Advice on roast profiles for a heat gun setup

[beanboy]

Hi,

I am a newbie here and have just begun making chocolate at home. Have done two batchs so far with reasonable success.

I roast on what we Aussies call a 'Corretto' roaster. This is a modified bread machine used as a bean agitator and a heat gun from a hardware store as the heat source with a thermocouple placed in the bean mass to monitor the roast. Usually used for coffee roasting, but now mine has a dual purpose.

I am after advice on roast profiles for this. I realise most if not all out there probably don't use this method but I figure it must translate to other methods - especially other coffee roaster methods?

So far I have been roasting a bit blind. I am going in with high heat and then backing right off and very slowly climbing until the beans have cracked. The first batch lasted around 18 mins, the second just over 20 mins. I then cool the beans in my home made coffee bean cooler utilising a cooling tray and forced air system.

Any and all advice will be much appreciated by the newbie. I am able to monitor bean mass temperature as I roast so the more specific the better!

Thanks.

[Brad]

Hey Beanboy;

Why not just roast in your home oven?

I started doing that and it worked fine for almost 3 years.

My "commercial roaster" is simply a convection oven in our shop. I roast about 100lbs of beans in the morning, and then bake brownies in the afternoon. When you look at the dynamics of cooking anything, it's really about heat and airflow.

A convection oven works great, because you aren't bashing the beans into each other and breaking some of them up.

Unless you don't have a home stove/oven, there's no real need for fancy roasting gadgets.

Further to that, the key to chocolate (at least the samples I've roasted) is LOW temperature. We roast several varieties of beans and go no higher than 300 degrees Farenheit. Most of the roasting I do here at Choklat is around that temperature, or slightly below.

Hope this helps.

Brad

[beanboy]

Thanks Brad,

the main reason for not using the oven is that I have my own coffee roasting setup out the back, and my chocolate hobby was to join it - out the back. That is, not in my wife's way and making a mess in her kitchen.

I also figured I could control the roast better than setting an oven at a set temp and simply placing the beans in that ambient temp - off the mark with regards to cocoa I guess. Although, I wonder about the reliability with my oven. It is not a great oven and often we need to work out how to tweak cake recipes and the like to match our oven - following recipes advice on temp and time don't seem to work out.

I haven't found that the roaster breaks any beans - cocoa or coffee.

I am thinking I could do an oven roast following the info on here to set a benchmark that I could then try to aim for 'out the back' on my roaster - as keeping it all out there would be preferable.

Thanks for the temp advice - we're on Celsius here, but I believe the temp I took it to would be a little higher than 300F, probably around 320-330F. I have been thinking it tastes a little over roasted - no obvious burn flavour, but not quite right. You have confirmed that I should pull it at a lower temp.

thanks, and anymore advice still much appreciated.

[holycacao]

Roasting profiles for cocoa are dependant on the type of cocoa as well as the desired flavor. If you roast coffee, you should know that the final temperature is one important factor, but how you get there greatly affects the final flavor. Longer roasts will get you more cocoa flavors. Beckett writes about adding water to the cocoa before roasting to prolong the time and promote more maillard reactions. I've experimented with this and find the I get a more profound chocolatey taste. However on some of our beans (fruit bombs to use a coffee term) a shorter roast time will keep more of the fruity volatile acids in the beans which should stay in the chocolate. We use a drum roaster for cocoa and coffee and have found that regardless of temperature, we roast based on taste and aroma. We also try to monitor the temps as to not stall the roasts. 20 minutes can be more than enough time for some beans. It all depends on the ambient temp.
Cocoa is roasted more delicately than coffee and we usually start with a high temp preheat 200 c- add the beans which drops the ambient temp to around 160, and set the temp to 130 -150 depending on variety.

[FeralOne]

holycacao~ That is one of the best answers I've seen on here for a question about roasting. I personally oven roast, because it's the best means for me, but there are many way's to do it. As you said, the desired end result is different for everyone, there is an impossible right or wrong answer. Nice explanation.

Andrea

[Brad]

I agree with Andrea.

Great contribution.

I never thought of adding water to the beans.

Interesting....

Brad

[FeralOne]

"I never thought of adding water to the beans."

I was thinking the same thing, I'll be trying that on my next roast.

Edit~ By adding water, does that mean spray a mist over the beans, soak the beans...?

Andrea

[holycacao]

By adding water, we introduced water into the preheated roaster drum, right before adding the beans. I'd like to modify the roaster with a water intake like an oven to be able to introduce steam during the roast.

Thanks Brad and Andrea. I taught myself to make chocolate from this site and it changed my life. I want to thank both of you for many of your posts as well all of the contributors to the site.

We actually built a much larger scale of Brad's box winnower. We designed it off of the info Brad posted.
I think this kind of openness only makes us better.
All the best,
Jo

[Brad]

Jo;

Thank you very much for the compliment. It's good to know my posts are helping people.

:-)

[beanboy]

Thankyou holycacao, much appreciated.

I have just roasted my 3rd batch using the advice from yourself and Brad. I realise it is personal tastes and will continue to play with my roasts to improve them for my liking - was just after a starting point which you have both given me - thanks.

Will post how this batch works out when it's ready.

[beanboy]

Sorry for the delay in posting but have been busy.

This third batch is amazing! I am so impressed with my chocolate and am loving the new hobby.

Thanks to all. I have been lurking on this site for some time and have learnt so much.