Can I achieve Commercial Retail quality beans at home?

[satxdrummer]

Hello everyone. I was wondering if I would be able to achieve roasted coffee similar to commercial roasters (Klatch, Doma, Madcap, Olympia, ect) at home with a Behmor 1600. I've gotten pretty much every other aspect perfected in my brewing, but ordering coffee every 3 weeks gets a bit pricey and towards the end of each shipment the last pot i make is usually 25 days off roast. There are no local roasters available and it doesn't make sense to order more often than every 3 weeks do to shipping costs

 

[PinkRose]

Hello "satxdrummer"

Welcome to the Coffee Forums website.

We have a lot of members on this Forum who roast coffee at home and they're very pleased with the results.

If you go up to the top right corner of your screen, you will see a search box. If you type words Behmor 1600 in the box and do a search, you will see some threads where the Behmor 1600 has been discussed.

From what I've read, the Behmor roasters have a good reputation. It takes patience, and a bit of trial and error to be able to roast the coffee exactly how you like it, but it's something that's worth the time and effort.

Rose

 

[slurp]

Welcome satxdrummer

to be blunt the answer to your question is no. If you looking to save a few $$ roasting your self is not the answer. You will buy green coffee beans only a little less than you can get from a quality roaster already roasted. Add shipping, time and machines and you are paying more than just buying roasted coffee. Do not forget about learning curve, your going to toss a lot of incorrectly batches away in the beginning.

Now if your looking to roast coffee for the love of it I say go for it.

Not sure your location if you tell us maybe someone here knows of a roaster near you. OR you can message me and I know a really good roaster :coffee1:

 

[thCapn]

If you do a lot of research, talk with people who use the same machine, take your time, and do a lot of "experimenting" and tasting/cupping then you can eventually get to the point where you're roasting very good tasting coffee on a home machine. I use a Gene Cafe and it took me about 7 months to get to the point where I was consistently producing really good tasting coffee.

I've heard that Behmores are easier. I have a friend with one and she knows how to juke it to get what she wants.

Choosing good greens is imperative. I buy greens locally at Mr Green Beans in Portland, OR for $5.50/lb in 5-lb increments.

 

[Amhas]

Welcome satxdrummer

to be blunt the answer to your question is no. If you looking to save a few $$ roasting your self is not the answer. You will buy green coffee beans only a little less than you can get from a quality roaster already roasted. Add shipping, time and machines and you are paying more than just buying roasted coffee. Do not forget about learning curve, your going to toss a lot of incorrectly batches away in the beginning.

Now if your looking to roast coffee for the love of it I say go for it.

Not sure your location if you tell us maybe someone here knows of a roaster near you. OR you can message me and I know a really good roaster :coffee1:

Come on Slurp, that's not a positive welcome to the forum...:sad:
Satxdrummer,
I'm not going to tell you that it is easy to reproduce what specialty coffee roasters produce (like those you mentioned), but you can by all means get reasonably close and with the right combination of bean and profile you can by all means roast coffee as good as these specialty coffee roasters. Savings? You can roast your own coffee for about half the price of what you're probably paying at those specialty roasters that you mentioned. It depends on how much coffee you go through but with a small investment like a Behmor or similar device you can save enough in roasting your own coffee in a few months to a year to pay for that investment and you can have fresh coffee at your disposal (never stale).:-D

If you have the patience and the interest, which it seems you do I highly suggest you give it a try. With some experimentation you will find beans and roast profiles that you will most certainly consider pretty good; although, as Slurp said you may ruin or find a batch of beans now and again that you simply can't or don't want to drink.

One key thing is to buy specialty grade coffee beans. You can get them around pretty readily now. I order all my beans from Sweet Maria's and they seem to maintain a good supply of high quality green beans. You can even buy the green beans directly from some of these specialty (Artisan) roasters out there. Klatch does this the last I looked; although, you they do charge a bit of a premium for them you get what you pay for (most of the time).
Like others mentioned there are a lot of posts on the forum about the different roasters (Behmor being no exception), so you can certainly get some feedback and advice here. The Behmor is a good place to start and you can reasonably roast upwards of 10 maybe 12 ounces, but you have limited control (unlike the other system like the Gene Cafe and Hottop, both of which I have never used). The home roasters like I mentioned have some limitations which makes it difficult to control the roasts like a one can on a commercial roaster but they are a fraction of the cost in comparison and by no means reasonably price effective for a home roaster.
Good luck, if you do decide it is worth the adventure. :coffeecup:

 

[poison]

It'llbe tough to match what the best roasters can do on pro equipment, with pro experience, and pro palates, but you can sure beat everyone else, and maybe even come close!

 

[ensoluna]

yes, definitely. and sometimes you can do it even better, of course with plenty of practice and experience. plus knowing the characteristics of coffee beans because some beans are softer than others, some beans are smaller, bigger. You need to study about the bean before roasting for even setting temperatures.

and most important thing is that when you have the green beans to roast, please make it sure to inspect them and sort out the bad ones, broken ones, sour& blighted ones, black beans, ...etc as much as you can. you need to take them out before you roast. if not, they will ruin the cup profile entirely. SPECIALLY QUAKERS AND SOURS.

supposedly, in export standard green beans, there shouldn't be that many, but I have seen otherwise.

on the contrary, many unqualified roasters roast bean without going thru this process (perhaps, no time, no man power), so from my experiences, I get a lot of bad batches of roasted coffees.

So, proper investigation and study about the beans, sorting, and attention to details..etc will guarantee better roasted beans than most of roasters.
Also, green bean pricing is less than half of roasted bean pricing.

 

[peterjschmidt]

From my experience, the answer is yes and no. For 8 years I roasted ~50-70lbs. per month, using two SC/TO's and got very good at it. I know my roasts were better than 90% of the "pro" roasters in town. As a very good home-roaster you can do better than a bad pro roaster. Since switching to a small commercial roaster, my coffee has gone up in quality, and now my answer to the OP would be a qualified 'no'. The best home-roaster cannot compete with a good commercial roaster run by a competent operator.

You'll still have very good coffee, and perhaps better than what you'd be buying so you should be happy with your output. Just realize the Behmor's limitations and don't ask it to do something it can't do.

 

[slurp]

Come on Slurp, that's not a positive welcome to the forum...:sad:

It was the real answer to the question. If you like me to say "oh yes your going to save money on shipping", that would be dis honest.

The OP stated shipping was pricey. As my post said if he/she is trying to save money on shipping it is not the best idea. If he/she is looking to learn and roast coffee I encouraged them. Did you read my post completely?

Now if your looking to roast coffee for the love of it I say go for it.

Amhas I see you have 10 post, please except my warmest welcome to the forum.

 

[JCF]

If you are home roasting because you have the time, and make it like a hobby, I can understand the enjoyment. The aroma of fresh roasted or grounded Coffee is always stimulating to the senses and a +. The need to have roasted Coffee shipped every three weeks for personal use is further motivation to consider home roasting. But like everything in Life, it's a balancing act. I know of many things I thought were a good idea, later become to much when it requires repetition on a continued basis. Bottom line is with time you will get better at it. Do you have the dedication to stick to it to get the better Roast. Only you know.

 

[JumpinJakJava]

From my experience, the answer is yes and no. For 8 years I roasted ~50-70lbs. per month, using two SC/TO's and got very good at it. I know my roasts were better than 90% of the "pro" roasters in town. As a very good home-roaster you can do better than a bad pro roaster. Since switching to a small commercial roaster, my coffee has gone up in quality, and now my answer to the OP would be a qualified 'no'. The best home-roaster cannot compete with a good commercial roaster run by a competent operator.

This is my experience too. After home roasting for years on a Javapro CRC(well over a 1000 roasts),got the same end result as Peter stated. "Better than 90% of commercial small shop roasters." Why? Because of the desire for the best coffee. Plain and simple! They had better machines, but perhaps not the same anal attention to get the best out of the coffee roasted. I would not go back now from my Ambex. More consistent batches. Why? Obviously better control. Master your machine, know your coffee. I understand what Peter is saying about the machines in competetion(home/commercial), and the operators. Bells and whistles(night & day!) But personally, I would've welcomed the competition. I bet Peter would've too.

 

[Amhas]

It was the real answer to the question. If you like me to say "oh yes your going to save money on shipping", that would be dis honest.

The OP stated shipping was pricey. As my post said if he/she is trying to save money on shipping it is not the best idea. If he/she is looking to learn and roast coffee I encouraged them. Did you read my post completely?

Slurp, yes I did read your entire post. The OP said he didn't see how it made sense to order roasted beans more frequently based on shipping cost, not that he was going to save $$ on shipping if he roasted his own beans. Realistically he should be able to save $$ and always have fresh roasted beans if he roast his own. That's what I am saying. I know for a fact I do... well maybe not after I give beans away, but that's changing now.

Satx,
Peter and JCF make really good points here as well here. I highly suggest starting out small with a little roaster and little investment. This is all relative to the individual but I can assure you that there will be moments of frustration and disappointment in your roasts no matter what roaster you get. For me I don't necessarily say it is fun so much as rewarding to roast. I started with a Behmor and now I have a small commercial roaster (should be here this month). I found myself intrigued with the science of the process and the Behmor just doesn't give me the control or volume I want, but I would never suggest one start with a commercial roaster (they're way to much $$ unless you get one for a steal).
Let us know what you decide...

 

[djlamar]

to be blunt the answer to your question is no. If you looking to save a few $$ roasting your self is not the answer. You will buy green coffee beans only a little less than you can get from a quality roaster already roasted. Add shipping, time and machines and you are paying more than just buying roasted coffee. Do not forget about learning curve, your going to toss a lot of incorrectly batches away in the beginning.

I have to vehemently disagree with this. Very high quality green coffee can be bought for $6 - $7 a pound for home use. Remember that the roasted coffee you usually buy from Klatch, Handsome, Heart, or wherever is usually in 12 ounce bags -- 3/4 of a pound -- so that $15 bag of South/Central American coffee or $18 - $20 bag of African coffee has an actual unit price of $20/lb or $24 to $27 a pound respectively. Sure you have to pay shipping that is a little higher than the shipping from roasters -- Sweet Maria's charges about $8 or $9 per shipment, no matter the size. However, since the green coffee does not degrade in flavor or quality for a year or more, you can buy in large quantities to make the increase in price per pound negligible. I just got a 12 pound order from Sweet Maria's which totaled $88 after shipping, so an average of $7.33 per pound of coffee. Of course, this is comparing unroasted weight to roasted weight, so if we take off a decently liberal 15% of the weight to find the amount of roasted coffee I end up with, I'm still left with 10.2 pounds and a per-pound cost of $8.62 (and by volume, 75% of my order was African coffee, which is normally on the higher range of price, so this is probably close to 1/3 the price I would be paying the roaster).

Let's use the lower estimate of $20 per pound for pre-roasted coffee. I drink a cup a day and I end up using about 2 pounds of unroasted coffee a month, or 1.7 pounds of roasted coffee. So I would be spending $34 on pre-roasted coffee every month, but instead I'm spending $14.65 a month on unroasted coffee. So I'm saving $19.35 a month -- a $300 Behmor would take 16 months to pay off, but if I'm mainly interested in minimizing cost without losing too much quality, a $25 to $50 stove-top or electric popcorn popper for roasting would pay off in no more than a few months. If we use the more realistic cost estimate of $24 a month per roasted pound for the coffees I got (since I mostly ordered African coffees), then I'm saving $23.35 a month and even the Behmor would only take 13 months to pay off (for the record, I've owned my Behmor for slightly more than two years now). And the topic poster is currently ordering online and probably adding $2 or more per pound to his costs in shipping, so a cheap popcorn popper would pay off in just one month.

Sure there's a learning curve too, but if you read up on roasting before you start and begin with small batches then probably your first batch will still be ok, it won't take long to ramp up to a pretty solid level of quality, and in the worst case you won't waste more than 1/2 to 1 pound of coffee.

 

[docdvm]

I have been roasting for 6 years from home 5 of which were with my HotTop. Enjoyed every minute of it! I also explored espresso , have good quality grinders and a top end espresso machine, La Marzocco GS/3. But the purchase that made the most difference in taste and enjoyment of the cup was when I started roasting my own. Am I a master roaster? No way and I do not pretend to be. But I never drink stale coffee anymore. What a difference a freshly roasted coffee makes! True you can spend $20.00 or more a pound buying from a master roaster, many of which are exceptional. But I can calculate that my HotTop saved me $3000 over the past 3 years when compared to drinking master roasters beans. I never drink any coffee that is more than 10 days from roast. I grind with my Baratza Vario right before preparing my drip coffee. I have a separate grinder for expresso. Anyone coming to my house comments on my coffee because they are used to drinking stale coffee.
I buy my coffee from the Green Coffee Buying Club distributions from individual members. They are a good group of hobbyists who can help with all your decisions. Since I am in Canada I do pay more for shipping so my beans end up costing $7.00 or $8.00 dollars a pound. Still a big saving. Plus I have a better understanding and appreciation of coffee. Have fun with your hobby as a home roaster. Install a Bean Temperature thermocouple and you are set.

 

[peterjschmidt]

You need a North roaster, docdvm.