How to Check Coffee Beans in the Roaster

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com, my name is Dean Forrest with Sedona Coffee Roasters. I am here to tell you about roasting coffee. Okay once we've dropped the beans from the hopper into the drum, I then need to keep an eye on the beans and actually keep an ear on the beans. The way that I do that is with the side glass. This doesn't tell me as much as I would like it to but this is my trier. My trier will actually take samples of beans out of the drum as it is roasting so that I can look and see exactly what stage of the roasting we are doing and where we are. What I am actually looking for is the color, the amount of caramelization that is going, I am listening to the beans, the roasting process has at least 2 distinct cracks or pops and I listen for that but this tool helps me a lot. I look at it and I can actually see it, smell it, hear it. Over here this is the actual axle and I need to keep it lubricated obviously. It is a continuously rotating drum so sometimes when maintenance calls for, we pull the cap off and lubricate it and put cap back on. Once I have been looking at the beans and I decide it is getting close to time to actually drop the roast, I will be looking at this constantly in, out and out. I really want to make sure I am dropping at the right time. Once I decide they are done and I need to drop them, I open the door and out they come. Inside here you can see our cast iron drum with the baffles. The baffles allow the drum to keep the beans loose and mixed and free spinning and not roasting on each other which will cause them to start to bake. "