Hive Coffee Roaster: Review & Sample Roast

The Hive is the simplest home coffee roaster around. It's as manual as they come, which makes for a terrific hands-on intro to roasting—not to mention a fun change of pace (or sample roaster) for those of us with more experience. You simply load it with up to 6oz of green coffee (I recommend around 150g or just over 5oz), "swirl" it over medium to high heat, and aim for something like 10-12 minutes of total roast time. In this video, I'll talk through its features, limitations, and a start-to-finish batch of coffee. Quite frankly, I miss the ease and consistency of my Fresh Roast SR 800, but I do enjoy the Hive and would strongly recommend it...as long as you understand the effort involved with 100% manual roasting! Available at hiveroaster.com ***** 0:00 Hive roaster design & overview 2:28 How much coffee to use in the Hive 3:00 Starting the roast 3:53 How to get less tired 4:08 Roast progression, milestones & smoke 4:43 How first crack sounds in the Hive 5:21 Dropping & cooling the roast 5:52 The results! 6:32 Clean-up (essentially nothing!) 6:52 Quick tips for baked or scorched roasts 7:29 Wrap-up: who should buy a Hive? (Music: bensound.com)