Roasting coffee beans with a popcorn maker

Today I decided it was time to roast my own coffee. My mate Barney kick started me with a bag of green coffee beans for my birthday. Luckily I had a vintage prima popcorn maker at grind&brew HQ so this seemed the best place to start.

1. First I measured out 40 grams of green coffee beans and tipped them into the top of the popcorn maker, after turning it on the first thing I noticed was there was a lot of chaff flying out of the top. I let this fly into the air, and made a note to come up with a cunning device to catch the chaff for next time.

2. I ran the machine for a minute or so and stopped it to see the progress, after tipping the roasted beans into a sieve I noticed there was quite an inconsistency between the beans some being dark and some light, I gave them a shake around in the sieve to try and loosen some of the chaff.

3. Next I tipped them back into the popcorn maker and turned it back on, this time I alternated from tipping the machine to 30degrees or so and shaking it around to ensure all the beans got an even roast.

4. I repeated the tipping out and shaking around to loosen the chaff a few times until I acheived the roast I wanted, the way I knew was by comparing the colour to some of my favourite espresso roasted beans I had in stock. (Note to self next time time the roast)

5. When I was happy with the colour I tipped back into the sieve to cool them down.

6. I know you are supposed to wait before brewing with freshly roasted beans but I couldn't wait! I grabbed the Tiamo hand grinder and set it to 1 up from fine and ground 18grams of coffee straight away,

7. I ran a 30 gram espresso through miss Silvia, it took around 40 seconds but still made a great espresso. I am actually really surprised this worked and made a decent coffee!

The beans - Sumatra MandHeling from rave coffee
Roasted - 40grams
Ground - 20grams
Brewed - 18grams ground
Produced - 30gram espresso over 40 seconds

Chris