Oh, by the way...

... I just realized I haven't talked at all about coffee roasting in months (maybe longer!). And that was supposed to be the theme of this eternal essay.

So it's still happening. Every Wednesday (or thereabouts) I roast anywhere from 1 to 7 pounds of coffee using the now 6 yr old Bullet R1 roaster. The Bullet moved in here in January 2019. Close enough to say that over the last 6 years this handy appliance has roasted something like 1,500 lbs of green coffee.

About 683 kg of greens have gone thru the Bullet R1 roaster... about 1,506 lbs of greens.

And no, the Admiral and I did not consume all 1,200 lbs of roasted coffee. Yikes!! That would be a lot of caffeine! I roast for us plus as many as 4 other people that live here in SKP Saguaro Co-op. Works out well: I get to play 'roast master' and they get to enjoy what I like to think is some really good coffee.

I've mentioned this in the past: I started out with a tiny electric hot air roaster (roasted enough beans for 1 cup of coffee) before going to a 500 gm electric roaster. That was followed by a custom made roasting drum which fit on the spit of a propane-fired barbecue. Then I learned about the HotTop electric roaster. That worked ok but with limited capacity- it yielded something less than 1/2 lb of roasted coffee. 

The HotTop was followed about 6 months later by the current Aillio R1 Bullet roaster. I bought the Bullet from Sweet Maria's Coffee in Oakland, California. It is mfd. in Taiwan and sold internationally thru dealers in several countries. An important selling point is that it has Bullet-specific software provided at no additional cost. I'm a beta tester for that software.

I still use the Bullet weekly to turn out coffee that we enjoy. Not necessarily to everyone's taste, of course. Our taste preference is for a fairly dark roast. The taste dujour for the current crop of USA-based coffee snobs tends toward a very light roast. Yeah, I guess I'm a coffee snob too but I prefer a dark roast! If I understand correctly, some home roasters don't even finish 1st crack (ugh!).

I buy coffee from a seller in Mississippi (Coffee Bean Corral) in 50# lots. About every 3 or 4 months I buy another 50# bag. The greens I buy are grown in the Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico. If you go any further south than Soconusco you'll be in Central America, i.e. Soconusco is as far south as you can go in North America!

The state of Chiapas in Mexico... you can't get any further south in North America!

The Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico.

More than you ever wanted to know about us and coffee roasting!

And in case a pronunciation guide would help, Soconusco is pronounced "so-co-NUS-co" and Chiapas is pronounced "chee-AH-pahs".

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