I’ve been hanging around coffee forums again, and realized my dander was rising to levels requiring a post here, away from the proscribed topics and heat of the public fray. Frequently, a new member will pop into the forums to ask about using an air popper to roast coffee. Around and around we go about how inadequate this method is; do it some other way; why put yourself through it? Maybe because it’s the best coffee has tasted. Maybe it’s a lot of fun–the act of roasting–and you learn a lot about coffee. It could be because it’s so fresh. It’s cheaper, too.
Risking the curmudgeon tag, there’s a trend in coffee shops today, a phase in which the apex of coffee roasting is to take the roast just to the end of first crack. This is called a City roast. One is supposed to be able to divine origin flavors and characteristics of a particular varietal. If you roast too far you burn up the sugars and burn off the flavors unlocked by the roasting process. That’s all good and sensible. But often sweetness is left on the table, as the gods of the roast are in thrall to acidity above all other qualities of a high end cultivar. If they roasted anywhere from 15 to 50 seconds longer sweetness would be increased.
It’s iron law right now. I’d been waiting for months for the newest emporium to open, and since the proprietors all migrated from an old-line, mainstream roaster I anticipated a more flexible take on roasting. Nope, it’s all City, all pourover, all the time. Putting a medium roast on a coffee is verboten.
I have bought brewed coffee at all the best shops in town. I have had a vacpot of the same coffee I roast and brew at home using a popper and French Press. I have had V60 pourovers of Ethiopias, Kenyas, and a Sulawesi. They were uniformly better than anything one might get at a restaurant or hotel, but none were nearly as good as what I do at home, while kneeling and shaking a popper loaded with 68 grams of gray-green seeds. They are not “beans”.
The owners

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