Microwaved Coffee Roasting pt.2

So after a quick revision of the rum used, i've switched to a thicker plastic container, which has been used many times for heating up my sons baby food, and therefor shouldn't melt (should it?!)

This time the whole was placed in the base of the container with the lid affixed after the raw coffee is inserted.  Don't know if you can see them, but i've also cut small holes into this container.



This time I roasted for 2mins checking the roast every 30 seconds.

I hit the first crack at around 1:30 and finnished the roast at 2mins exactly. This is what came out.



By no means perfect, but no too bad for a second attempt. This however, is what the container looked like.



Clearly some more work is needed here, but the coffee didn't look all the bad. So I removed the obviousely scorched beans and ground the rest in the k10, set for a cupping.



As the coffee was some really old green beans that had been lurking in the back of my coffee cupboard, i'll save you from any tasting notes as they'd really be of no use, suffice to say that the coffee tasted like coffee. Just as it should. Nothing deeply culinary about it, but not too bad at all.

The next step will be getting some fresh green whose profile I understand, and so will be able to compare against. And yet another revision of the drum. It seems that it was the direct heat from the actual beans that melted the plastic, and not the ambiant heat of the atmospere or gas. Consequently i think the next revision will be cutting out some silicon based bakeware to fit into the plastic drum/container and thus, remove any direct contact with the plastic. Hopefully this'll help distribute the surface heat more evenly and result in less scorching of the beans, but only time will tell.

Microwave roasted coffee (it was only a matter of time) pt.1

Spawned by an interesting thread at a local forum, and after being unable to find much on the topic, I thought it might be interesting to investigate the possibilities of roasting coffee in a microwave. Really it doesn't seem that crazy an idea (to me anyway), and after a quick wiki search the following description is found:

"A microwave oven, or microwave, is a kitchen appliance that can come in many different sizes and styles employing microwave radiation primarily to cook or heat food. This is accomplished by using microwaves, almost always emitted from a magnetron, to excite water (primarily) and other polarized molecules within the food to be heated. This excitation is fairly uniform, leading to food being heated everywhere all at once (except in thick objects), a feature not seen in any other heating technique."

Hmm, sounds promising, so it's off to the drawing board to figure this out.
In order to roast coffee you need heat, and aggitation.  Obviousely the heat comes from the microwaves, and the only form of aggitation available (without shaking the whole microwave) is a small rotating wheel at the base of the Microwave.
The answer seemed simple, turn the microwave on it's side and rig a small 'drum' to the rotating wheel.  The 'drum' in this case is a small sour cream tub (with a few divets cut into it to further agitate the beans and allow for some air flow) with the lid attached to the base wheel.



Now beans in the container and the whole thing is fixed onto the lid in the microwave.
 


I shut the door, set the timer to 8mins and away we go...

Thirty seconds later I open the door (the smell tipped me off) and discover this



Hmmm, clearly this drum has some flaws ;P Here's a shot of the beans to illustrate the consistancy and roast level at 30 seconds.



Clearly some work is needed, but at least we've seen that it is posible to use a microwave to roast beans.