Coffee Roasting attempt #2

After the fairly average ghetto attempt at roasting coffee in the wok, this time I used the popper. Apparently it's important to get one with the vents on the side instead of the bottom of the popping cylinder. This ensures maximum agitation of the beans and prevents the chaff (how cool is that word) from falling through the holes in the bottom, and oh how much chaff there was!

Now most keen home roasters perform a whole heap of mods to their poppers so they can better control the temperatures etc. Anyone who knows me knows that I suffer from a delibitating electronics curse. I must have done something pretty evil to an eight track player in a previous life to deserve such bad karma, because any electric/electronic goods I touch blows up. Because of this severe condition, I'm reluctant to hot up my popper with anything fancy like thermocouples and cut out switches. Besides, it's pink. And sparkly. And it's "Bratz". So it's cool enough already, or so my 6 year old niece tells me.

My awesome popper at work:













So anyways, 13 minutes in my unmodified popper gave me a fairly even roast in a nice middle brown colour. Comparing it to commercially roasted beans I had lying around it was perhaps a bit lighter but some of that could be attributed to the original pale colour of the "India Mysore Nuggets A" beans. What kind of name is that for a bean though really? That ain't very appetising - it sounds like the first thing that passed out of the wrong end of an Indian dude with Hemarroids.

Anyway, so this time I waited a couple of days to try the results and I have to say I was quite happy with myself. Even more than usual =P. I would actually choose to drink this stuff. I can see myself relying less on pre-roasted coffee and doing alot more popper roasting in future,. The downside though is that I can only do small batches so I'll have to roast frequently. Overall though I give this the big tick. If you want to make sure you're getting the freshest coffee at home while saving some dosh, invest in a $25 Bratz popcorn maker!!!