Humbug

With some of the coffee that I had bought to tide me over Xmas turning out to be quite bad, it was out with the heat gun and dog bowl again for laughs. I home roast every now and then and can't really profess to have had great results, though I imagine that if I were to invest some serious time in it, I'd get there.

The half dozen batches that I have had varied from garbage to acceptable, due to a combination of bad technique and bad beans in my stash. The sometimes-maligned Nicaraguan Maragogype from ARC that I won in the Victorian Cupping Competition turned out to be the pick of the lot; not a complex coffee, but definitely soft, smooth and sweet as a brewed cup. In the past, it has been nutty and mild as an espresso, but my machine has been disused for the past few weeks.

I will keep on experimenting for my own amusement and education, but will likely try to scam my way on to some commercial equipment, which I have found easier to handle in the past.

In the meantime, I continue to appreciate the hard work that my favourite roasters put in to their green selection. I bet that if you were to walk in to any roastery and check out their stash you would actually have a fair idea of how cluey the roaster is.
Perhaps my dog bowl just doesn't have enough carats ...