How To Roast Sweet Flavorful Coffee

Home coffee roasters can learn how to roast sweet flavorful coffee. During the coffee roasting process, heat is applied to the coffee beans. Over time, chemical reactions take place with the natural sugars and amino acids in the coffee coffee (seed) bean. These are known as caramelization and maillard reactions that form sweetness and acidity. In order to achieve these reactions, heat over time, properly used, will form sweetness and fruitiness in the bean. In this video, I address how to roast sweet flavorful coffee.

There are a couple of other videos I made that will help add context to this video. I would encourage you to watch:

Both of these videos prepare us for the middle phase of coffee roasting known as the “Browning” phase. This is where many of the flavors and sweetness are developed during the coffee roasting process. This video also talks about charting your roast and using your senses; both very important tools to help us achieve great coffee roasts that are sweet and flavorful.

Is the coffee you roast sweet, fruity and full of flavor? Are you allowing enough time for the flavors to develop during this middle phase? Are you logging or charting your roast temperatures and events? Share your comments below!
Video Timeline
0:00 How to roast sweet flavorful coffee
1:16 What is happening to coffee beans during the browning phase?
2:10 The Caramelization takes place during the browning phase
3:10 Acidity is formed during the browning phase
3:50 How do we get these flavors when we roast coffee?
5:36 it is important for us to understand the 3 phases of coffee
6:39 We can control Time & Temperature - both will influence sweetness and acidity
7:24 Monitor Rate of Rise during your roast
8:39 Get to know how your roaster performs
9:24 How should we understand first crack?
9:46 Smell, Color and Sound are more important events we should be writing down
14:00 How you can help other home coffee roasters
14:36 How do we log or chart our coffee roasting process
14:54 Temperatures, Times & Events must be recorded so you will know what is happening to your roast
17:27 Chemical reactions (development continue all the way through cooling the beans. Use the time after first crack to balance your coffee sweetness and acidity.

Links to the various coffee supplies I use:
If you click on these links I may receive a fee which helps support this channel

Kettle

Grinder

Scale

Immersion Brewers

Percolation/Pour-Over Brewers & Supplies

I roast coffee on my Mill City 500 gram commercial coffee roaster every week. I also use a Behmor and a hot air popcorn popper to roast some great coffee. Join me as we roast, brew and cup coffee every week at home.

Do you roast coffee at home? Do you craft single serve coffee and if so, what brewing method do you like? Please share your comments and be sure to like this video!

About Me:
I am a coffee enthusiast who roasts coffee from home on my sample size commercial drum coffee roaster. Coffee has been in my life for over 40 years, whether I was selling it or roasting it, I want to share my passion with you.

Supplies to Build Your Coffee Cart & Organize

Music:
Rubber Necking - Topher Mohr and Alex Elena

#HomeCoffeeRoaster #CleverDripper #CoffeeBrewingMethods

[anadventure]

Recently had a one on one session with Mike via the buy me a coffee option. Rarely do you get the opportunity to pick someone's brain in a one on one setting. I tried finding coffee roasting classes locally and had no luck. I binge watched Mike's and other youtuber's videos and still had some targeted questions. Mike asked me my questions ahead of time and then prepared a PDF with my answers. Mike is patient and thorough. Consider supporting him and his efforts via buy me a coffee and a one on one is a steal of a deal. I plan to do another session after I get some more experience under my belt.

[billyjackskin]

Great stuff Mike! Tough to weed through all the online info and make sense of it. Your videos make it concise and clear. Keep'em coming!

[yoyoyoyo-qsxz]

Hey man, I’m Yousif from Saudi Arabia, would like to complement the way you talk, I’m practicing my IELTS test and just watching you talking has improved me. Very clear and words used in place wisely, also the way you explained the middle phase was just perfect, I’m lucky your video the first thing I saw, that saved me a lot of time. Thanks again.

[momoflily]

Thank you! I have seen so many people throw up graphs and talk about "rate of rise" without actually explaining what it is. Of course I'd mostly been watching videos about which roasters might be best for various reasons and they apparently assume you know these things already I suppose. I am thankful for your very good verbal description. This is the first time I actually understand what is actually being measured on the graphs. As soon as someone throws up a graph it makes it seem like it must be something so complicated that a graph is necessary to grasp what's happening.

[howdostuff]

Fantastic video! I’ve been roasting without fine tuning for 10 years and never considered adjusting the time and temp. I’ll do this today!

[cg]

I'm a commercial coffee roaster, and your videos are really awesome. Great, informative presentation.

[GoTellJesusSaves]

Airflow, drum speed and capacity/batch size are also 3 very important variables in roasting times, roasting quality and uniformity, because of how the coffee batches take on heat.
For example, with the same environment temperature reading a higher airflow setting and drum speed can cause the coffee to cook faster (higher ROR).
On the other hand, with a higher airflow and drum speed, a little lower temperature can be used while keeping a similar ROR.

I'd love to see a video addressing this with real examples. So maybe a video all about controlling ROR throughout each phase. And all the different ways to do so, with end results of each different way.
I feel this would be EXTREMELY helpful to so many!

Thanks so much for your videos and sharing your experience and knowledge with us!

[omnidivergence]

Thanks for all the time and effort that has gone into making these videos. This channel has excellent content.

[Cofenotthatone]

Thank you for this useful content. Just an idea how to improve your explanations: when you dealing with numbers, curves like different RoRs, it would be much more comprehensible showing it on a diagram or using another kind of visualization. But I really appreciate your thoroughness. Thank you again.

[davidrichert]

Helpful video, thanks for sharing! You have a way of making the how and why very clear.

[alanchng]

I use a rotisserie basket in an electric oven. Temperature can measured manually in the coffee, or indirectly using an oven thermometer. Continuous rotation and oven fan ensure even heat distribution compared to using a wok or heater gun. Thanks for the explanation on the importance of charting. Cheers!

[fahmulkopisipirok]

Amazing explanation, you are doing great sir, thank you so much ❤

[LivingTheLifeRetired]

Wow, learned so much today. Thank you.

[Rayzer]

Superb! I’ve learned more in the past few days since finding your channel than I have in the past year. I’m using a FreshRoast 800 with 12” Razzo roasting chamber, Mastech MS6514 temp meter, two K type thermocouples, and Artisan software. I have struggled to achieve ANY consistency, but until I started hearing you talk about the 3 stages and percentage of time in each phase, and especially RoR, nothing I have read to date had sunk in. Now things are starting to make sense. I can’t wait to head back to the drawing board and start from scratch with the information you have provided. Thank you!! 🙏🏼

[NMEONES]

Truly appreciate all of the info… thank you!

[damiencass]

Cam across your videos recently and they are a huge help, very specific yet delivered in simple terms. Much appreciated.

[robertlukas]

Great video! Exactly what I wanted to learn. Thanks!

[hushedambience]

Very thorough and informative videos! Best so far during my home roasting learnings. Hope new roasters flock to your videos soon!

[koreishite]

Very good explanation.One the best explanations I’ve heard so far

[ajk]

Thank you again for another informative video! I roast 1/2 lb. coffee every 6 days and just wish I could roast more often to learn more! I'm using a Hottop that I just converted to -2K+ and now I can see what is happening during the roast and I also have a record of each roast so I can study and plan the next roast. I do turn the heat down at dry end, but maybe I also need to increase the fan speed higher to help drop the temp even more. The middle phase of my last roast was 3:00 minutes, which was 25% of the total roast time. I haven't tried that coffee yet, but maybe in the morning I'll brew it. That was Guatemala Antigua Pulcal Inteligente from Sweet Maria's. The average ROR during the middle phase was 21°F, dropping to 12.4°F in the third phase.