Stovetop Popper Method

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Features: Can produce any roast style, from City roasts to Dark French/Spanish roasts. But lighter roasts are more difficult with this method. Air roasting produces even roasts with less effort, but if you like doing things the "olde tyme way", you may enjoy this! Beans can be observed during the roast since half the Whirley-Pop lid is hinged and flips up. The Stainless Steel popper has a plastic window which is great for visibility but will warp or melt if you roast too hot/too fast. This method roasts by conduction, more like old shop roasting. Can roast 8 oz of coffee at a time. Much more effort required than a roasting appliance ore even an air popper because you have to sit and crank. And if you don't like this roast method, the the stovetop poppers are incredible popcorn poppers!

What You Need: Whirley-Pop (previously known as the Felknor Theatre II) or Back to Basics Stainless Steel poppe, or another similarly designed device, gas stove (electric with larger burner OK too), thermometer is mandatory for this method, a metal colander or two for cooling, and oven mitt.

Stovetop roasting takes some practice. There are more variables than other methods since you set the heat and provide the agitation. But the results can be outstanding and the 1/2 lb. batch is nice. It sometimes seems like a 3-handed act: before you start, try a Òdry-runÓ by adding green coffee without any heat, and agitate it. In the course of the roast, agitation gets easier as the coffee loses weight and expands.

Instructions:

Turn on your stovetop exhaust fan, or open a kitchen window. Have all your supplies within reach.

Measure out about 8-9 ounces of coffee by weight, or about 12 ounces by volume.

Use a low flame / medium electric burner setting. NEVER use highest heat settings/flame -you'll melt your popper! See the tip below about using a heat-diffusing cast iron pan if necessary. Heat until thermometer reads about 400 degrees. PLEASE NOTE: A thermometer is going to give an incurrate reading when the inside of the popper is shiny and reflective, so use a LOWER heat until the popper is broken in and seasoned. Remember that if the window starts to melt or warp - you are roasting too hot!

Put your beans in the chamber and start your medium paced, steady cranking. Thermometer will drop to around 350. Don't let it drop much below 300, or get much above 400 except at the end. These temps are Òstarting pointsÓ; you will ultimately personalize the process once you have done it a few times. And remember, you are measuring the air temperature in the popper, and the actual temperature on the bottom will be higher. DO NOT ROAST BY TEMPERATURE ALONE - watch the beans and popper to be sure the roast is moving neither too fast, nor too slow.

Around 6 minutes you should hear the "first crack" and see roast smoke. Wait 1 minute and slightly reduce the heat, not so much that the roast stalls, but enough so that the roast does not progress too quickly. Start checking the roast by flipping back the lid (or checking the window) at about 1 minute intervals or less. Second crack ought to occur anywhere from say 9 minutes to 12 minutes, depending on how you like to time the roast. TIP: If you can learn to roast by smell and sound only (and avoid opening the lid) you can reduce escaping roast smoke and any reduction in temperature.

You want to pour the beans out of the popper into the colander when they are a tad lighter than the color you desire, since roasting continues a little into the cooldown process .

Agitate beans in metal colander or bowl with a big spoon until they are warm to your touch. You may need oven mitts for this. You may want to shuffle the beans between 2 pans/ colanders.

You may want to walk out to a porch to aid cooling.

If beans have light colored chaff still attached to them, simply agitating them in the colander should remove it. If you blow lightly on the beans the chaff will fly off, but do this outside or over a sink to avoid sweeping the floor.

Coffee should be stored out of direct light (and not in a fridge or freezer) in an airtight glass jar, but with a fresh roast, wait 12 hours to seal the jar tightly; it needs to vent off C02.

Warm, fresh roasted beans are wonderful, but the coffee attains its peak 4 to 24 hours after roasting. If you store it as recommended, we'll call it fresh for 6 days. When you open that jar in the morning, you will know what fresh coffee truly is.Ê

More Tips:

If the agitator jams while cranking, don't force it. Work it free by cranking the opposite direction. When the popper is cool, see if you can bend the agitating tines to hug the bottom of the pan a little closer.

If the heat is too hot, or you worry about burning up the pan, you can use a cast iron pan, or cast iron heat diffuser under the pan.

Having trouble getting an even lighter roast? You need to slow down the initial warm-up period of roasting (from the time you put the coffee in until first crack).

Clean the popper with scalding hot water every so often to reduce the coffee oils ... it is not necessary to clean it after every roast. I clean mine after every 15-20 roasts. I have actually Òseasoned the drumÓ of my new professional shop roasters by burning up coffee in it!

Modifications and Refinements:

We recommend Home Coffee Roasting by Ken David's for more information. Don't use the stovetop popper without a thermometer! Stove popping is great! It's like cranking an old butter churn or a meat grinder.

Resist the urge to peek all the time! Listen to the sounds and smell the steam/smoke. After you do this a few times, you'll know where the roast is at without looking, which lets a lot of heat escape and makes the kitchen smokier. Remember, first crack sounds like corn popping, while second crack sounds like the snap from an electric spark (or "snap" in the sense of "snap, crackle pop").

When the roast is done, there may be a lot of smoke that makes it hard to judge the color. A good overhead light helps a lot. I keep the popper closed, walk outside with my metal colander, and then transfer the beans.

Here's a helpful overview of the stovetop process written by Philip Scott-Smith. a home roaster on the island of Guam. It sounds like his inital temperatures are probably too high for the stainless poppers with the plexi window - unless you have modified the popper and replaced this with a pie plate:

"I believe I finally have the Whirley-Pop method worked out right.
The most important thing to remember is that the W-P is a CONDUCTION roaster. Consequently, the beans always are at risk from scorching. Even if the thermometer is reading acceptable temps, it's easy to get scorched results because simply cranking the agitator doesn't get them far enough away from the hot skin of the roaster.

Here's my new method, which has produced consistently superb coffee (possibly even better than my Home Innovations roaster):

Once the temperature reaches 450*F, I lower the flame to the smallest available (I use a single-burner Coleman stove in my carport). When the temp has stabilized at 500*F, I add 9 oz. of green beans and swirl them for initial, even distribution (swirling as though they were marbles in a covered sauce pan). Then, I crank at a moderate speed until I see the temperature start to rise. At that point, I swirl the beans for about 30-40 seconds, keeping the pot's bottom centered fairly closely over the flame (the swirling mimics some of the levitation we see in fluid bed roasters, and that's how I got the idea).

The cycle continues: more cranking (faster now), then the next temperature rise, then more swirling, etc... . With each rise in temperature, I crank a little faster after swirling. I take my first look inside the chamber after the first crack. As the temp passes 375* and approaches 400*, I swirl continuously, take one last peek, and dump them in the colander. At that point, they usually are just right for me (Full City/Vienna). If still not dark enough, back they go for a few more seconds. If I'm after a lighter roast (e.g.: Harar), I check the beans more frequently after the first crack. Once I'm satisfied (beans slightly lighter than the desired final color), I shuttle them between two colanders until cool. And that's it! Fast and furious at the end, but gosh! the coffee's wonderful. - And there's a 9 oz. payload for the effort! "

Here's is yet more feedback from a customer on his stovetop popper method - from Bill Baddeley 5/27/05:

I've been working with the steel version of the stovetop popcorn popper for the past several weeks, and I've gotten to the point of getting consistently good coffee from my roasting efforts. I found a few small glitches as I went along, mostly in the first roast.

•The popper has metal gears on threaded rods. When the agitator began to stick, prior to the first crack, I cranked backwards. The gears began to unthread from the rods, so I went back to "forward only" cranking. I put blue locktite (thread sealer) on the threads and replaced the gears, and have had no trouble since. The blue formula allows you to take the gear off if you need to at some later date.

•Shortly after I'd narrowly avoided losing the gears by cranking backwards, the clip that retains the handle on the crank rod popped off and rolled away. So, now we're cranking forward, and being careful not to slip the handle off the crank rod. And we're mildly apprehensive. I used a 5/16" O.D. c-clip to retain the handle, and it's been fine.

•The polycarbonate window sagged when the heat got too high, but stayed put well enough to get me through the first batch. I replaced it with a pieoe of sheet aluminum and that, too, has been fine.

•The thermometer fit through a #8 (8-32) t-nut with the threads drilled out of it. The gasket compound works very well, but I didn't use enough the first time, and the thermometer AND the t-nut wobbled around, giving me one more thing to try to keep lined up in that first attempt to roast coffee. I used a nut to secure the t-nut to the lid, and then the gasket compound, and it's been fine since then.

Your advice on listening and smelling the roast as it goes is excellent. It's much easier than trying to see the beans through the smoke. I had one batch that turned out to be a bit lighter than I wanted, so I poured the beans back into the pot, and roasted them a bit more. I had a couple of roasts that ran too hot and too fast: one so bad I couldn't drink it. But once you get the hang of it, the roasting process is pretty straightforward. And the coffee is wonderful.

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Stovetop Popcorn Popper Method (Whirley-Pop, SS Stovetop Popper)

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Instructions: