Poor Man's Blend - from Coffee Bean Direct - review

5 lb bag of Poor Man's Blend green coffee beans

In late December, I was running out of coffee beans and Coffee Bean Direct (CBD) was having a holiday sale ($5 off). That meant that it was time to get some new green coffee beans. I decided to go with a bag of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and a bag of Poor Man's Blend. This review is about the latter, which is named as such because it is the cheapest blend that CBD sells. They recommend that people use this blend for art projects because it's cheap but on the other hand, it's supposed to taste good too. Being a poor student, I just had to try this coffee and find out if it really tastes good. If not, I can still enjoy the Ethiopian beans (which are great, by the way).

First roast - medium-dark
The first time I roasted a batch of Poor Man's Blend, I used my newest Popcorn Pumper (from the Goodwill store) because it's the one that roasts the fastest. Before getting this shipment of beans, I had been roasting Guatemalan and Costa Rican beans. The Poor Man's Blend smelled a little different and the chaff seemed to be less uniform looking and get darker a little quicker. Because this is a blend, the beans themselves are not uniform-looking. With single origin beans, the beans look uniform and the chaff that flies out is light at first and gradually gets darker as the roasting process progresses. This was the first time I had ever roasted a blend so I decided to do a medium-dark roast because that's my usual roast and I could compare that to what I'm used to drinking.

After a day, I decided to brew a cup using my espresso machine and then brew a small pot of regular coffee with these roasted beans. When I open a jar of freshly roasted guatemalan beans, there is an aroma that's similar to chocolate. With the Poor Man's blend, it smelled just a little better than a jar of any coffee you'd find in the supermarket. It smelled like fresh coffee but wasn't very fragrant in a pleasantly interesting way, as you would experience with the single origin beans.

The espresso was not very impressive and even though there was crema, it didn't stay thick for very long. The regular coffee also did not have a lot of flavor but it tasted like fresh generic coffee, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I added some chocolate soy milk and it didn't curdle, which means that the acidity is not very high. Sometimes light coffees like Dunkin' Donuts coffee will be acidic enough to curdle milk or soy milk. The fact that the crema dissolved so quickly might have been due to the fact that the beans did not have enough time to rest or de-gas.

After a few days, I tried this coffee again and the espresso had a better layer of crema that didn't dissolve as quickly.  The crema got better as time passed. The flavor was a little better but still generic tasting (not bad, just nothing special). There were no floral or chocolatey aromas or anything like that. I also brewed some coffee in a french press. The coffee actually tasted better than the espresso. Perhaps these beans just need to be brewed a little slower in the french press and have time to really soak. Having said that, I think I still prefer the single origin beans such as Guatemalan or Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.

Light roast
To really test out the range of this blend, I did a light roast a week later. Perhaps the first batches were just roasted too dark and I need to taste the bean a bit more. The single espresso that I made with the light roast was actually quite good. It was kinda like the Dunkin' Donuts blend but less acidic. I still prefer the single origin beans. However, if you're on a tight budget and just want something reasonably good to get you going in the morning, this coffee is fine.

So, I think I'll save these beans for the summer when I tend to make iced coffee drinks and guzzle them without savoring them. The Poor Man's Blend tastes like generic coffee - it tastes pretty good but it's nothing special. I suppose you could compare this blend to an excellent background singer in a band. In a fancy coffee drink, it will do its job but not stand out or upstage the other ingredients. If you want a coffee that will taste good and unique either as a hot coffee or in a hot coffee drink, try a single origin bean such as Guatemalan or Ethiopian beans. Those have some nice flavors that you can really savor.

The bottom line is that this blend is perfectly fine and it's the cheapest bag of green coffee you can get from CBD. It's nothing to write home about but it's not meant to be that either. For poor students who don't care what their caffeine tastes like, this one's for you! If you roast it dark, it's great for iced coffee because you can't really taste the coffee fully when it's iced and diluted with milk anyway. The light roast makes an okay espresso. Just make sure you give it time (at least 3 or 4 days) to rest after roasting it. If you drink it right away, it'll taste flat.

Roasting Coffee in the winter

The weather has gotten a bit cooler in Boston recently. The drop in ambient temperatures will affect your coffee roasting results if you don't make any modifications to your set-up. The beans will just not get dark or even to first crack. So, I took a cue from Ryan Jacobs, who simply puts the Poppery into a cardboard box and puts one flap over the Poppery to recirculate the hot air.

If it's cold outside, one of the first things you might notice is that smoke comes out of your popcorn popper. If it smells like your coffee beans roasting, then don't worry about it. However, if it smells like burning plastic, turn the machine off and make sure the machine is not melting. The smoke should be just the steam coming out of the beans as they are roasting. After first crack, you might see a bit more smoke as the beans getting darker. Just monitor the roasting process and trust your nose.

Some air poppers roast hotter than others
I recently saw a Popcorn Pumper at the Goodwill and just had to buy it, even though I already had a Poppery II and a Popcorn Pumper. I'm glad I got it because I discovered that poppers don't all roast at the same temperature. When I used the most recently acquired Pumper, I managed to get to first crack in a shorter period of time and I was able to get a darker roast too. If you get an air popper and it doesn't seem to roast hot enough, try getting another one. If you get the poppers from thrift stores, it won't be a huge investment.

Back to the winter roast

All in all, the cardboard box technique seems to work quite well with all of my air poppers (both the Popcorn Pumper and the Poppery II).

The Popcorn Pumper in the Coffee Bean Direct box works just fine.

At first, you might see some smoke.

To increase the ambient temperature even more, flip over one of the flaps.

Happy winter roasting!

Roasting your own coffee - part 4 - Pumper vs Poppery II

Update (Nov. 20, 2011): I found and bought a second Popcorn Pumper at the Goodwill last month and discovered that not all machines (even within the same model) are created equal. My newest Pumper actually gets hot enough so that first crack takes only 6 minutes, like others have demonstrated on Youtube. My other two air poppers take about 10 minutes. So, if you have an air popper that seems to take forever to reach first crack, try another one, even if it's the same brand!

-------------

This is the fourth post about roasting your own coffee with a popcorn popper. This might seem a little excessive but if you think about the amount of coffee that you'll drink when you're a college student, it seems worthwhile to learn how to make the best cup of coffee that you possibly can without breaking the bank or wasting too much time. If you're going to drink a lot of it, make it good and enjoy it!

The inspiration for this post was the purchase of a second air popper at my local Goodwill store. I saw it on the shelf, plugged it in to test it (it worked), and bought it for $6.99 + tax. It was the Poppery II, which is the preferred model on Sweet Maria's. I had been going to the Goodwill twice a week looking for an air popper because I wanted a backup machine in case my Popcorn Pumper ever stops working.

Since I now have these two different brands of air poppers, I thought it might be useful and interesting to do a comparison of the two machines. The chambers look similar in that they have the same air vents on the side. However, the Pumper has a little bump on the bottom of the chamber. In the picture below, you can see that the Poppery has a higher point where the sliver part meets the black top part. However, it has a groove in the silver part of the chamber that shows you where the approximate maximum fill point is. In the Pumper, the maximum fill point is approximately where the sliver part meets the black part. In either machine, you really need to watch how fast the beans rotate at the start of the roast. If they're moving too quickly, add more beans. Otherwise, you'll never get to first crack and will have to finish them off in the toaster oven.

Poppery II (left) and Popcorn Pumper (right) 

Closer look: Pumper has a bump on the bottom of the chamber

The Covers
The other main difference between the two machines is that the Poppery II has a clear lid, which enables you to watch the coffee roasting process from beginning to end without having to remove it. Some Poppery II models have a yellowish lid but they won't be as dark as the one on the Pumper. The Pumper also has that removable butter melting cup on top but every time you open it, the temperature inside the chamber drops. This could be important in cooler temperatures, when you don't want the ambient temperature to affect the temperature inside the chamber. Also, there are vents on the Poppery cover but I'm not sure what their function is. Writer of other blogs have warned that the cover will melt after a few roasts but I'm hoping this doesn't happen with mine. If it looks like it's going to warp soon, I'll save it for winter roasting.

Other Differences:

• Wattage of the Poppery II is 1200 W, the Pumper is 1250 W
• Poppery II is a little shorter than the Pumper
• Poppery II is a little quieter than the Pumper (this means that you might be able to hear the cracks better with the Poppery II)
• The bottom of the Pumper chamber has a little bump in the center while the bottom of the Poppery II chamber is just flat. Perhaps this explains why the beans move a little more efficiently in the Pumper.

Poppery II (left), Pumper (right)

The reason I wanted to compare the machines was because other people on youtube have managed to create dark roasts in half the time it took me with my Popcorn Pumper. Even though the wattage of the Poppery II is slightly lower, I thought the design of the Poppery II might make it faster to roast a batch of coffee. The first few batches in the Poppery II didn't seem to work because the beans took forever to get to first crack, if at all. I had to finish them off in the toaster oven. While this worked fine because most of the chaff came off when the beans were spinning around, I still wanted to be able to do a complete roast in the Poppery II. I also remember having a similar problem with the Popcorn Pumper when I first got it. Perhaps the machines need to be "conditioned" before they are able to do a complete roast.

After roasting a about 3 or 4 batches, I was finally able to do a complete roast and hear the first crack. It also helps to add more coffee beans than you think is enough. The beans should look like they are percolating and not moving much at the start. Here's a video of me comparing the two machines and a more recent roast in the Poppery II:

I roasted the beans for over 13 minutes and wasn't able to see any oils at that point. Sometimes the oils take a few days to come out of the beans. I've been able to see a bit of oil when I use the Popcorn Pumper. Perhaps it just takes a few more batches for the Poppery II to be broken in fully. The slightly lower wattage of the Poppery II might also prevent me from getting the beans up to a high enough temperature. Time will tell.

Resting the coffee

Some people on the web will say that the coffee tastes the best 4 to 24 hours after the roast. However, I've found that the coffee actually has more flavor a few days after the roast. It really depends on the bean. There's a de-gassing process that needs to happen. So, if your coffee tastes a little flat at first, let the beans rest a day or so and try again. At some point, you'll get a feel for how long it takes for the beans to reach their full flavor.

Home coffee-roasting results

Now that I've tried to roast my own beans and had a cup of coffee made from those beans, it's time to review the results. But first, I'd like to show you my popcorn pumper making popcorn. If you get an air popper from the thrift store, it's probably a good idea to try and make popcorn with it first to make sure that it works.

Ok, so now that you know that I used a working popcorn maker, here are the results of my coffee-roasting experiments.

Trial 1:

my set-up on the balcony

Bag of green Sumatra beans

I took the scrap beans from the bottoms of the three burlap sacks and topped them off with the Sumatra Mandheling beans. The popcorn pumper has a half-cup measuring scoop that's also part of the cover. I used that to measure 1/2 cup of green coffee beans to use. Since I didn't want my whole apartment to smell like roasted coffee, I did this outside on the balcony by plugging the machine into a power strip, which was plugged into the wall just inside the window. This turned out to be a good idea because the chaff that went flying made a bit of a mess. The mistake was leaving the cover off the popcorn pumper. This meant that the temperature did not reach the right temperature and the beans didn't get to a nice color, even after 12 minutes. So, I cooled them off anyway. I went into the kitchen and thought that putting the beans on a sheet and toasting them in the toaster oven might be a good idea. I did that for about 5 minutes (until I heard some crackling sounds) and took them out to cool. That's how I roasted the beans you see in the picture below. As you can see, it's a light roast.

Fresh light roast, smelled great after 24 hours.

Nice thick layer of crema on top

Fresh espresso with thick layer of crema

The next day, I brewed this in a simple Cuisinart 4-cup drip brew machine with a paper filter to taste "normal" coffee. Then, I brewed a crema coffee with my espresso maker. I added soy creamer to both. The regular coffee tasted like Dunkin' Donuts coffee, which is pretty good when it's fresh. However, I usually drink a dark roast, so this was just not to my liking. The crema coffee was very nice with a thick layer of crema (check out the pictures above). However, the next time, I will try to roast the coffee a little darker, maybe until I see some oils on the surface.

Trial 2:

This time, I put the cover on the popcorn pumper and went on the balcony again. It was a little warmer outside, so I was hoping that using a cover and the warmer ambient temperature might help me create a darker roast. I also decided to take my camera outside and film the process at intervals. I didn't film the whole thing because watching coffee roast is like watching your dryer spin your clothes around and around. It's not great footage. Here's a video summary of what I did:

Even though the weather was better and I got the roast a little darker in the popcorn pumper, I didn't want to wait around for more than 20 minutes. So, I finished them off in the toaster oven again for a few minutes (until I started hearing crackling and saw a bit of smoke coming out of the toaster oven) and got some dark oily beans. As you can see in the picture below, I got a "mixed" or uneven roast, meaning that some beans were roasted darker than others. I'd also like to caution you that the smoke doesn't smell great. If you try the toaster oven finishing method, make sure the windows are open. The whole process of roasting coffee does not create a nice smell for your home. It's not awful but it's not the same smell as you get when you grind the finished beans, which smells great.

Uneven roast

Uneven roast on the left (Trial 2), light roast on the right (Trial 1)

Trial 2 roast on the tray, Trial 1 roast in the jar

Trial 3:

After reviewing the video of the roasting process in trial 2, I thought that the beans might have been spinning a little too quickly. So, for this trial, I decided to add more beans, until they spun a little slower in the popcorn pumper. It turned out very nicely this time and I did not have to use my toaster oven. I got the beans to a nice dark roast but not enough to get oils. The solution for getting a reasonably even dark roast was to put more coffee in the chamber - up to the point where the metal meets the plastic (in the Popcorn Pumper). However, it was not much more than the 1/2 cup that I used in Trial 2. Maybe 1/4 cup more was all that I needed to put in. The whole roasting process took about 13 to 14 minutes for a medium-dark roast with no oils on the surface. After roasting, the volume came to about 1 cup. Here's a short video of the roast:

This video is also featured on Popcorn Hot Air Popper