BBQ Grill Coffee Roaster

[Mister Moo]

My four burner grill, topped with some quilted Nomex/batting as insulation (aluminized fiberglass would serve the same purpose), will take 2-pounds to a very even roast (city+ or more) in as little as 12-minutes. If I bothered to put a spill-resistant door on the drum it'd probably manage three- or more pounds. It's fast to set up, roast quality is excellent and control is fair - fair enough for me, anyhow. I can heat up beans fast enough to blow divits out of them or take temps up, down and up with adjustments on burners, flipping the insulation blanket on/off or simply lifting the lid for a few moments.

The thing with the BBQ grill is this. If you roast single origins for your drinking pleasure or, perhaps two-bean blends, it's great. The SO or modest two-bean blend which is fine for any coffee except espresso. But if you're roasting for espresso blends and plan on roasting three or four different beans independently you need to take a second look. I'm sure there are folks who love some kind of SO espresso 24/7 or they're happy with three-bean premixed greens, but I'm not him.

So the math. I don't like to roast more than two-pounds of any three- or four bean blend (I'm mostly a four-bean guy) because, after allowing for a couple of days of resting, I have a 10-14 day supply. If I roast more, it'll begin to stale. If I roast less it's like being a coffee slave. So, if I'm regularly roasting three or four batches of eight-to-12 ounces I think the SCCO does as good (or better) a job with a lot less hassle.

When roasting more than a pound/week of a SO or two-bean premix, typical for a press around the Moo household unit, I prefer the BBQ. The rocket ride for those who multi-task well and like multibean espresso blends is to put the biggest load in the grill and run the smaller lots simultaneously in an SCCO.

The nice auto-roasters that handle less than a pound fall on the exotic but functionally equivalent side of the SCCO in this scheme.