Cooling Your Coffee Beans
By Jim Cameron, Fri Dec 9th
COOLING YOUR COFFEE BEANS The most overlooked part of homeroasting
The process of roasting your own coffee beans is easy once youhave a basic understanding of how it works. Home roasting iscatching on rapidly and has been touted as the fastest growinghobby in the United States today. While simple, it does requiresome knowledge to produce roasts that are truly great.Understanding the entire process is mandatory in order todeliver the ultimate cup of coffee.
The number one problem in producing great coffee roasted at homeis the failure to cool the roast quickly after roasting. Coffeeis ”roasted” rather than “baked” and for good reason. Whenroasted properly at high heat quickly allowing convectionbetween the heat source and beans as well as from bean to beanyou will avoid “baking” your beans. The baking of coffee beansrenders them flat and void of the brightness and zip they shouldhave. Baking occurs when the beans are roasted too slowly orallowed to remain in a slowly decelerating heated situation.When this happens the coffee is losing the zip it has at peak ofroast.
The manufactured home roasters that I have seen or heard of allhave the same problem; they lack a good cooling system. It isvirtually impossible to cool your roast quickly enough in thesame chamber that they were, moments ago, roasting in. We in theindustry uses sample roasters which are all outfitted with aseparate cooling pan built to cool the roast as quickly aspossible. We watch the roast checking it with a small scoop weinsert into the roasting chamber about every 15 seconds when theroast is nearing the profile we desire. When the roast hits thedesired profile we immediately dump it into a cool and operatingcooling pan and generally stir it to speed the cooling alongfurther. It is easy to build
a very efficient cooling pan whichI highly recommend. Following is a simple plan for building acooling pan:To build an in-expensive, simple cooling pan that works verywell, you will need: One of those 5 gallon buckets like at thebakery or Home Depot WITH THE COVER. A large stainless steelmixing bowl, a couple draw hasps (National Hardware # N208-512V35) (Bungee cords will work – if you’re less mechanical). A 1x1(1 gallon/1 hp) shop vac. I bought one yesterday at Wal-Mart for$19.99 and a wooden spoon. Cut the top of the bucket so thesteel bowl fits snug on top of the bucket. Drill several hundredlittle (1/8” or smaller) holes only in the bottom of the bowl(colander will not work because the holes go up the sides). Cuta little hole 3 – 4 inches from the bottom into the side of thebucket so the vacuum cleaner hose will fit into the bucketSNUGLY. With the steel bowl snugly fastened on the top and theshop vac snugly in the hole you will have a very strong downwarddraft through the holes in the bottom of the bowl. This makes anexcellent cooling pan!
There are other, even easier ways including a 12 inch box fanblowing downward with a colander resting on top. For moreinformation on cooling beans and cooling pans email at:info@u-roast-em.com .
Next time you roast, make an effort to cool your roast asquickly as you can and taste the difference. When everything isdone right, your coffee will be noticeably better in the cup andthat is why we roast our own.
About
the author:Jim Cameron is a 30 year veteran in the Specialty CoffeeIndustry
and charter member of the SCAA (Specialty CoffeeAssociation of America).
Having sold his roasting business, Jimnow uses the skills and contacts
with importers and brokersdeveloped in 30 years of roasting to purchase,
cup and sellgreen beans to the home roasting trade.
