Roasting

Roasting was Originally Posted on October 3, 2008 by lavarock

Most people want roasted coffee shipped to them, rather than green beans which they roast themselves. Only home roasters tend to buy green.

Depending upon the size of the order or how much green I want to roast, I have used two different sources, Greenwell’s or Sheppard’s. The price was about the same but here are the differences.

Greenwell is a large coffee processor. They manage some local farms and have their own coffee farm. They get tour busses in and have samples of coffee for tasting. They are a major player. They are also local to me and convenient. If I need coffee roasted quickly, I can drop it off and maybe get it the same day or the next. They close early Friday and seem to clean the roaster then and open again on Monday. They are closed holidays. The minimum batch size is 20 pounds for their commercial roaster. The roast is consistant.

Then there is Sheppards. It was started by Ken and Christine Sheppard, long time Kona coffee farmers. Ken decided to build roasters and they can roast just a few pounds or more at a time. If I give them lots of coffee, they roast in batches. The process was performed at MaryLou Moss’s house up the mouantain from Kailua-Kona. The roast is fairly consistant, but can vary batch to batch as it is a more manual process. The roasting is done outdoors on a lanai (porch) and often the wind blows or worse there is rain nd roasting will be suspended until it stops. Roasting here is done 1 or 2 times a week, but i an emergency, they can roast almost any time for me. I try not to have emergencies, but they are quite responsive to my needs. They are also quite a ways from my house and somewhat convienient from work, but not really.

Depending upon how quickly I needed the coffee and in what quantity, determined who I used. If I had lots of coffee, needed lots of grinding, or needed a very consistant medium, it was Greenwell. If the roast was darker or smaller batches, I’d have them do it up at the Moss farm. This is because sometimes the wind would blow a bit and we didn’t get the beans out quite quick enough to meet my specifications. The coffee was never ruined, but getting a perfect, consistant roast was slightly difficult. Still, we would mix the beans between batches and it all evens out.

There are times when I needed a couple pounds of very light roast or something just a bit darker, yet didn’t have time in my schedule to accomodate a customers special request. I may have just solved that.

I just put in an order for a small coffee roaster for the house. It can roast 1 pound of green at a time and looks to have quite repeatable results. Including shipping it will cost about $400 but I think it will be worth it. I can roast a batch in under 30 minutes and end up with about 12 ounces of roasted each time. Still, I think this may solve part of the problems I have had. I will still Use my other options for larger batches, but I think I can really make use of this.

On a side note, years ago I bought a grinder and when I would ned a bit more ground than what I had onhand, I would dump whole beans into it and out came ground. After many years I finally burned it up. I have not yet replaced it and probably will not for a while. The grinder was under $100 as I remember, but still, it was messy and a pain to try to grind a few pounds of coffee at a time. It was not really designed for the amount of coffee I was grinding.

If I get another grinder it will be long the lines of a professional Bunn (like at the stores), not a home unit. These Bunns cost many hundreds of dollars and weigh a lot! Shipping is quite a bit to Hawaii, so perhaps I will look for a used one here.

In any event, I hope to receive the roaster soon and will report back.