I just got my bullet. I was surprised to learn that you have to spend 1,5 kg green beans just to get off the ground, I had no idea about that. 1,5kg is quite a lot imo, and I only have premium coffee green beans that I don’t want to waste on throwing in the trash. I also don’t know where I’d buy cheap beans, my normal retailer only sells good stuff.
Is there any other way to season? Could I use some other type food bean? Could I use pre-roasted store-bought cheap beans?
edit: Maybe roasting chick peas (aka garbanzo beans)? Lots of people are roasting these in regular ovens.
I had read the manual while waiting for my Bullet to ship, so ordered some of the cheapest beans I could find, from Burman’s…they were a “special” at $3.99/pound IIRC…I didn’t think spending $20 on seasoning was too much on a $2,700 roaster.
By the way, I ordered an extra pound of that $3.99 coffee, and roasted it later and it was pretty good. I buy most of my coffee from Sweet Maria’s but occasionally get some very fine coffees from Burmans.
Have you looked at the RoastWorld site, where your coffee inventory and profiles will be housed? There are a number of coffee vendors shown there, maybe some of them are located where you can order.
Unless the “premium” coffee beans in your inventory are wildly expensive (aka Kopi Luwak), just “bite the bullet” and sacrifice some beans to the drum-gods. Sweet Marias and other on-line green sellers offer inexpensive packs for as little as $5/lb. But shipping to Denmark could add another $60 to that reasonable bean cost.
Seasoning is a one-time thing, so consider it part of a drum roaster investment. You should use unroasted, green coffee beans as your seasoning object. Those seasoning roasts are purposely to the dark-side because it produces more heat and coffee oil to coat the drum.
Having seasoned several drums over the years, I went with (5) seasoning roasts. Whether you source a drum from within a product or build one from scratch, the metal will have manufacturing residue on it of some type. The Bullet manual says do at least “3” seasonings from a “food safety” perspective. You will find that people who season drums in larger roasters will typically go with doing (5) as did Tom at Sweet Marias.
Yeah thanks for the help, I’ve resigned to using some of my good coffee on it. It’s hard to part with, but I reason I can buy a few extra bags next round. I will do 3 rounds for the trash and taste the 4th and 5th.
I have some “dead” beans I plan to use… I had forgotten about these beans that were in a box in my basement behind my wine! They are at least 4+ yrs old … I almost threw them out but kept them knowing I might need them to play with on a Bullet one day My Bullet from Sweet Maria’s hopefully should arrive at the end of this week.
Sweet Marias and other on-line green sellers offer inexpensive packs for as little as $5/lb. But shipping to Denmark could add another $60 to that reasonable bean cost.
My Bullet from Sweet Maria’s hopefully should arrive at the end of this week.