Scientists Clash in Coffee Roasting Competition [video] - SciTechDaily

How hard could roasting beans at home really be.

Sam and George go head-to-head in a coffee roasting competition to find out, and Candy Schibli, the founder and head roaster of Southeastern Coffee Roastery, provides expert advice.

So today we are attempting to roast coffee beans ourselves at home, in a frying pan using our chemistry knowledge.

And this is a throw down a challenge to see who can roast the better beans.

So to prepare for this challenge, I read a bunch of coffee, roasting blogs, and then really went down the YouTube rabbit hole.

Are these supposed to end up looking like normal coffee beans.

These are possibly the most unevenly roasted beans I have ever seen in my life.

This is what professionally roasted coffee looks like.

These are really unevenly roasted.

Like it really does not taste like coffee.

It’s really bad.

Could we reach out to a professional coffee, roaster, someone who does this for a living and get some tips or tricks or something to make home roasting in a frying pan, actually work.

I decided to call up someone who actually knows what they’re doing and I’m doing this interview without George to make sure I win?

That’s like a really nice way of saying like here’s a participation trophy.

Probably what surprised me most, the actual sound there’s a sound component and a smell component that goes along with coffee roasting, they’re really distinct cracks and coffee that indicate a point in the roasting process.

If they’re like really, really popping, you know.

That’s the thing about coffee roasting that I found so interesting is that there’s a very fine line between something tasting really good and then taking it too far and having it be really gross?

All of these components are affected during roasting and are important for the smells and tastes that you associate with coffee.

But caffeine content is actually not all that effected by roasting when coffee beans are roasted, it’s a super dynamic process, lots of chemical reactions, but we’re a range of temperatures.

If you’re roasting beans on a cast iron skillet, get it to about 200 degrees Celsius, then throw the beans in.

The beans start to turn a yellowy golden as compounds like chlorophyll start decomposing.

The temperature of the beans builds at a hundred degrees Celsius.

Nearing 200 degrees Celsius, the temperature of the beans continues to rise and sugars, proteins, and lipids begin to decompose.

If you’re roasting coffee at home in a frying pan, it’s going to be really hard if not impossible, to get evenly roasted amazing coffee beans.

Having a cast iron skillet, I think is a, is a good idea as particularly because it’s a very like even heat.

You can check the temperature of the grill itself, but you can’t check the temperature of the beans.

And then that’s something that really impacts how you roast.

You know, making sure that the beans are constantly shaken or rotated around, uh, for a good, I would say 10 to 12 minutes, we’ll get you a generally a light roast.

They’re not going to be super even.

I’m like excited to like, to really just dive in and start roasting.

You got to roast and like send some to me.

I’ll be really embarrassed cause you’ll be like, Mmm, these are still really bad.

What I’m going to do differently this time is roast the beans on a much lower heat setting.

I’m really excited to do this?

Here’s the thing I personally don’t like it, but this tastes more like coffee than the first time I did it.

The beans are pretty even let’s see.

They’re pretty even brown.

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