Home roasting

Yes, it may look like a paint stripper which has burnt a hole into an old bread maker, and all sitting atop a four-burner BBQ tray, but what you’re actually looking at my friends, is the Brezzinator 44: The Durhams’ coffee roasting machine. No, I didn’t believe it would work either when I first saw it, but you’d be amazed at how effective it is!

Fired up for around 15 minutes, the paint stripper pushes the temperature of the coffee beans up to around 215 degrees celcius where they go through two distinct cracking phases. The trick to a nice roast is to quickly transfer the beans to the fan-mounted cooling tray, which rapidly brings their temperature down before the sugar caramalizes too much (and they develop a distinct burnt flavour).

Only time (and our seasoned palettes of course) will tell how good they taste, but if the sample we enjoyed at the Durhams’ house beforehand was any indication – well, suffice to say we’re in for a flavour sensation when we get back to old Blighty.