On coffee and hibernation

I find it somewhat ironic that the last post before a 4-year hiatus was a goal to post more often.

Eh, life happens.

Coffee

For a few years now, I have been regularly roasting coffee in my kitchen.

My setup: natural gas cooktop, deep frying pan (this one) a colander, a fan, a whisk, and some green coffee beans from Sweet Maria's coffee in Oakland.

I measure out between 6 and 10oz of beans (about 3/4 to 1.25 cups), get the pan hot enough to bounce a drop of water, then pour in the beans and whisk them until the crackling starts to slow down, or the smoke alarm goes off, whichever comes first, hah.
I then pour the very hot beans and chaff into a colander and take them outside to blow off the chaff and cool.
I never liked coffee until I started making these roasts - my wife is a real lover of coffee, and I wanted to make something nice for her. It's spiraled into a small hobby for me, I have 7 varieties of green beans on hand at the moment and enjoy making different blends and roasts, to see how the flavors change.

My favorite so far have all been blends that are mostly dry-process ethiopian arabica; I find that straight dry-process is just too ... bold (I guess?) for me, but if I cut it a bit with some clean-cupping mild beans the interesting flavors are preserved and I'm not overwhelmed.

Just finished a 2:1 blend of DP Yirga Cheffe Konga (ethiopian dry process) with some Honduran beans, roasted fairly light - the crackling hadn't begun to taper off, but I felt like it was no longer increasing. Feedback has been fairly positive, and positive feedback really helps.