Types of Domestic Roasting

There are a number of products that do small roasts, you can roast on an open pan, like they do in Ethiopia and how they discovered to roast originally. This method is time consuming, and can typically so no more than 90g of coffee at a time.

Diary of a Home Roaster

After spending a few attempts with pop corn poppers and oven pans it was decided to try and use some of the specialty home roasting products

This page is dedicated to experimentation done with roasting quality green bean with a home roaster. Have you done some roasting at home, send us the details and we will share them.

I-Roast 2

The below are the tests done with a I-Roast 2 home roaster.

This roaster is essentially a mini fluid bed roaster. A heated element is set to a temperature and the air up past the element blowing the beans up and thereby rotating them. so that they all should get a relatively similar level of exposure.

The I-Roast is one of the leaders in the domestic market, and is a good place to start, since it can technically do up to 150g of coffee at a go.

It can roast for a maximum of 15 minutes, and has 5 programmable temperature levels.

All these tests where done in Cape Town, so the roasting is at sea level. Humidity, altitude and weather dictate the minor differences that may occur in the roast

 I Roast 2

Date Bean Rstd Green Wght Phases First Pop Second Pop Total Final Wght Rating Comments
30 Sep 07 Mzuzu (Sample) 90g 1:160°C; 4:30
2:176°C; 0:30
3:190°C; 0:30
4:200°C; 1:00
5:210°C; 2:00		 04:30 (started) 02:00 (I think) 07:30 66g burnt outside, semi raw inside, yuk. This is what happens when you use retail grade stuff. Stopped the roasting cycle early since the bean was looking burnt
5 Oct 07 Marango 70g 1:160°C; 15:00 08:34 11:21 to 10:09 07:30 62g almost right, perhaps Agtron all right on the outside, drinkable Pressed Cool button at 07:30 to stop over roasting
6 Oct 07 Marango 90g 1:160°C; 07:00 03:20 4:05 07:00 76g Quite nice, about as close as the Marango roasted using the Diedrich I think this is about as good as you can get.
9 Oct 07 Marango 150g 1:160°C; 07:00 03:10 4:55 07:00 126g Drank it fresh from the roast quite good Now more or less convinced this is about as good as you can get out of this little roaster.
15 Oct 07 Yirgacheffe 90g 1:160°C; 06:40 03:25 to 02:40 n/a 06:10 78g Even though Second pop had not started, it was creamy and not dominated be lemon Roasting stopped before second pop started

Further Roasts

Date: 17 July 2009

We took one of the new crop of Limu and did three different roasts. Using the I-Roast feature of phases. The basic principles of the roast was this:

  • Ease the bean into the roast slowly by putting at the lowest temp. for as long as possible
  • Increase the roast temp. in a varied amount so that when typically the first pop temperature of around 200°C is steady
  • Experiment with short bursts of the second pop temp. typically 220°C

We then sampled the roasts, and found that 4 and 5 below produced the most flavoursome roasts, and combining the two produced a slightly different coffee too

Program # Time 1 Temp 1 Time 2 Temp 2 Time 3 Temp 3 Time 4 Temp 4 Time 5 Temp 5
2 4:00 160°C 1:00 180°C 0:40 196°C 0:40 210°C 0:40 220°C
3 4:30 160°C 0:30 180°C 1:30 200°C 01:30 220°C - -
4 4:00 160°C 1:00 180°C 1:30 200°C 01:30 220°C - -
5 4:30 160°C 1:00 180°C 1:30 210°C 01:30 230°C - -


Interested in an I-Roast? Contact us, or go to Orders and order one, and a few green beans too.