Okay, so I roasted up my second batch of the God Mountain the other day. Taking Dad’s advice and my own thoughts on board, I went straight to the high heat setting on my heat gun and held it about 4cm from the beans. This had the desired effect and the colour change was a lot swifter than last time. I encountered a slight set-back when my gun overheated about 3 minutes in – the combination of a quite hot day and having the angle of the gun wrong (the hot air was blowing back off the walls of my bowl over the cooling vents) tripped its safety thingy… Anyway, I reached first crack by around 7 minutes (not counting the cool-down time for the gun), and second by 9.
The first batch I roasted I’ve since drunk through using a dicky little grinder my housemates have. It’s an old Gaggia, but its all corners so its a pain to clean, and gives a fairly uneven grind thats annoying even for plunger. Still the coffee tasted good, but this latest batch has a bit more to the flavour so I think I fluked a good one.

Yesterday I finally had some time to sit down and play with my new toy! No, not a hair-dryer – a heat gun!
If I can track down a digi camera I’ll show you the full set-up, but basically I sat down on my verandah with a big stainless steel bowl with a cup full of some elderly beans Dad and I unearthed last weekend (I figured practicing on some geriatric God Mountain would be better than the lovely Brazilian beans I also have), flicked my Ozito on and stirred…and stirred…and stirred some more.
I was being fairly conservative as I’m completely new to roasting without Dad’s supervision – even then we would use his old popcorn popper or BBQ roaster – so I used the low heat setting (around 300 degs I think) around 7-8cm from the beans. This began to wear a little by the 8 minute mark, so I amped it up to the higher heat setting and held the gun about 4cm and began to get some real action. Even at the higher setting it took me nearly 17 minutes to get the beans to first crack (the aural markers when roasting coffee are stages where they make cracking sounds), and another 4 to get them to the first few pops of second crack.
Even though the drinkability of these beans is uncertain (I think we estimated their age at at least two years), the roast looked very even and consistent. I’m keen to experiment some more with the set-up, maybe devise some sort of stand and stirrer to make it easier on me, and soon be sipping some lovingly home-roasted coffee!!

PS
To any coffee fans amongst you with a soft spot for either myself or ministry, keep you eyes peeled for a new initiative (and blend!) to fund my work in Vanuatu next year…