Roasting, episode 2

It's been a couple of days since my first attempt at roasting coffee on the grill. I drank some of the output from that attempt today, and to my surprise, it was pretty good. I had read that it's better after about 24 hours. The carbon taste was gone, and there was not a hint of beef in the taste.

My second attempt at coffee roasting on the grill was a little more methodical than the first. This time, I used a wok, on the grill. On my first attempt (the last one, not this one), I let the beans sit in the vegetable strainer until they cracked. The result was that some of the beans got scorched on one side. So this time, I stirred the beans constantly, from start to finish. I had the grill set to 450 degrees, but since I had the lid open, I'm sure it got hotter than that. The beans started popping loudly, and there was smoke. When I pulled them off and cooled them, they smelled burned.

I tried another small batch. I stirred this one from start to finish as well, but took them off sooner. They didn't get as dark as the first batch, and no oil appeared on the outsides. Basically a lighter roast. But they still smelled burned. Dang!

For the last batch, I backed the temperature off to 400 and closed the lid on the grill, stirring every few minutes. Eventually they started popping violently, and it smelled like another burned batch.

I put them all in a glass jar, thinking I would try them tomorrow. About an hour later, I popped the lid off the jar and smelled them. The burned smell is almost gone. Weird...

At this point, I have no idea if a wok is a good tool to use for coffee roasting. I guess I'll know tomorrow.