the Costa Rica has ( A Full City+ versus a City+/Full City). In addition to being a little darker, the Sumatra beans have an oily sheen to them that the Costa Rica lacks. This produces a slightly heavier, oily mouth feel in the cup. The darker roast mutes the bitterness–called “brightness” in roasting terms–a bit and brings out caramelized, chocolate tones in the coffee. I prefer darker roasts in general, so I tend to push my roasts a little further than might be recommended. I’ve yet to cup these two coffees, but when I do I’ll post my cupping notes here.