Wrangled two days a week of work from home out of this COVID mess and wondering if I want to start roasting coffee or not just at home, for funsies, with a like $300 home roaster. cgod, what say ye? Even with a stay at home order I can still go outside and run around town, by myself, which is mostly what I do anyway. So between that and at-home strength and core workouts, things aren't too bad. Going to keep an eye on the National and State parks to see when they re-open and am continuously yelling at friends who go to those places anyway. There's this little nag at the back of my mind about a friend from college, a kind of "what if"...I don't think I've ever really been able to shake it and the fact that it's still there even though I've been in my current relationship for damn near a year, and am...five? years removed from college is unsettling.
ButterflyEffect, not sure if you already have that $300 roaster, but I made instructions on how to quickly and easily mod a $20 popcorn popper to make a decent roaster: If you're wondering if you'll dig it, might be worth dipping your toe in this way first. Cheap. Easy. Fun. They changed the design of the popper I used in the tutorial, but not meaningfully. Same instructions should apply now.
holy shit I even shared that way back in the day amazing, will refresh myself on this
Ha, nice. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of the cheap home roasters don't yield that much more capacity than a popper. I'm guessing at your mentioned price point you're looking at something like a Behmor, which actually will net you quite a few more grams per roast. If I was paying money for a home roasting machine, I wouldn't go any lower than one of those, else the popper mod is more compelling. I actually have wanted to go old school cowboy-style and dry roast in a cast-iron skillet once I take my grill out of the garage. I think with this lockdown that is going to happen...