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Re: Roast coffee beans???
On the contrary, it's far more repeatable than any of the many electric machines I've used over the years. I stir the beans until they are exactly where I want them to be (well into the second crack, in my case) and pull the beans at exactly that moment. I can slow the roast down or speed it up almost instantly. I can repeat a roast I like much more precisely, if I pay attention, then I ever could in an electric machine.
Of course, you can get distracted, and mess things up, but that's true with most cooking. It's certainly true with bread.
I've home roasted for over ten years. The results from the electric machines were not terribly consistent. If you just "let her rip" and let the machine roast according to its timing sequence, factors such as age of the green, humidity, and, particularly, ambient temperature, affected the results. If you tried to control the machine on the fly, as some allow, your visibility of the beans was generally poor and, at least for me, it was difficult if not impossible to hear the cracks over the noise of the machine and the extractor needed to vent the smoke. The result was certainly much better than buying roasted beans at the local supermarket, but not nearly as good as what I could get from any of the better mail order roasters.
I've known people who claimed to get very good results tricking out the electric roasters with PIDs and so forth, but the stock machines I've used were good, but not great.
Roasting in the WFO lets me hear the cracks far better, observe the process of the roast, and control the profile. I'm not sure my results are as good as the best of the mail order craft roasters (Barry Jarrett used to be my favorite source) but the results using my WFO are a lot closer to them than I ever accomplished with the electric devices.
I'd say the improvement I've seen using the WFO rather than a kitchen appliance roasting coffee is comparable to the improvement I've seen in my bread. Which is a considerable improvement. Not as great as the improvement in grilling a steak or making pizza, where no kitchen appliance comes close, but a major improvement.
Karl
On the contrary, it's far more repeatable than any of the many electric machines I've used over the years. I stir the beans until they are exactly where I want them to be (well into the second crack, in my case) and pull the beans at exactly that moment. I can slow the roast down or speed it up almost instantly. I can repeat a roast I like much more precisely, if I pay attention, then I ever could in an electric machine.
Of course, you can get distracted, and mess things up, but that's true with most cooking. It's certainly true with bread.
I've home roasted for over ten years. The results from the electric machines were not terribly consistent. If you just "let her rip" and let the machine roast according to its timing sequence, factors such as age of the green, humidity, and, particularly, ambient temperature, affected the results. If you tried to control the machine on the fly, as some allow, your visibility of the beans was generally poor and, at least for me, it was difficult if not impossible to hear the cracks over the noise of the machine and the extractor needed to vent the smoke. The result was certainly much better than buying roasted beans at the local supermarket, but not nearly as good as what I could get from any of the better mail order roasters.
I've known people who claimed to get very good results tricking out the electric roasters with PIDs and so forth, but the stock machines I've used were good, but not great.
Roasting in the WFO lets me hear the cracks far better, observe the process of the roast, and control the profile. I'm not sure my results are as good as the best of the mail order craft roasters (Barry Jarrett used to be my favorite source) but the results using my WFO are a lot closer to them than I ever accomplished with the electric devices.
I'd say the improvement I've seen using the WFO rather than a kitchen appliance roasting coffee is comparable to the improvement I've seen in my bread. Which is a considerable improvement. Not as great as the improvement in grilling a steak or making pizza, where no kitchen appliance comes close, but a major improvement.
Karl
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