This update on Larry’s Wobble Disk Home Coffee Roaster now has a shorter heating element, two options for handling and more design improvements
We are big fans of doing it yourself, and in the case of home roasting, that sometimes means building your own machine or modifying a low-cost option to roast coffee and make it work. Customer and home roasting comrade Larry Cotton has been a fervent example of this DIY spirit, consistently reworking what he calls the “wobble disk” coffee roasterA machine for roasting coffee. Or the person operating it! The basic requirements for a coffee roaster are a heating element that gets suitably hot and a mechanism... ...more. It’s a unique design that effectively moves coffee and roasts it evenly.
Check out the latest iteration of the wobble disk roaster below, which now features a stripped down heat gun for a shorter heating element, two ways to configure the handle — affixed to the sifter or to the whole roaster, and some design updates.
Larry has previously shared a PDF with instructions on how to build your own wobble disk roaster. Check out Build Your Own Home Coffee Roaster from 2024 for more information.
2 Responses
I just use my oven to roast coffee on cookie sheets, and it works quite well for me. I normally bake at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes. Each sheet holds 2+ cups in a single layer. I reverse the sheets at about the halfway points for more even roasting, but I actually like the fact that the beans aren’t uniformly roasted, which gives a more complex flavor. I don’t know why more people don’t use this approach because you don’t need to buy anything and you can do a lot of coffee at once. It creates some smoke so I do it on days when I can have the windows open. I eliminate the chaff by shaking the roasted coffee in a container, then pour it back and forth between 2 large bowls outside in the breeze.
Thanks for sharing Nick. It’s amazing what you can roast coffee with that you might already have. I also started roasting coffee in an oven. I’ll be honest, the jump to a Behmor was a total game changer, but I really enjoyed the results I got in the oven too. It’s a lot of fun seeing the process up close, too.
Cheers,
Dan