Hive Roaster

I got this manual coffee roaster late November and I’ve been roasting ever since. To be clear my coffee roasting experience was below novice before getting this one. The thing I’m good at is the finished product and how to manipulate the brew to enhance the taste of what I want the coffee to taste like or just simply cup the coffee and find the clearest notes. So as a complete coffee roasting beginner I watched a lot of videos online regarding how to plan your coffee roasting, I also watched live (and replays of live shows) from the maker himself at @hiveroaster. He’s the maker of this lovely manual coffee roaster called the Hive Roaster. He does everything alone and everything’s handmade to fit every part perfect.

I wanted to give this roaster about 2-3 months before posting a bigger review of it other than the Instagram stories I’ve done. So after 2-3 months, I’m hooked, it’s really cool and interesting to do your own roast. The only thing you need is raw coffee and a gas burner, and an arm that can shake the roaster for 7-14 minutes depending on your coffee roasting plan.

I’m obviously going to post about the Hive much more than just a review of the equipment, but for now let’s talk positives and negatives.

Positives are that you’ll get a drum roasted coffee, I’ve tried air roasted and it’s not the same, this gives a more genuine mouth feel. You can sample roast small or you can roast big (about 150g). It’s very cheap to use, just buy a portable gas burner if your stove isn’t one. The Hive roaster has the meshy thing in the middle that I LOVE, a lot of chaff (dried coffee skin) will get burned while you shake the roaster over the flame when it’s close to the mesh. This means that when you sift the coffee you don’t have a lot of chaff left. So any negatives? To be frank, no, the manual labor comes with it being manual so I can’t say anything bad about this at all.

If you’re interested in this, first look up the maker Mathew @hiveroaster for instructions or even if you want to order, @crema_store for ordering in Europe and lastly stay tuned here at @kaffenytt and see future posts about roasting at home.