What's in my drum?

[CoffeeMagic]

After a flurry of home roasting posts, I am sure we all want to hear about those great (and not so great) roasts. Pan roast, popcorn, corretto, Behmor, Gene or whatever your container.

Has anyone had a go at blending a few greens? What results have you had?

For myself, I have been doing a bit of roasting and blending (see blog post) with Brazilian Santos Yellow Bourbon, Costa Rican SHG, Guatemalan Los Olivos SHB and Sumatran Lintong G1. Wow, what a pungency the Sumatran adds to a blend.

So far 50/50 and 60/40 blends containing the Guatemalan have been very successful as espresso and flat white. Getting good body and flavours that come through the milk very well. With the Santos, it produces a very acceptable espresso blend without the need to roast beyond med-dark (before 2nd crack).:coffee:

I may have to tone down the use of Lintong, but think it has solved the problem of producing a bold flavour for my neighbours ;)

[MikeHag]

Please keep these posts and blogs coming, Ron. I love em. Read the blog yesterday and I'm jealous of your experiments :)

[CoffeeMagic]

How are you going with pan roasting?

[MikeHag]

I don't think it's worthwhile TBH. Fun to try but a waste of beans, otherwise I'd have liked to fill you in on my blending disasters :D

[CoffeeMagic]

To quote the press, somewhat - "why let a bad blend get in the way of a good story". You must have had some success with SOs.

[MikeHag]

I just figure that if I can't control the roast properly I'd rather wait until I can. For me the pan on an electric hob is neither art nor science, it's a jackson pollock

[funinacup]

Nothing at the moment, trying to choose some SO's to start blending my own. In the last couple of weeks I roasted some stuff from Hasbean in a popcorn popper to see if it worked well and if I enjoyed doing it, which I did!

I roasted;

Brazil Espresso Perfetio - tasty
Costa Rica Finca de Licho - tasty!
Hasbean decaf blend - rank (in my opinion, but not a decaf fan generally!)

Any recommendations on SO's to blend with/mixtures/ratios would be helpful :)

[CoffeeMagic]

You could try a 50/50 decaf & Costa Rican as an evening blend - unless the decaf is going to spoil it. I normally just make up about 50g as a test before a full mix.

Depending on the result you are looking for, I find a good ratio to start with is 60/40 or 60/20/20. It generally provides enough of each to determine where any adjustment is needed in flavour, body or finish.

[funinacup]

Thanks! Will give those ratios a go when I get some beans.

The ones listed above are all gone apart from a wee drop decaf, so need to pickup some green!

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[lookseehear]

Love the idea for this thread! I roasted my first undrinkable batch at the weekend. I was trying to slow down the roast using the heat gun method by using the lower setting, but the result was that the beans went brown but didn't crack. I thought I'd give them a go anyway but they were unroasted in the middle, what a waste of 200g of hasbeans finca machacamarcha :-(

It's such a hands on method that if you don't know what you're doing it's quite easy to mess it up. The popcorn popper method is much harder to get wrong but obviously doesn't give you much control.

I bought some lovely kenyan beans from square mile this week so I'm going to enjoy those then do some more roasting at the weekend, I'm thinking maybe hasbean finca loayza.

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[CoffeeMagic]

It's a pity you only get one go at getting it right (or close). Yeah, I've baked a swag of beans before now, just by not giving them enough heat when it mattered. Completely whacks the flavour and has a distinctive 'baked' smell, almost biscuity.

I admire the use of a heat gun - it's seat-of-the-pants roasting. It's big in Oz (correttos) and some of the over-engineered setups are amazing. Those Kenyan beans should be marvelous. How far do you intend to take them?

[CoffeeMagic]

Got a couple of blends going. Brazilian and Guatemalan for a deep rich milk chocolate flavour. Guatemalan and Sumatran which is a bold blend. By roasting each at different degrees then blending you can get the rich taste of the Central followed, a few seconds later, by the spice of the Sumatran for a long finish.

[lookseehear]

It's a pity you only get one go at getting it right (or close). Yeah, I've baked a swag of beans before now, just by not giving them enough heat when it mattered. Completely whacks the flavour and has a distinctive 'baked' smell, almost biscuity.

I admire the use of a heat gun - it's seat-of-the-pants roasting. It's big in Oz (correttos) and some of the over-engineered setups are amazing. Those Kenyan beans should be marvelous. How far do you intend to take them?

I only just noticed this reply!

It definitely takes some concentration! I watched a few videos and read some forums and it seems a popular method with the heat gun is to start on the low heat setting ('drying phase') then after 5 minutes or so switch to the high setting to get the roast going. I've been more successful with this method, with 220g batches taking around 9 minutes to finish first crack. I feel like I'm learning a lot more about roasting using this method over the popcorn popper. Don't get me wrong the popper is pretty foolproof, just chuck 70g in wait for first crack then cool them as quick as you can, but there's so much more control with the heat gun method. The downside of bigger batches is that if you get it wrong it's more down the drain - this leads me to not change the parameters too much now I've found something that works although I want to keep expermenting.

The Kenyan beans were bought roasted. I don't think you can buy greens from Square Mile as far as I know, they were pretty marvelous though!

[CoffeeMagic]

Latest has been the same blend roasted to 2 different degrees. I very often do a medium roast but also tried taking it further and just into 2nd crack. The beans were Costa Rican and PNG. What I was looking for here was a boldness with significant depth of flavour but retaining a clean finish. It's certainly got oomph!

Of course the individual flavours are more pronounced in the lighter of the 2 roasts, but the pungency of the dark roast is fine in espresso and FP. The lighter roast, I would say, is better in FP but still makes a very tasty short black.

Overall, it probably won't make my top 10 but nonetheless a good brew for those who like a "strong" cup.

[CoffeeMagic]

Hopefully, all the magic of Christmas. It's that time of year for creating a Christmas blend. I've had some good deep blends recently using Brazilian, PNG and Ethiopean beans but looking for something really special to give as 'stocking fillers'. Anyone have a particular favourite?