I have been asked several times, “What is the single most important piece of advice you would give a new roaster?” The answer is easy but the practice may not be: always have a plan before you start roasting.

On the surface this seems easy enough.

Your plan, however, should be more than, “make green into brown.” It should involve having a purpose for your roast and an expected result.
An example might be: Roast 5 ARRIVAL samples to a cupping standard for evaluation tomorrow morning. Now you know what you are roasting, why you are doing it and an expected outcome of Agtron 58 whole bean of 58 +/- 1 in 8-12 minutes. This is a simple, well thought out example.

Others plans might be a little more complicated. Here are some plans you might want to consider. You can take these as a starting point for your roasting and make them as detailed as you want.

If you have been roasting for a while you probably have a set of ‘common’ profiles you use. If not, build some thereby creating a small library of starting profiles. This will save many hours and lots of coffee in the future while making your outcomes more precise and consistent.

A good plan well executed saves time, money, and frustration while increasing quality and consistency.

Rocky Rhodes