[lamroger]

My partner and I started roasting and selling coffee (https://tinywaffle.co). My day job matches donations 2:1 so I've been funneling in proceeds to max the $10k benefit. It's been fun learning about coffee, marketing, and design.

[xcubic]

This is highly interesting.

Would you share some more details about all this, your setup and how you do it? I'm expecting you to do this in a much lower scale than "regular" coffee roasters, and I'm sure more people might be interested in this.

[lamroger]

Yep, I use a FreshRoast 540 which is a fluid-bed roaster. It pushes hot air and rotates the beans for an even roast.

I roast about 4oz at a time but you can get an extension or get the larger FR to roast about a lb. For context, bag are usually 8, 10 or 12oz.

Smoke is mininal with the FR but I'm def getting irritated. I live an apartment so it's been a little tricky with venting.

You control two variable, fan speed and temp. With those, you control the temperature curve and it takes about 15 mins each bag from prep to cool down.

We sell for $10 a bag but half goes to green beans and packing and we donate $5.

Def learning a lot about scale. The typical commercial roaster is 10-15kg. Yep... Those cost about 15k.

Next would probably be improving our packaging to make it more attractive.

Lots of content on youtube and podcasts. Hit me up if you have more q's!

[sdfgdfghj]

That's really interesting - what kind of equipment do you need for roasting? Is this something you can do from home?

[lamroger]

Yep, posted info above but it's very easy to do at home. Just the light smoke has been irritating me. Very fun to try new beans. Get a bag of Gesha beans. They retail for like $50 but you can get a lb for 15. Berry after taste for a longgg time.