A table of green, unroasted coffee beans in bags from Sweet Maria's, with burlap coffee sacks from Panama and Costa Rica behind them
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Home Coffee Roasting on a Behmor, and a 2008 Coffee Show in Minneapolis

ByJamie Dolan

Here is a home coffee roast from back in the day: Sweet Maria’s New Classic Espresso Blend. The video below shows the whole roast from start to finish, and this batch came out really well. I always let the beans rest a few days before brewing, since that resting time lets the flavor settle, which works best for espresso.

Roast settings: 1 pound, P2, B.

My home roasting setup

That roast was done on a Behmor drum roaster. I roasted on that machine for years and got a lot of good coffee out of it. It needs watching, you cannot just walk away from it, but if you pay attention you can pull a really nice batch. Mine eventually burned out after all those years, and we moved up to the newer generation of the machine. My dad actually handles most of the roasting now.

A table of green, unroasted coffee beans in bags from Sweet Maria's, with burlap coffee sacks from Panama and Costa Rica behind them

I have mostly roasted green beans from Sweet Maria’s out in Oakland. They have been the go-to source for home roasters for a long time, and that is most of the stash you see here, along with a few burlap sacks from Panama and Costa Rica.

Before the Behmor, I also spent years roasting in a drum on my grill. That is a delicate process. Coffee beans and the chaff they throw off burn very well, so if your grill is not totally clean you can start a fire in a hurry. It taught me to respect the whole thing.

A coffee trip I will never forget

The Park Plaza Hotel lit up blue at night in Minneapolis, where we stayed for the 2008 Specialty Coffee Association show

Somewhere along the way, through an online coffee mailing list, I got to know another roasting enthusiast. Back in 2008 he invited Karen and me to be his guests at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual show, now just the Specialty Coffee Association, held that May in Minneapolis. We drove over for a couple of days and stayed at the Park Plaza you see here.

The show floor was hundreds of vendors, the barista competitions, and just about every machine you could dream of out there to try. I got to play with a Dalla Corte at the Whole Latte Love booth, among a lot of other things. It was honestly one of the coolest things I have ever gotten to do, and a great couple of days with Karen.

These days I run an ECM Synchronika at home, and I even run a Facebook group for other Synchronika owners. The gear has changed a lot since this old Behmor video, but the hobby never really let go.

More on home coffee and roasting

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