Thread: Coffee Blending and Roasting

Now I know some of you guys do your own coffee roasting at home, I do. Do any of you custom blend your own beans rather than just buy them from somewhere and just roast them. Tell us about what varieties seem to just go good together. Does a Colombian go good with a Mexican or a Sumatran with an Ethiopian? Inquiring minds want to know.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Now I know some of you guys do your own coffee roasting at home, I do. Do any of you custom blend your own beans rather than just buy them from somewhere and just roast them. Tell us about what varieties seem to just go good together. Does a Colombian go good with a Mexican or a Sumatran with an Ethiopian? Inquiring minds want to know.

I am a coffee and tea freak but have not got into roasting yet. If you need someone to test those private blends I will be happy to take one for the team and do that for you.

there was a good show on foodnetwork this evening about coffee and tea. The show was good eats and the titles were true brew and true brew 2 (tea)

although I dont roast or anything cool like that,
I am a coffee addict...

Yep,

I home roast and blend my own as well.. I like to mix it up a lot....I think it really helps to know the flavor of your single origin beans and then decide what flavors will complement each other.

Lately I have been blending Columbian and Brazillian single origins and sometimes throwing in a little Nicaraguan for added chocolately flavor...or another central american bean...I have some nice Guatamallen beans that have a great flavor.

I usually try to roast at least a few different coffees at a time and then experiment from there....I usually prepare it in our Anita espresso machine...

Good stuffs

I love good coffee, but if I started another obsession like roasting my own beans my wife would kill me!

Hmm, I do home roasting, but the idea of actually blending the beans from different regions never occurred to me. I did mix a flavored cinnamon coffee with a
"Mayan Onyx" coffee which tasted like machine oil with cardamom, so I haven't felt an urgent need to blend again.
Do you have any recipes bigspendur?

For espresso, I like to have a post-roast blend of 45% Brazilian(city roast)/45%Yemen (rolling 2nd crack) w/10% monsooned robusta. It makes for a lovely chocolaty shot with gobs of crema. I also like Sweet Maria's Monkey Blend for a nice shot. Drip or press is almost always single origin.

Wayne

My summer blend consisted of 27% 07 Aged Sumatra Lintong roasted just out of first crack. If you take that bean any further it loses is soul and goes funky. It has to be roasted fast and hot. 26% Brazil Poco fundo at city+ (fully out of 1st crack but nowhere near 2nd crack). If you roll it into second it goes ashy. 26% brazil Yellow bourbon Fazendac Cachoeir roasted to the first snap of second crack (added the spice and coco hints to the blend) and 2.6% Ethiopian Harar Horse Masala taken to city+ as well.

It makes for a very Deterra like blend with a bit more brightness and acidity with a nice pit fruit finish with a little spice and coco. It was a light and refreshing espresso for the hot summer months. I ran it at 15 grams, 200-201 brew temp with a slight ristretto, 1.5-1.75 ounce over a 30 second extraction.

For a press pot or drip, my favorate of the 07 season was the Brazil COE#3 winner, Fazenda Pedra Preta. A super coffee and I was lucky enough to score 5 pounds in the green from the auction lot. Absolutely wonder coffee. I know what the auction price was for the lot, I was surprised when I saw it going for $30 (or was it more, don’t remember) per half pound roasted. But even at that price, the entire lot was gone in months.

If you want more roasting/blending information might I recommend the Home Roasting forum at Home-barista.com. Some of the best roasters in the country, along with the home roaster manufacturers, occasionally chime in with assistance as well.

I don't roast my coffee beans but I was sitting next to a couple from Ottawa at a Senators NHL hockey game and they roast their own beans. They use a hot air popcorn maker to roast their beans. Sounded unique to me but maybe you experienced folks use something more high tech. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty interesting way to roast the beans. They sent me some samples of their coffee and it was really wonderful. There really is a difference from the commercially ground varieties.

You can actually roast in an oven without any special gear just that its a pain in the butt. They have the most basic machines which are specialized pop corn poppers. They tend to be very noisy, hard to control and don't last very long but they do work.