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Home-Roasting Heretic: Happy AccidentsA royal screw-up led to my first major home-roasting success. Well, I should be more specific "the right kind" of screw-up led to success. My first few home-roasting endeavors (particularly the first) were chock-full of screw-ups, and none of them yielded great results. On my fourth or fifth attempt, however, despite thinking I had under-roasted the beans, I experienced my first ahhh that's good! batch.
A roasting emergency forced me to prematurely halt an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe/Sidamo roast. Using the Westbend Poppery, I had placed a soup can atop the popper as a chimney (a suggestion from MAS's Roasting Coffee in a Popcorn Popper tutorial). The problem was that the can I used was coated inside. I noticed a couple of beans sticking to the can, apparently because the heat was softening this coating and making it adhesive. I switched the power off, to end the roast and save the rest of the beans.
I've long preferred darker roasts, so I was disappointed that this session ended with the beans just barely at a Light Roast stage. Still, I wasn't going to let this batch go to waste. I drip-brewed a pot, expecting mediocrity. Instead, I was blown away. For the first time, I could recognize distinct tastes in the beans I roasted ("floral, earthy"). This was the first batch I roasted that I would have been able to identify in a blind cupping. Accidentally, I roasted Ethiopian beans to perfection. The morals of this story are twofold:
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