Another Roast with the Melitta Aroma roaster

For the regulars here this will be old news - another Melitta CBR-10 Aroma Roast blog from me. As mentioned before, these were hit or miss back in the day - the day being 1982 of course.  Apparently this one has some heat and roasts rather than bakes the beans.  The design doesn't inspire confidence so I doubt it will last a long time if I use it a lot.  I hope it makes it through the winter as my indoors cupping roaster since it is fairly quiet - think of the sound of hair dryer being used on the other side of a closed bathroom door and you know what this roaster sounds like while in use.

Today I tried a larger batch of a bean I am more familiar with since the roaster passed it's test at 47 grams.  I went with 60 grams of unroasted Panama Carmen Estate 1750 Reserve since this amount filled the plastic measuring cup.  I timed the roast which took exactly 8 minutes to finish.  The beans are a bit chaffy but the chaff collector does an admirable job keeping the area around the roaster free from debris. As you can see in the photo, the chaff collector holds the chaff so it is not blowing all over the place.

The roast turned out decent which is all I expect this machine is capable of creating.  The minimal profile adjustment (pull the roast lever toward off and the fan slows down) does not lend itself to variety of roasts.  Get the machine hot and go for it is about the only technique available to the operator.  Even with out control adjustment the results have been good here to start. These beans look nice to me - I can hardly wait till next Tuesday or Wednesday when I cup this coffee.