With the grill all cleaned and fired up you are ready to start roasting! I leave the grill on it's highest setting when roasting coffee and get it nice and hot before starting. I tend to roast a pound of coffee at a time but you can do less if you like. In order for your coffee to stay fresh and taste the best possible, you'll want to roast about as much as you plan to drink in a week or two.



There is a lot of good info on the internet for roasting techniques as far as ramping temperatures and creating repeatable roasts and the such if you're interested. I'll tell you how I've been doing it but feel free to adjust.



Pour your green coffee beans into the roasting basket and close it up. Next attach the assembled driveshaft to your drill and place the other end of the driveshaft on the square shaft of the roasting basket. It will be very hot inside the grill by now so use an oven mit to place the whole assembly on the grill. Set the slotted round shaft end of the roasting basket down on your centrally placed rotisserie brackets. As quickly as possible, start running the drill/basket assembly to keep the beens moving while they are being roasted. I run the drill at about 1 or 2 revolutions per second so place your clamp on the trigger to hold it in place. I leave the lid of the grill up for the first minute or two to make sure everything is working smoothly and to bring the beans up to temp at a slower pace in the beginning. If there are some small or broken beens in the basket they may work themselves out during this phase and end up on the burner. I like to carefully remove the fallen beans as they'll start to burn and smoke which may add some extra smoke flavor to the coffee. After the initial warmup I close the lid of the grill, wait about 4 minutes and then open the grill, check for any loose beens and close it back up. I do this about every 4 minutes throughout the roasting. As the beans roast, they will expel it's outer skin, which is called, chaff. It's kind of like a very thin paper that floats around in there and ends up burning up in the grill. By opening the lid every 4 minutes or so, you release some of the chaff and smoke associated with it and have found that it helps eliminate any smoky flavor in the final coffee. There is no real set time limit at which you will know when they are done roasting as different beans tend to roast differently. However, there are some things that you can listen for that will tell you when to stop. As you are roasting the beens, you will start to hear them pop like popcorn. It's a fairly loud sharp cracking sound and coffee roasters call this "first crack". This will be the first indication that you are getting close to being done. Once the first crack is finished, you could pull it off the grill and call it done but it's a pretty light roast. I tend to like a darker roast so I keep it going until the next indicator, "second crack" is underway. The first crack will stop and there will be a lull in the action for a minute or two, but start to get ready as things happen pretty quickly. When second crack starts, it will be a more faint cracking sound but can be more rapid. It has been described it as listening to rice crispies cereal. When the second crack starts, I start counting and take it off the grill about 30-45 seconds after second crack started. This results in kind of a light french roast. Here is some good info on the different roasts to see where you might want to take yours.. https://www.sweetmarias.com/library/content/using-sight-determine-degree-roast



Once you have your coffee roasted to the level that you like, you will want to cool the beans down pretty quickly to stop the roasting process. I take the roasting basket out of the grill and shake it for a bit to cool them down and to also release any chaff that might still be sticking to the beans. Next pour the beans out on a cookie sheet to finish cooling them down. Please be careful as the beans are very hot!



Once they cool down you will want to place them in a bag or container that will allow air to vent out but not let air in. The beans will vent CO2 so it needs to be able to escape the container but on the other hand O2 will start to make the beans stale. It's hard, but you'll want to wait about 24 hours or more depending on the type of coffee you roast before drinking your coffee. This allows the coffee to vent off some CO2 and it will taste better if you wait. It's interesting to try it daily as it does change a bit over time.



After all that, grind it up and enjoy!!