My wife and I have been roasting our own coffee for about 10 years now. (Normally for espresso or americanos, occasionally French press or clever coffee dripper).
We just got a Bullet after years of using a Hottop after our starter FreshRoast machine. After dialing in our Hottop we have been in a rut since the early teens, and I thought it might be nice to take the opportunity of the new machine to also up our roasting game.
What books do people recommend for people who already know the basics of roasting and want to increase their knowledge and improve their techniques. I think we have an extremely elementary home roasting book that must be about 20 years old now somewhere, but in practice most of what we know came from Sweet Marias and forums from early last decade.
Three authors come to mind- Google for Scott Rao (popular here) or Ken Davids or Robert (?) Hoos. All are readable. Hoos has given one or more classes with a Bullet- a few months ago there was some interest here for a video of that class. I havenât seen that video but you should find reference to it here as well as a link. And Sweet Mariaâs has a few videos on operation as well as maintenance.
Thompson Owenâs material on roasting is really good and sufficiently general to be applicable⌠donât minimize what you learned there. And of course anybody with a journalism degree that has drunk a cup of coffee has probably done at least one free lance article on roasting. I suspect there are a couple gems out there.
Raoâs Coffee Roasting Best Practices is pretty essential if you decide to subscribe to his philosophy of the linearly decreasing RoR. Not everyone agrees, but it has worked well on the bullet for me at least for light-medium roasts. The book is aimed at larger commercial roasters but plenty valuable for us too.
Hoosâ Modulating The Flavor Profile Of Coffee covers just what youâd expect: what roasting changes cause what flavor changes. IMHO it is very helpful now that we have so much roasting data, but still just provides guidelines as each bean needs individual tuning. Thatâs the fun part, right?
@brian34vk Hi, congrats on the new equipment. If you get a chance (and havenât already tuned inâŚ) on YouTube Mill City Roasters
is a phenomenal resource of experience, data, and tips! It is almost a frightful cornucopia of good information. Seems to me Iâm always seeing ânewâ segments which are months or years old - but always insightful and presented sincerely.
Hoosâ videos are on Vimeo. If you go to his website there will be links to it. I am making my way thru Hoosâ ebook. I didnât want to splurge on Rao. From what I gathered they seems to be similar in their approach to roasting. Iâve been roasting on a FreshRoast SR500 for 8 or so years and jumped right to the bullet. I had the opportunity to take a 2 day roasting class at InterAmerica (bean wholesaler) several years ago roasting on a Probat 12kg - totally fun and very instructive.
