What? My Roaster's On Fire???

                                                                     Decades ago (wow! that's scary for me to consider), I was serving God and country in the US Army.  The Cold War was still on, and I was in Germany.  Our battalion was hosting a formal holiday party, men in dress blues, ladies in formal evening wear.

One of the lieutenants was a nice "good ol' boy" from South Carolina.  Nice fella, thick southern accent.  Kept his hair buzzed, almost like a crew cut, yet put lots of "product" (mousse?) in his hair.

This Lt. is at the buffet table and leans over to get some item that was out of his reach.  Unfortunately, he leaned over a candle, and the open flame took the opportunity to jump to the flammable stuff in his hair.

His wife screamed and tried to throw a glass of wine on his head, but missed.  Every other officer decided it was a good idea to beat the fire out, so we all gathered around and smacked the lieutenant's head.

As he suffered this tumult of head slaps, he pulled back, pushing against us and, after a clearing a free area in front of him, he struck what we would call a dramatic pose and queried:

"What, mah, hairs on fahr?"  

(Translated to "What? My hair's on fire?")

Fast forward to the past few weeks.   I was watching our toddlers and roasting coffee on the deck.  I had completed several roasts (about 8 oz per roast), and was finishing the last one, when I smelled the aroma of a French Roast, maybe even an Italian.  That's my cue that the batch has gone beyond the second crack (coffee speak for going tooooo dark).

As I walked to the roaster, I immediately saw the copious quantities of thick smoke billowing from the roaster.  I next noticed the actual read flames shooting through the roasting chamber.  For a micro-second I considered how beautiful it looked; dark clouds of smoke, short fingers of fire coursing through...it reminded me of seeing lightning inside clouds.

I then extinguished the fire.

I determined that the beans I had been roasting were chaff heavy.  Too much chaff that couldn't clear well enough, and eventually that started increasing the temperature in the roasting chamber.  As the temp. increased, the beans started roasting darker, which increased the amount of volatile oils coming out of the beans, which oils then aided the chaff in catching fire.  And once the chaff started burning, those same oils helped the beans actually ignite and burn.

The roaster took some damage, but I'll be able to rebuild it.  And, thank God I have a back-up roaster, so all was not lost.


Today, I was again roasting several varietals to make a blend for some local customers.  When I got to the same beans that caused the fire, I sat glued to the roaster.  I watched the color, smelled the smoke, listened to the beans cracking, and got a lovely dark roast from them.

I had a stopwatch running, so I thought I could roast another set of the same beans, and use a timer to monitor the progress.

I even checked on the roasting twice during the fifteen minutes I had on the timer.  And I was sitting in the sun room beside the deck, working.

My lovely daughter then announces, "Daddy, your coffee is on fire!"

Sure enough, the chaff collector had bright orange flames licking through the grate.  One bottle of water and the flames were doused, the roaster turned to cooling mode, and the emergency abated.  I pulled the chaff collector off and poured another glass of water through it, and a third glass over the exhaust port of the roaster.

After cool-down, I opened up the chaff collector and found an overload of chaff, thickened with oils and char, covering most of the screen of the chaff collector.  Once again, too much chaff blocked the exhaust flow, increasing the temperature inside the roaster, and this time, the heat ignited the chaff in the collector only.

More cleaning and repairing for me, but the roaster is fine, and so is our family.

I still have several pounds of "those" raw beans (the burned ones got tossed).  I'll try them one more time, but I will start each batch with a bone dry and clean roaster and chaff collector.  And I'll sit there.

Oh, the lieutenant?  After his question, we all yelled in the affirmative and continued smacking his head and pouring beverages on him until the flames abated.

Someday I'll have to tell the story about putting out a fire with a bottle of Moet.  Talk about decisions!


In the meantime, if you'd like some fine 100% Arabica Coffee Blends, email me at:

Kervinkaffee@gmail.com

Thanks,