Sumatra And Popper

Sumatra from Aceh area isn’t that low grown generally (1250 to 1800 meters) but can be tough to roast. It often gets a heavy, dark roast treatment that obscures the coffee to a point. Lighter roasting is more challenging.

Air roasters do a pretty good job with this. It’s hard to scorch coffee in an air roaster … provided you don’t overload it.

Currently we use a 3 barrel Probat for samples but when I have a single sample to check out, I’m using Popper lately.

Here is a 1450 meter Sumatra from Aceh (near Lake Takengon) roasted for cupping in Popper.

Lighter City roast from the popper for cupping and drinking!

Origin Story #1

We wanted to create a coffee roaster, one that was a lot like a popcorn popper from the ‘70s.  We didn’t want to think up any new design, or new roast method. We wanted to take what works, the air popcorn popper, and roll it back to the way it was 30 years ago. 

So we took an old vintage air popper machine we bought at a thrift store in the ‘90s for $4, and sent it to China. We sent it to the factory that still makes air poppers, and asked if they could make one just like that. They said they could.

West Bend Poppery, first version, 1500 watts

They sent us back a prototype machine. It looked just like the popper we sent them. Actually it was the popper we sent them, but they added 2 knobs to the front.

From then it was a long (and actually pretty boring) back and forth between Oakland and the factory.

There’s more to tell… but we are trying to drag out the story and make more “content” out of this.

It’s a “coffee roaster”

This is just a photoshop image of the Popper with the color shifted from black to gray and the name inserted.

It’s larger than we thought but actually about the same size as the first generation Poppery air popper we sent to them. Big also means stable, which I guess is good.

Popper Coffee Roaster
Popper Coffee Roaster