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has anybody else noticed that Morgan is slowly but surely reaching the path of self-sufficiency when it comes to coffee. She knows how to brew She knows how to grind She knows how to roast now Next step.... how to grow your own coffee.

Started roasting with popcorn popper a month ago. Some tips from my experience: 1. Lower dose = more consistent roast, as less beans could get stuck 2. Lean the popper forward slightly so the chaffs will be easier to collect 3. Rest longer the lighter you roast. I tend to do light roast as well, the herbaceous taste is very apparent even after resting 1-3 days. More tips will develop for sure the more I roast at home hehe.

The "scoop" on top is actually for butter. You put butter in there while you're popping popcorn so the heat melts it.

Morgan: Have a little familiarity with roasting, and ALL Roasting creates a LOT of Smoke and Chaff, inescapable about that. A couple of tips: a bowl of water at the exit port helps a lot with chaff, but for the smoke, I just usually resorted to "Popper" roasting either in the Open Garage, or outside on the deck. I ran into the same thing with the Fire Alarm. As you are noticing, the AMOUNT of beans is device dependent. I also made a screen to go over the exit port until I wanted to end the roast, as well as "Shaking" the unit regularly to increase the roast consistency between the beans. I've also used about a 16" diameter perforated metal tray and roasted in the oven, and periodically would shake the tray to agitate them for even roasting. Another tip, at the end of the roast I would dump the beans into a metal bowl in a water bath to rapidly cool them down to arrest the roasting process.

Great first attempt. A couple of suggestions: 1) I'd recommend a stainless steel colander instead of plastic. My concern with plastic is that those hot beans (like 425 to 450F) will melt the plastic a bit and you could end up with small amounts of plastic on the beans. 2) If you can, do the roast outside. That way, you don't have to worry about the chaff. Just let it blow wherever. 3) If you want to slow down the roast (some air poppers are too hot and roast too quickly), you can unplug the popper for a few seconds at a time, and/or you can use slightly less than 1/2 cup. counterintuitively, roasting a smaller batch results in a slower roast. 4) It's important to cool the beans quickly. I pour the beans immediately into colander. I have a fan going and put the colander right in front of the fan. Cools them down in a minute or so. Love you videos! Have fun with the roasting!

I started with an air popper maybe 10 years ago. I strongly recommend roasting outside both for the smoke and the chaff situation, great to see more people getting interested in home roasting!

So I followed Morgan's skits a bunch of months ago and I don't even drink caffeine like that... Baddah bing later, I work as a Barista at this restaurant and I'm learning from Morgan's channel. Thanks for the awesome content

I've been roasting like this for about 15 years now. The best popcorn popper is the kind that swirls/spins the beans instead of the kind in this video which just blows hot air up through a mesh screen. The swirling kind won't blow beans out, but only chaff. Also, roast toward the sink to catch the chaff. Or under the stove hood/vent for the smoke & use a big mixing bowl for the chaff. The timing depends on the popcorn popper. Also, pour the finished roasted beans into a large skillet to cool them down quickly. The thick bottom skillet cools the beans better than a plastic colander/strainer.

Highly recommend using a popper that swirls air from the sides rather than shooting it from the bottom to avoid the leaping beans issue. I have an old West Bend 1200W popper with side vents that I found at a thrift store for like 99 cents; it kept me supplied with great coffee all through college.

I started roasting a few years ago, and for the first six months used a $20 air popper like this one. It was definitely not optimal but if done right you can get some pretty decent coffee. Your mileage may vary, but a few tricks I learned along the way: -Roast outside: the chaff is a little bothersome to clean up, but setting off the smoke alarm and filling the house with that smell was straight up annoying. -Find a better cover: after a few uses I found the clear plastic cover starting to melt, what I found to work is just placing a dinnerplate upside-down on top of the popper, this also prevented beans from bouncing out -Stir the beans in the beginning: As you know even heating is important, if you're putting more than about 60 grams of greens in the popper the airflow might not be enough to keep the beans moving until some of the moisture has burned off. In my experience it always took around 1 minute 30 seconds to reach a point where the beans could steadily circulate on their own. Until that point I would stir them gently with a cocktail spoon held with an oven mitt. The mitt is especially important because these air poppers get very hot. -The roasted beans need to rest: If I didn't give the beans AT LEAST 2-3 days to de-gas I found the coffee's inherent flavors to be weak and overpowered by an odd unpleasant taste.

Hi Morgan, from what I have seen the popcorn popper you need for this is the type that has the vortex air vents and not just the blowy vent in the middle

Glad to see more videos on this topic. I started with this few weeks ago. Few tips and tricks, use it outside if possible, for catching shafts you can place wet cloth or bowl with water, that really helps. I started to experiment with prolonging the time by decreasing temperature few moments before first crack by turning it off and agitating beans manually, removing the top cup/cover so heat can escape faster and turning it on again.

I started roasting coffee a couple of years ago. I highly recommend one of the Fresh Roast machines. I have the SR800 and love it. The first few batches are definitely a learning experience but once you get the hang of it you can roast excellent coffee consistently.

A simple fix to the spraying issue would be to redesign the hood for the purpose, with a screen mesh over the top of the roasting area to stop the beans escaping, and then a closed end container, perhaps similar to the cup in some grinders, for the chaff to be blown into. Some measurements and very basic work with a CAD program, and you could easily 3d print such a hood for not too much money.

So the popper you used is one that shoots the air up the middle. The popper that works best for this has fins in it that forces the beans to circulate on the bottom, instead of shooting up into the air.

A tip for your fire alarm woes: Radiation fire alarms are best at detecting the invisible “smoke” given off by roasting and toasting while optical fire alarms require visible smoke to block the light beam so use the optical versions closer to the kitchen to avoid simple cooking setting them off

I have one of those! Bye bye popper, hello coffee roaster.

Hey Morgan, i just wanted to tell you that you make my day a lot better because ur so cheerful and cute thank u🫶🏻🫶🏻🤍

How about an air fryer? It contains the beans/chaff, controls temp and time for repeatable results.

Nice video. I started with an air popper as well. Have moved on to "Sweet Maria's - Popper". It's basically the same with a timer and heat control. I have a couple of thermapens that I throw into the popper and it works great. It does about 100g at a time, I can use it for multiple batches, and seems to be still going strong after almost a year of consistent use. Keep up the great work on youtube and tiktok.

yay i love your videos! i am 13 currently and your videos have inspired me to have my first job as a barista

Hey Morgan, hope you have recovered from Covid, loving your content.

I started roasting coffee almost 20 years ago when I worked at a shop that got a 2 pound gas powered fluid air bed roaster. I then decided to try out home roasting with an old bread machine and a heat gun. Roasting outside was not fun in the South, so I quit for a long time, until I had an apartment with an externally vented stove hood and got a Fresh Roast fluid air bed roaster which can roast about 250 grams of coffee with the extended chamber. I laughed when you said maybe chaff would be less of an issue with the popper, and when you set off the smoke alarm, only because of experience. :D After the apartment kitchen here got remodeled last year I no longer had an externally vented hood so I had to spend about $100 on ducting and such to make my own! Love home roasting.

Obi-Wan Morgobi: “Hello There!”

James uploaded the Makita review today and I was like HEY MORGAN ALREADY DID THAT DUUUUDE. I hope you like each other anyway because I love you both as much as coffee.

Some of the best shots and lattes I've had was home roasted beans in a popcorn popper (and also a heat gun), ground in a Baratxa Encore, and pulled on a $30 used Delonghi EC 155 with pressurized baskets.

“Oh hey friend” - best moment :)

Love the video! I’ve tried using a popcorn popper to roast. It seems interesting though. I do use the coffeemasy roaster. I find that if you preheat it for ten minutes then put your bean it does well. Also if you stall the turning blades they will reverse direction and you’ll see the bean move more evenly

I got an air fryer/oven thing with a rotating cage attachment for making fries. Can't wait to try it!

Hi Morgan! I stumbled on your channel and love the content. I started roasting coffee with a popcorn air popper about 10 or 12 years ago. Things I learned: 1) 5 to 6 minutes gets you a nice medium roast. 7 will be closer to a French Roast, and 8 will be a nice dark roast. 2) I always dump the freshly roasted beans into a bowl of ice cold water to stop the roasting process, and get them cooled down faster. I dry them off and let them sit in a bowl for a couple of days. 3) Use slightly less beans than recommended popcorn. 4) Find something to stir them occasionally while they're roasting. This prevents beans from getting stuck on the bottom, though that will prove to be an ongoing issue, despite the stirring. 5) Get a small piece of window screen repair mesh and either glue or otherwise attach it to the exit port. This keeps any beans from dancing out. Won't help with the chaff though. 6) And the most important thing I learned was to always do this outside. 🙂 Helps keep the chaff problem from being a household cleanup problem. Overall, I enjoy roasting my own beans, and have found that how you roast them really depends on what you're roasting. A Yirgacheffe will roast differently from say a Guatemalan. And Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain roast up fantastically well.

I honestly have no idea what's going on but your enthusiasm is great and I love watching your videos

Literally the most beautiful woman I’ve seen IMO and she seems cool. She’s naturally pretty and doesn’t even need makeup. She’s just smokin hottt

I don't roast my own coffee but I of course appreciate you testing things so we don't have to lol. This was a fun video to watch Morgan!!

I've been roasting with the Nostalgia 16 cup air popper for a couple of years now, which sends in the air from the sides of the chamber rather than the bottom. It requires a little bit of shaking and jostling of the unit to keep the beans rotating at first until their oils start to come out, but aside from that it roasts like a dream. I've had the odd under roasted bean here and there, but out of each batch there's been a loss of maybe three beans maximum to that, and since they rotate instead of getting tossed around, they don't fly out the end. I know my dad, who's been roasting since at least when I was born, has always recommended a bowl to catch the chaff, and then pouring the roasted beans into a sieve and jostling them around in that (outside due to extra chaff) for a few minutes to help cool the beans as quickly as possible. Bonus points when it's cold outside and they cool off extra fast lmao

i use an aluminium foil piece covering half the opening at the front making escape less likely and a long wooden spoon to stir the beans

Put something underneath the front legs of the popper to tilt it backwards slightly, say 5-15°. Massively reduces the number of escaping kernels/beans.

I picked up a BEAUTIFUL vintage WhirlyPop at a garage sale not too long ago to roast beans in and I just haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe this is a sign

Try using a chimney made from a soup can with both ends removed. Works well but vents chaff straight up in the air so is best done outside.

I think if you took a cheap metal strainer and cut it up into a lid to totally keep the beans inside, you'd get better result. That's because the way a popcorn popper works is by tuning the fan to bubble up the kernels the exact amount for that specific seed, then pour out as it pops. Less coffee inside the popper would mean it would bounce around a lot more and evenly distribute the heat. Obviously with less coffee to resist the fan they would bounce right out, hence the metal strainer lid. Plus no chaff all over the place

I pop my popcorn in a pyrex bowl in the microwave, so I was just about to finally toss my air popper! Thanks for a new use so now i can justify keeping it.

10/10 slide well done, smooth intro +2 extra points

Try a stovetop popcorn popper!! I roast with a stovetop popper and have gotten great results. Your arm does get tired after stirring but it's a great option for home roasting

there is a full on coffee shop in my hometown that began their business in their house roasting coffee in an air popper like that.

A better popper choice is the kind that gives an air-flow in the hopper making the beans rotate.

This is how I roast coffee!!! I chuckled seeing that you stayed in side. I took all the plastic off mine and use a smaller strainer to hold the top while shaking it to get the chaff off then I dump the roasted beans into metal colander to cool. I do all of this in front a fan to blow the chaff away.

You gotta shake the beans by shaking the machine and empty the hot beans into a metal bowl or sheet tray which can transfer heat from the beans quickly.

So I’m drinking my coffee while watching this. Very recently my wife got me into French press, and its very much like Morgan describes in her other videos. Today, I’m drinking a typical drip machine coffee. Comparatively, it tastes like water with cream in it… I never thought I’d be pretentious about coffee 😂😂😂

Hi Morgan, I have some experience roasting on popcorn machines as well. I went to my local goodwill to do so, burnt one, then returned to buy another. I found that you will get better results in a popper that goes for a "cyclone" method rather than the versions that blow hot air up. This is why your beans were jumping out erratically. It didn't take me long before I bought a used drum roaster on offerup that can do up to 1lb. This is the Behmor 1600 plus if you were curious. I have since been roasting my own supply to use daily on my espresso machine and some to gift to loved ones. They are so much cheaper this way.

I've been home roasting for a while and I do it in the backyard /without/ the plastic hood. This way, I can stir with a wood spoon and get a more even roast. -- The biggest challange I've found is to get a dark roast without a charred taste. My feeling is poppers get very hot very quickly and burn the outside of the bean, as opposed to a commercial roaster which heats steadily for a longer period of time.

I think you're correct about angling the popper, but I would actually try leaning it backwards so fewer beans escape. The chaff would, in this case go _everywhere_ but it would probably be light enough to be removed. Another more involved idea would be to place some kind of metal mesh over the popping area sized to block whole beans - again, keep the beans in and the let the chaff through. Finding that mesh would be the difficult bit of course.

Consider an episode about grinds. Every off the shelf espresso has a different grind and it got me thinking. Can you show/explain grinds from auto to Turkish?

I've been doing this for a couple of years now. Got my old Presto Poplite modded with a dimmer switch to control the temperature.

I've been roasting on the Fresh roast SR800 for the past 2 months. I highly recommend it if you are looking for the next step. It was about $270. There is an SR540 which is cheaper but I found that it is well worth just getting the 800 model because I can get 6oz batches done in it since it's a little bigger. It's the perfect batch size to last a few days and track the flavour as the beans rest and develop.

Morgan spills the beans!

That was a good first try. It doesn’t matter if it is the wrong popper (the suggested one has the air blowing from the sides in a round way) you can still use a lamp crystal chimney to prevent the beans from jumping out and a long wood stick to roll the beans around (a few secs at a time, as it gets hot up there) I’ve seen someone use a small bucket with water that sits right below the popper entry and catches char. I think the best way is the glass screen and roasting outside. Try it! And, yes, keep them a little longer than the start of first crack for better flavor.

I am in the process of restarting doing this. I have a functional "West Bend Poppery II" which for most was the real starting point of this. Avoid any with a screen in the bottom unless your into potential fires. It is best done outside in moderate temps, say 50-80 range. Even better is on the stove under the Vent Fan at full blast. I used 1/4-1/3, but 1/2 cup can work. Aluminum Foil can be used to make an extension of the chute and use a taller bowl. The bowl does not have to be square, just high enough. Lastly there is a whole fan base that uses the chimney from Hurricane Lamps to extend the height of the chute. Also get a long stick for stirring during the early part to get movement going.

At last, Morgan's Popcornfee. I tried to 'cook' my own coffee with a frypan and manually stirring it. The end result was kind of unsatisfactory. It tasted very weak at first, but over the course of some days the coffee started to taste better, with more flavours coming out. Or perhaps it was because I was determined to finish the batch that I eventually knew what I was tasting. IMO leave roasting to the professionals, if one doesn't have the time to keep on experimenting with green beans.

I recently started roasting at home with a convection oven and a stainless mesh colander for fun. For small, like 1/3cup of green beans small, batches, a convection really does a fine job and produces coffee that has a more distinct smell and taste than any I've found in stores.

You know it is getting into the swampy depths of summer when Morgan isn’t even wearing a turtleneck 😂

Ooo thanks for teaching us!

An episode on Epicurious would be fun I think. Try that Morgan

I've done quite a bit of roasting in a popcorn popper, the most frustrating thing about it is the amount. It's nowhere near enough for an avid coffee drinker. Alternatively you can go to the thrift store and get a bread maker, and a heat gun. You put the bread maker on the dough string which constantly does and fashion some sort of way to hold the heat gun blasting at the beans in the open bread machine. This way you can roast a pound at a time. Also as previously commented it is always better to home roast coffee outside.

I really hope you revisit this! Would be so good to see all these great tips and tricks that I'm reading in the comments :) Morgan, you're awesome. Thanks for the content, always great fun

Yo she's bout to pop off.

so I do the popcorn make in the past I stirw the bean with a chop stick and you can make a dark roast but make sure you have a window open or the fan on since there smoke but this super fun to watch and do

If the beans are hopping a lot at the beginning, add a few more because they'll move more freely once they've dried and expanded. Hand-stirring for the first minute or so also helps to keep the roast even.

No turtleneck? Who is this. Also, the feline appearances make my day.

I used that popper for popcorn all the time. You tape cardboard to the top to block half of the exit in the middle. It will deflect all the popping beans back into the chamber and still allow some chaff to escape.

I skipped the popcorn popper and went straight to the breadmaker/heat gun method and have been roasting weekly for well over 10 years now. For the popper - I've seen people get a can - from soup etc - and cut both ends off to make a chimney/extension that fits neatly into the throat of many of the popular poppers. That stops a lot of the beans jumping out. Not much you can do re: the chaff though - I have to roast outside Be glad you're not doing an Ethiopian - those things are chaff monsters. Plus they race from 1st to second crack to on fire really fast.

It seems it would be fairly easy to make or find a mesh disc that could be placed over the heated cylinder of the air popper to keep the beans and chaff inside. You'd end up with more chaff mixed in with the beans when finished, but that needs to be separated anyway, and you wouldn't lose any beans in the process. Basically, a company that makes air poppers could make it a dual purpose device by creating a different lid/top for coffee roasting than they have for popcorn.

just ran through my first pound do this in the garage or outside i did it on the porch and was so glad

Just a shout-out for that Risky Business slide-in at the beginning. Very smoothly done, and impressive!

I roast with a Sunbeam popcorn maker which I think swirls the beans more than the one you used as I have almost never had beans pop out, but I usually max out at about 75g of coffee. At 75g I find I need to shake and aggregate the coffee quite regularly for about the first half of the roast because the fan isn't strong enough to move them around freely, as they get lighter (in weight) you can do it less, but I still do the occasional shake right up to the end to help them roast evenly. The real beauty of the popcorn maker for me is that I can roast outside so I don't care about the chaff going everywhere, it just end up in the garden. Plus no smoke alarms and you don't make the whole house smell.

thinking out loud .. use aluminium foil to make a chimney 2x the height of the transparent plastic bit to wall in the beans. The chaff will still be a problem (unless you put a metal mesh filter at the top of the chimney).

This is so neat!

I live for the slide in!!!!

Glad to hear you're feeling better. I think the popcorn popper did a pretty good job of roasting the beans, but maybe next time put it next to an open window or put it out on a porch/patio in a big plastic container or something to help keep the escaped beans contained, lol.

Wait a second there's something different about you.... I'm thinking give me a sec..... I can see your neck I can see your arms? WHERE'S THE TURTLENECK GO?

On round one, one of your commenters suggested tucking the popcorn popper’s box under the spout to spare the kitchen 😎

I'm all for preheating the popcorn popper

May I suggest you look up Larry Cotton's heat gun roaaster or just simply using a Heat gun with a steel dog bowl. I built my own green coffee roaster using Larry Cotton's design and it worked great! I can roast 200gms at one go and get about 150 grams per roast. I also built a ventilator tube to suck away the chaff.

Shaking the popper occasionally the first minute or more with help from stick beans. I'm new to roasting though and am just sharing advice from others. Nice video.

At the coffee shop that I usually buy my beans, the roast at store… they use a thermometer and a laptop to control the roasting profile. It ain’t a simple process, it is usually done with different temperature gradients at different phases of the roasting process

You need different kind of popper for this. Not the one with vent on bottom, but on the sides of the chamber. Side vents move the coffee more evenly (and don't throw it out) resulting in more even roast. Also air vents at the bottom may get clogged by chaff.

my dad had an air popper like this when i was little. popcorn also tries jumping out of the machine while it's running, but if you prop up the front feet on the handle of a butter knife so the whole thing tips back a bit, the kernels/beans are less likely to launch themselves out the front. they'll still leap, but they end up falling back into the machine.

Love watching your videos. I feel like I now know how to cup coffee but I'm pretty sure a tutorial would be very helpful. Please. Cat Fren! Just the one cat? Coffee, Cat, and Chat video maybe?

As someone with no coffee roasting experience whatsoever but a lot of cooking experience and experience rigging up weird things to "make do", I'd suggest some sort of screen! If you fit it with something that completely shut the end, you'd probably have to worry about overheating. A (heat resistant!) screen would block the chaff, allow for airflow, and probably let the beans bounce right back in. If it blocked the chaff too much and you had chaff falling back in and it became a problem, maybe a mesh bag. You'd still lose beans that way but the chaff would get out. That would probably the the easiest to fit, too. This was interesting to watch, and definitely something I would never have even considered as a possibility! Neat! Hope you feel better soon. Thanks for the videos. Making them while you have covid is incredible dedication! :)

Congrats on 800k!!!

Sweet Maria's is a company that sells green coffee beans and has a number of videos about how to roast beans using air popcorn poppers that have been helpful for me. Morgan, the smoke from the roasting makes this particular method best for outdoors if possible. Also, you can preheat the machine for a couple minutes before throwing in the beans. My air popper spins the beans around (the air vents are angled to make this happen on purpose), which I think prevents the beans from flying out so much. I'm guessing there are better machines and worse machines out there for doing this kind of roasting.

You definitely nudged me closer to the rabbit hole of roasting. For the price of a popper and some medium mesh to catch the jumpers and husks I will be trying this for sure. I will be under my range hood to prevent my smoke alarm from beeping :-)

There are two kinds of air popper out there, ones with radial fins along the sides of the bottom of the chamber and ones where the vents blow upwards from the bottom. From what I've heard, the latter is better for getting consistent air popper roasting, since it does a better job of agitating and mixing the beans as they roast. I'm not finding any photos looking down into that Hamilton Beach model but I'm guessing it's the radial fin kind.

I've been roasting at home for many years and feel it's pretty important to have control over both temperature and agitation. That helps develop the coffee a bit more slowly than to can in a high temperature popper which gives you more control over the flavor.

I actually sell dash brand air poppers for roasting coffee beans in my shop! I'd say with the roaster you have I'd fill it up a little more so the beans don't fly out the chute. And you should tilt the roaster back so the beans churn instead of it blowing a tunnel up through the middle. And lastly some models have a high temperature shutoff so the unit doesn't overheat, but they usually shut off when they get to a nice medium roast. The only downside is you won't be able to make french roast coffee with that is it has that safety feature. It's still my favorite way to roast coffee so tinker with that method and I think it'll grow on ya.

Cut some chicken wire mesh to cover the top of the popper chamber (inside the clear plastic spout opening/cover). The beans will remain inside the chamber while the chaff will pass through the mesh and be expelled into whatever you use to catch (not a colander lol)

At one point I had three different poppers just for roasting coffee. In my experience, if you have beans flying out, you don't have enough bean weight for the air flow of your popper. Ideally, your beans should be rotating and churning like a liquid. Also, you should have fewer stuck beans if you hold the popper at an angle so the beans flow into one corner of the popper. As for chaff.. I roasted on the back porch!

This feels so cursed 😭 the parts inside make sense but I’m scared PAHAHA

Air the hot air vents in the machine at the bottom or round the sides of the chamber? It looked like the coffee was just being pushed up, I used to have one of these where the vents were arranged around the sides so the popcorn would always be moving round. Seems like that would help keep it all in and maybe even give a more even roast too?

While not for coffee, I have seen Alton Brown using a popcorn popper for toasting spices. He used a cheese cloth to cover the chamber, between the plastic cover and the body of the device. Assuming you can get one that can take the heat, it would keep everything together. He also lightly shook it occasionally, which would also make the roast more even for you. Sadly, it would mean more sorting at the end though. Another device I would love to see you tackle is an air fryer. Some of the toaster oven style ones have a rotisserie function, like mine does, and they sometimes have a basket meant for toasting nuts. Would that work for coffee?

With a can on top you can comfortably use the popper for up to 100 gr without escapees ;)