Roasting Coffee & Enjoying a Homebrew

There are a couple of local roasters here that are pretty good. I’ve been buying beans from one that I like and are available at the farm stand up the road or in larger quantities at another local store.

There’s a really small roaster I wanted to buy from that has some interesting fair trade and some shade grown beans but I can’t get used to their lighter roast so I keep going back and forth on it. Maybe I’ve been drinking starbucks’ coffee too long and enjoy burned beans…

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The grocery store near my work has a roaster in the store and this really nice guy roasting there during business hours.

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I keep seeing Fair trade coffee and never really knew what that meant. So with about 10 seconds of my time searched it and stumbled upon this. “Fair trade is unfair. It offers only a very small number of farmers a higher, fixed price for their goods. These higher prices come at the expense of the great majority of farmers, who – unable to qualify for Fairtrade certification – are left even worse off. … Fair trade does not aid economic development.”

Yeah roasting bean is an art. My favorite roaster said he’d give me beans and some profiles but he told me the only home roaster that he would use is over $1000 dollars. I trade roasted beans for coffee

I find this interesting. A neighbor I had roasted coffee outside and boy did it smell good when he did. I have resisted getting started as I don’t need more expensive or time and space consuming hobbies.

I looked on Amazon and there are a lot of small roasters for around $100. Some have great reviews. What is wrong with them? Obviously a $1000 one would be more durable.

For now I am sticking with Aldi regular German ground coffee.

A good roaster needs a timer and variable heat. A roasting profile is kind of like decoction brewing. You do steps at different temps and time. Heck you can roast coffee in an air popper.

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My roaster brings me coffee roasted using different profiles same beans im able to tell the difference

That’s not actually the economics of it but I can see how results could skew. If all coffee farmers are paid a living wage for their work then the system will work. Instead large corporation use it to further inflate prices to rob some farmers even more.
There are roasters out there that buy from a specific farmer and only that farmer. By cutting out the 8 people it passes through to get to the consumer you can actually get a reasonably priced coffee were the farmer actually gets a fair price for the coffee they grow.
You are right that you cannot be lazy about any of this and assume a sticker on a bag saying something is fair is certification enough.

Before the pandemic stopped us from having a communal coffee pot we had a subscription to Maiden Coffee at work and it was worth it. Boy do I miss it.

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I’m enjoying MJB Columbian coffee, cold pizza… I seem satisfied… I’ll have to check…
Sneezles61

The charts in this article really are great at visually showing the markup each leg of the journey the bean takes.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-economics-of-coffee-in-one-chart/

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Here’s the roaster I use when camping. It’s a ceramic roaster and relies on sight and smell.

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Interesting to see Brazil leading coffee production. I assume the US is in the remainder. I may be wrong, but Hawaii is one of the only, if not the only US grower.

A few years back I was on a business trip to the islands and spoke with a local grower. A lot of farmers on Oahu were converting their pineapple fields to coffee due to the pineapple market shifting to other countries.

In the 80s you could get pure kona for like $15/lb. I thought that was expensive at the time. When I was on Maui 4 years ago it was really hard to find anything except a kona blend and even that was outrageous. It’s not my favorite coffee profile by any means but it’s a nice change when you can find some pure kona.

I’ve always been surprised that there’s no good coffee in Ecuador considering the volcanic soil, the weather and the altitude I expected them to have great coffee. Everyone there drinks Nescafe instant. Only the most expensive restaurants and hotels in Quito and Guayaquil seem to have decent coffee. The beans I’ve bought there were never very good or well roasted. Some of my wife’s younger cousins say that they’re starting to get a few good small local roasters in Quito but apparently most of the beans grown there have been shipped out to Colombia or Peru or bought by bigger corporate coffee buyers for export.

Maybe. Very easy to find negative information about anything…and what axe were they grinding… If this past 4 years taught me anything you have to dig deep to find the truth. I think like anything else, “fair trade” is a great concept but probably unevenly applied or possibly even fraudulent; as @squeegeethree says if you don’t do your homework…at the time I was buying from an outfit out of Ft Bragg and another in Seattle who know what they’re doing.

The main certification I was looking for was shade grown. Typical arabica plantations denude whole ecosystems and all trees are removed…remember Juan Valdez riding his donkey on terraced bare hillsides?
It looked nothing like this:

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So one of my college buddies was a partial owner in a coffee shop and did the roasting on site. The amount of information he could go into about beans and roasting was mind boggling. So we’d swap coffee and beer stories cause I can talk much more intelligently about beer than coffee. :joy: His joke about Starbucks coffee is if you want consistent coffee around the entire world, burn the hell out of it. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: When we do our annual get together, he brings fresh espresso and coffee with enough varieties to have 2-3 types each day and man they are really good fresh! I just buy the giant tub of Dunkin coffee for home, but I cheat and use Irish Cream creamer in that so it just has to be good enough.

:beers:
Rad

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Got word back from my buddy, he used an old one of these:

https://www.javamasters.com/retailers/coffee-roaster/

They’d do 3-4 lbs of beans in a batch.

I’ve been hearing about Oakland Coffee on my morning commute, half tempted to check it out from simple curiosity being that it was set up by Greenday. :thinking:

:beers:
Rad

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Let us know how it is if you try it. I liked Green Day. Even have an American Idiot CD somewhere.

I’ve been watching Oakland Coffee for a while now, since it came up on social media ads. I’m always leery of those ads. Had no idea Green Day was involved. I’ll definitely check it out. Guess I never looked at their website or I’m confusing it with some other coffee company because it’s pretty obvious Billie Joe was involved…haha

Such a fun band. One of my fondest memories from a concert was the last or second to last, WHFStival at RFK stadium, 25,000 or so fans singing Time of Your Life and Billie Joe just standing on stage smiling. Those festivals were SO much fun. Miss live music. Got to get to some outdoor shows this summer when they start back up!

Maybe I’ll go ahead and order a couple pounds of that coffee now too.

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My roaster uses single source beens. On the bags he writes Country, region, farm or plantation in that order. Also the roasting date. He charges a premium and gets it. I would be leary of paying top dollar if it didn’t have at least that information.

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I’m really into this honey processed coffee from my roaster. He lists the farmer when he can.
https://maidencoffee.com/coffee/single-origin-5fpp5-y6n2p-bnb4h

I think Sumatran is generally my favorite.