# CoffeeAdrenal



## CoffeeAdrenal (Apr 6, 2020)

Can I spend less than £100 on a roaster and improve the taste of my coffee?

I have a Rancilio Silvia and Rancilio Rocky and currently buy single origin roasted beans from Coffee Compass.

I'm not really interested in doing this as a hobby or to while away the hours, I'm just interested in better coffee.

Thanks


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

No.


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## TomHughes (Dec 16, 2019)

I disagree but it depends how adept you are with DIY.

I built my own roaster from varies bits including heat guns and a rotisserie basket.

Does a pretty dam good job of roasting, as good as anything I've tried from a roaster to be honest and it cost less that £50 to make


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

Ok I'll give a more complete answer.

No because...

1) Without 'doing it as a hobby' (as in willing to spend the time learning how to roast) you're looking for automation. Even with the ability to adjust profiles and automatically roast to them there will be a lot of learning and trial and error before you can understand and predict to an extent what effect adjusting the profiles will have...

2) Objectively speaking a 7kg Drum Roaster will always produce a better roast than a heat gun setup, gene cafe, or any other small roaster that uses hot air as the primary means of heating. My understanding is even smaller drum roasters a generally considered to be at a disadvantage to larger drum roasters but I could be wrong on this point.

So no you will not get objectively "better" results for less than £100, even if you do spend the time learning how to roast a variety of beans and understand how to adjust profiles. No not even for less than £3000 without spending a lot of time learning how to roast. Automated drum roasters are much more expensive and still require a degree of learning.

Yes because...

1) Subjectivity matters. You might find a bean that you really like and you might be able to roast it precisely to your preferences with practice. For me this happened with an El Salvador Red Bourbon, a relatively cheap bean that I was able to roast almost perfectly on the Gene Cafe producing results I personally rank up there with the best I've had from roasters. So by ignoring the hit and miss nature of finding beans and developing profiles, focusing only on the successes, yes you can do better than professional roasters.

2) You might like dark roasted coffee and you might find you get just as good coffee roasting it to a dark level at home with a cheap setup.

3) Your palate might not be great and you might not be able to tell much difference.

4) Your technique and equipment might limit what you can get out of any coffee and so roasting your own with a popcorn popper or other rig might produce results comparable or even better than professional roasters (again with practice and DIY/modding).

You say you're just interested in better coffee but seems like you're setting a low budget for this. Presumably your budget for green beans would also be low and if so you are not going to get green beans as good as roasters can get (though Coffee compass do allow you to buy greens from them). The question would be then can you spend less than £100 and not spend a lot of time learning how to roast, and beat a professional roaster roasting the same bean...seems somewhat doubtful to say the least especially when you can contact the professional roaster and ask them to adjust the roast to your preference.


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## Aficianado (Sep 15, 2014)

To be honest, if you had a setup with something along the lines of an Arduino (the board not the machine) w/temperature sensors, fans, extraction and I would go as far as humidity then there is absolutely no reason you can't produce amazing coffee on a budget. And yes those components are very cheap, just takes a little know how.

At the end of the day it's a heat reaction, to make great coffee all you need to do is identify all the variables and impart control on them. Size won't make a difference that you can't adjust for, nor will anything else, your interest and budget are the only limitations but a perfectly acceptable outcome is possible with that budget and some effort.


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