BMB (www.BearMountainBull.com) is visiting the blog today to post about his latest coffee roasting methods:

After 9-10 years of roasting via the hot air method, with both the Hearthware Precision (no longer in production) and the Fresh Roast Plus-8, I decided to take a stab at an even cruder roast-it-yourself method: roasting on the stovetop with a hand-cranked popcorn popper.

Why would I bother? Two reasons. First, when I was ‘between’ roasters, and my Precision roasters started to give me problems, I wanted a reliable backup in case of a breakdown of my primary roaster. I eventually decided on the Fresh Roast as an inexpensive, no-brainer, backup (now primary!) roaster. But…eventually it too might wear out, so I kept studying the options. The second issue I wanted to solve was that I’ve always wanted a way to roast bigger batches. With both the Precision and the Fresh Roast, it takes around 3 batches to roast a half-pound of beans. For my everyday espresso needs, those three batches last a little over a week, and then it’s back to the roaster for another three. I thought it would be really nice to be able to roast at least a half-pound in one shot, either for my own use or when roasting up coffee as a gift.

So, one day not too long ago I was roaming around Sweet Maria’s site for god-knows-what (coffee probably), and stumbled onto the ‘Stovetop Popper method’ page. The light went on - “that’s it!!” It’s cheap, it’s reliable (all you need is the popper and a stove), and it roasts a half-pound at a time. Score!

The next question to be answered was: which popper to get? Of course, there wasn’t much doubt that I would go with one of Sweet Maria’s recommendations, and the slightly heftier stainless steel model from Back to Basics sounded like a good idea. So I did a little poking around on the web, checking prices on the B-to-B Stainless Steel popper. After much searching, the best deal (though minus the sampler coffee pack offered by Sweet Maria’s) was at WalMart.com. They’ve got the popper for the cheapest price that I could find, AND they’ll ship it to a store near you for free. Done.

Back to Sweet Maria’s for the stovetop popper method ‘tip sheet’. Might as well get advice from those that have done this before.

The ‘tips’ had some good ideas, one of which I was going to do anyway, and that was the ‘dry run’ - put the green beans in the popper, without heat, and see how the paddle pushed them around. So I measured out some beans. Three ounces of beans turned out to be just less than a quarter-cup, so I tossed in about three times that amount. The tips sheet recommended between 6-9 ounces, and that put me right up at the top of that range.

Pushing the beans around with the crank/paddle, I saw that some beans might get pushed up against the edge of the bottom of the pan, and that the paddle tended to keep some of the same beans bunched up against it as it turned. To counteract those tendencies, I decided to stop the paddle, maybe even reversing it slightly, and shake the pan to mix things back up.

With the range hood exhaust fan (which vents to the outside - important!) on ‘High’, I preheated the pan as directed. That only took a few minutes on my gas stove, with the burner at a medium-low setting. In order to check the ‘air’ temperature inside the pan, I dangled a candy thermometer inside. Once the air temp reached around 400° F, I tossed the beans in, closed the lid and started cranking, stopping to shake things around now and then.

The smell of roasting coffee beans was evident shortly thereafter, and just as the ‘tips’ said, first crack started around 6 or 7 minutes in. I reduced the heat slightly, then kept roasting until I heard the snaps of second crack for a while - I was roasting up my espresso blend, which I usually roast a minute or two into second.

One problem that I noticed - I like to judge the degree of roast by the color of the beans, but down inside the pan, the color and/or oils on the beans were pretty hard to see. A small drawback–I’ll have to judge more by sound.

Once I decided the beans were done enough, it was time to dump them into the metal colander for cooling (we’ve got a nice hefty metal colander - perfect for the job). But be careful, because the beans are hot, and the colander will get hot too. You might want to have something under the colander. Not only will it get rather warm, but remember there is no chaff collection mechanism in the ‘popper’ method, so all of the chaff is still in the ‘roaster’ and will pour out into the colander with the beans. Some will slip through the holes. If you’ve roasted coffee before, you know how that chaff can fly around.

I took the colander outside (with oven mitts), and tossed the beans around to cool them, blowing chaff away in the process. I think a better idea would be to have a fan ready and waiting. Let the fan blow over and through the colander as you toss the beans around, and it will help to cool the beans and blow away the chaff.

Once the beans were cooled, they looked and smelled great. My first ’stovetop roasting’ effort was a success.

Next time, I think I’ll have that fan ready to help cool the beans, and I might set up another fan in the kitchen window to help with the ‘exhaust’ effort - the kitchen smelled like coffee for an entire day afterward. But that didn’t bother me much…

So if you want a roasting method that should prove to be quite reliable over the years, and also produces a bigger batch, consider giving the ’stovetop popper’ a shot. It’s cheap, it’s kinda fun, and it works!

Oh wait, there’s one last problem: I’m not sure that you’ll want to use that popper for popcorn after roasting coffee in it.