Can You Roast Coffee In Helium? 

James has completed coffee and now doing side quests

I would love to see the results of roasting in MORE oxygen.

If he keeps up this current pace, i would not be surprised if James becomes the first man to grow Coffee on Mars.

James Hoffmann experiencing the struggles of glovebox chemistry is just peak entertainment!

I was half expecting "And now I'd like to hear from you. Have *you* roasted in helium? What was your experience like?" 😆

Hi James. As a chemical engineer who is seriously addicted to coffee I loved this episode of the coffee roasting saga. Some experimental design tweaks might help (namely test out the roasting under Argon rather than Helium - Argon is heavier than air so in theory you can even do this at home, and it's 10x more thermally conductive than air - I stand corrected it is slightly lower than air but still an interesting control experiment), but definately a great run. Here's a suggestion for a future run - why not submit a project (free and open access o mostly anyone) to ship out green coffee to the international space station, hermetically sealed in a pressure resistant container and just put it outside in space, exposed to solar radiation. The amount of UV and gamma radiation should roast the coffee pretty quickly and under easilly controlled atmosphere.

The Max Plank Institute probably did not expect that someone would ever roast coffee in their glove box.

By the way, the Glove-Box usually is NOT opened all the way to make small changes, there is that vestibule at the end, an airlock that can be used to pass fairly bulky stuff in and out without changing the atmosphere inside. Helium is too expensive to just vent it! Also some glove-box systems have pass-throughs, some way to move small routine stuff in and out, such as your already roasted coffee.

The Ikawa is effectively a fluid bed roaster where the medium of movement of coffee is through the air moving inside it, which is why the density of helium matters in the experimental roasts. I think if you can set up small traditional drum roasters, like a Roest, where the movement of coffee comes from the drum spinning, you can try to roast in helium again!

In metallurgy, we use fluidized sand baths as a way to heat treat metals while maintaining a high degree of thermal stability and heat transfer. It would have to be done with a set up closer to the deep fryer than a traditional roaster but it would be interesting to see a sort of start-to-finish turkish coffee experiment totally using sand as a medium.

As someone who used a glove box off and on for the first few years of my PhD, I absolutely love that the exasperation of using one comes across in this video! Everything is twice as hard with those thick gloves on, and everything decides to just quit working. It takes forever and ultimately ends up being a battle of spirit! Even if you have an antechamber to transfer things in and out, it still takes a several minutes each time you have to load something. For something porous like coffee probably more like an hour or so.

What you've shown us is not what failure looks like - it's what learning looks like! Great, very interesting video!

"OH hello!" When the glove box tried to grab James is my favourite James Hoffman moment so far.

You know you are deep into the James Hoffmann rabbit hole when you're watching a helium roasting video. I love it.

My first thought was to go the opposite of helium: sulphur hexafluoride. (The one that makes your voice deep.) It too has a high heat transfer coefficient, and I'd be curious to see what the high density does to the movement of beans.

I think solid medium or semi-solid like for example hot sand would be interesting since You've already tried both the liquid and alternative gas solutions. I don't know how to approach the conditions monitoring such as density/temperature etc. but would definitely be a blast to watch the results!

James mentioned in the oil roast episode that the traditional roasters are more like air fryers, so how about a guide to home roasting with an air fryer, including how to dial in a roast for the aspects you want from the bean. Maybe include one of the pros from Square Mile in the video with their perspective (or one of James’s other roaster friends) since James freely admits he isn’t an expert roaster himself.

I'm so happy you acknowledged that helium is a finite source that we should take care of and should use for more useful things. That was the first thing I thought about when seeing the title card. But the curious scientist in me also tremendously enjoyed that you explored this crazy idea.

James is such a legend that he makes a video involving helium and his voice sounds deeper not lighter.

This was way more entertaining than I expected it to be! Never skip a James Hoffman video!

"Goodbye coffee, I wish you the best of luck." Spoken like a person who truly loves every bean.

Lets appreciate how this man has gone from making high quality content to insane quality content

That's so cool to be able to have fun and design these experiments! I am really happy James can have so much fun after many years of "accumulating" his professional (and popular) credit. Cheers!

Happy you mentioned the sustainability aspect. Every balloon of helium we inflate for fun might be a medical procedure not happening down the line.

Before even watching the video I jokingly told my friend “drinking that coffee would make your voice high pitch” and then James did the high pitch voice at the end and I’m dead 😂 💀

I got 2 other interesting methods 1. Roast PRE-GROUND coffee! I know grinding green beans will be rather hard, but I think it might have 2 major benefits in both efficiency and uniformity. Increasing the surface area of your coffee will drastically reduce the required roasting time as well as make it easier to ensure even roast as you won't roast the outside of a coffee bean more than the inside. 2 - Air Fryer: This ones a bit more "fun" as regular coffee roasters ARE essentially air fryers, but air fryers are pretty readily available to most consumers and IF it's good, home roasting might be somewhat easier to get into... In a weird way?

James is becoming an absolute madman of coffee, love this guy!

Interesting results! I think there’s a big caveat that needs to be considered. Our roasting methods have been fine tuned through a lot of nerdiness over many years, all for the environment we live in. There’s every chance nitrogen or helium could be just as good, if not better, but the tools we have at the moment just aren’t developed with that in mind. I bet with some tinkering and experimenting these could be fine - raises the question though of what’s the actual point?

James has gone beyond PhD level coffee education and is now in post-doctoral research

I would love to see your take on a low-tech method of home roasting - specifically skillet roasting or oven roasting. Watching you play with the expensive toys is fun and all, but I don’t see me getting access to a hermetically sealed chamber anytime soon 😂

I just watched your “Deep Frying Coffee” video. When the video finish it auto played this one. I didn’t read the title until you started talking about roasting coffee because I was convinced your channel was about deep frying.

Love how you’ve completely expanded the coffee world and keep pushing the boarders

You're an odd chap James, but in the best of ways. You're answering all the questions that nobody asked and I love it.

Next on James Hoffman: Roasting Coffee on Mars

I love your content because it intersects with so many interests beyond coffee, such as science, food, etc.

James is so excited throughout the video, its honestly endearing to watch. 😂❤❤

If you can somehow make it or find someone who could, I’d like to see you try supercritical steam. Roasting coffee with water would be quite an interesting experiment.

12:54 laughed out loud. Was so happy this was included. Great job

This is awesome. Always looking forward to these weird coffee videos.

Coming from a tea background, I'd be curious if something like ''wet piling'' fresh coffee beans would work (just like with Shou Pu Er). It would probably be the most awful cup ever but I'd love to see James drink it and hear his thoughts on it. I'd also be curious to know if there would be some process to make aged coffee good and not stale, maybe there's too much oil in it... Aged tea is a world in and out of itself and I'm always amazed by how the aromas develop with time depending on the storage conditions.

Would be interesting to see a roast in something like heated sand. I would imagine since sand is a solid that acts very similar to a liquid and will fully pack around the coffee, you should get better heat transfer than air/helium/water. But also have something that you can more or less completely remove afterword, unlike the oil. I can see the logistics of temp control being difficult though.

I simply adore the amount of experimentation and joyous discovery in all your videos. This was top notch. Thank you for your enthusiasm!

I love how out of this, there's such an immediate interest in a follow up video to use hot sand

I love that you’re going down this rabbit hole. Try roasting in high oxygen. Or try freeze drying before or after roasting. Or try the deep fry again but centrifuge the oil out of the beans

I think it's worth trying the Helium again, but with 78% Nitrogen added to provide enough density in the gas mixture. You'd also need to add a fan inside the chamber to prevent the Helium layer from sitting at the top.

My suspicion with Helium, if you can ever do this again, is that it needs to be at the same density as air, meaning way higher pressure, to roast it correctly. Would be very interested in that if it could ever be.

just bought a book and i'm making sous vide coffee. i'm very excited about it.

Better this experiment than mylar balloons that end up in the ocean. I'm glad you noted you didn't know it was a finite resource. I enjoy your coffee videos very much. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for keeping curious minds around. Big respect for what you do. I am a coffee tour guide in Colombia. A more humble influencer but hopefully as passionate as you are. Regards from Colombia

I'd like to see the deep fried coffee experiment be expanded upon. it might be interesting seeing if different oils had different effects on the final cup. For example, coconut oil, avocado oil, perhaps a really nice olive oil. I'd imagine those 3 oils would likely taste better in the final cup compared to whatever neutral oil was used in the original deep fry video!

Ha! What a fun video. I am impressed you were able to pull this off. The scientist in me is totally geeking out right now.

Do it in a very dense fluid like co2 and sulfur hexafluoride. Similar concept, but opposite end of the spectrum! Also, try a 80% co2/20% o2 mix to see if the presence of oxygen improves or detracts from the coffee.

Someone probably already have mentioned this but....roast it in a BBQ/smoker with wood or charcoal. It'll be interesting the flavours of wood or charcoal in coffee. I know, it's very similar to current roasting minus the fire source but still fun!

"That is terrible!" I lost it at that remark. Well played sir. It's always good to have a laugh first thing in the morning. 👍

Sulfur Hexafluoride is used for its great heat-transfer capacity and it is much denser than air. And the funny thing about it is that it does the opposite of helium to your voice. Maybe you can test it with that?

The voice was brilliant and wonderful. Well done!

now I am curious to see what would happen with a mechanical tumbler and argon gas (which is available at any wielding supple outlet)

I love these videos with a more scientific line. Combining coffee, technology, curiosities, science... Perfect!

i so enjoy these videos. who knew coffee would be so interesting. I look forward to James videos. Thank you

Seeing how the oxidizing process is used to change tea from harsh to mellow the way air performed in coffee roasting makes sense.

try roasting in sand, complete coverage and even thermal transfer.

I would love to see what the moisture content of the roasting chamber would do. Just like moisture levels need to be tweaked along the process of drying pasta, maybe there is an advantadge to introducing and removing moisture from the roasting environment. Plus, I can assure that water is completely renewable ;)

Important too to consider the embodied carbon of the apparatus needed to brew each method. This would be quite high for a pod machine compared to minimal equipment needed to do a pour over.

And now I want to watch the pure O2 roast! 🔥 💥

get a pressure chamber so you can raise the boiling point of water and sous vide coffee beans. I think it's about 15 bar to get to 200 C boiling point. If you sous vide with a very thin layer of beans it should be a super roast even as well.

It would be really interesting if you paired up with Noma to explore coffee ferments, coffee shoyu, coffee miso, and more. What would be really cool is tasting as time goes on; the flavors will change week by week.

Fantastic IKAWA ad. I’m nearly sold

As soon as James had problems with the machine in the helium cabinet I was reminded of Michael Crichton's The Sphere, where the science team is working at the bottom of the ocean in an hab filled with helium. It's explained in the book, that the navy had to supply them with special gear, like custom-CRTs, and that cook of the crew had to make major adjustments to her cooking to accomodate for the high-helium atmosphere.

This is probably obvious, but what about using an air fryer to roast coffee? A lot of people already have one in their home, so I think it'd be interesting to find out if it makes good enough coffee to be a viable entry-point to at-home coffee roasting.

I WAS NOT READY FOR THE HELIUM VOICE 😂

The excitement at getting drinkable looking coffee tells you a lot about James's previous videos...

I'm not sure why RU-vid has been recommending me these videos I am not a coffee nerd but I'm glad it did I guess the algorithm knows something I don't cause these coffee head videos are pretty dope

everytime james releases a new video theses days, he never fails to suprise me what new idea he's going to try

Maybe you can revisit the deep-frying technique but with different oils. Sunflower, canola, peanut, olive, and then maybe animal fats like beef tallow or lard.

i would love to see a part 2 of this video with a improved helium roasting experiment

Roast in vacuum, use LASERs to transfer the heat from the photons into the coffee beans, or something like just a vacuum sealed microwave oven. Could vary the frequency in either case. To get evenness you would need to perturb (in zero gravity they could float around randomly in the chamber). Alternatively, for evenness you could illuminate with laser or microwave energy from top and bottom simultaneously.

I'd love to see a comparison of how different conventional roasting methods affect the flavour profile of the same coffee. Gas, IR, wood, fluid bed, plus any traditional variations on them from different cultures or any other types I've definitely missed.

You've raised the bar on coffee insanity. That's not easy to do at this point. Kudos.

Just as I'm asking myself what else James can do with coffee, we have Helium and Nitrogen coffee roasting. We've gone way beyond Aeropress techniques and tea kettle recommendations. Just awesome.

How apt that this was sponsored by Jump The Shark! (Love you James !)

I’m both grateful and impressed that you mentioned that helium is a non-renewable resource and shouldn’t be wasted on something like roasting coffee! This finite resource is used for things like medical treatments, MRI machines, computer hardware production, and many other critical purposes. Not only is roasting coffee in it a waste, but things like filling balloons and blimps with it is also wasteful. As always, you don’t skimp on giving all the details available. Thank you, James 👍

Thanks, I don't know what I learned here but the slurps & helium voice were hilarious! ☕

Saw some others say this, but using fluidized sand baths might be the next move. very useful for heat transfer consistency since air circulation is removed from the equation.

James, thanks for the the amazing videos you make

You should try roasting in sand. Hot sand holds heat well and is used in forms of heat storage. It could be interesting to see how it roasts coffee

This was entertaining, thank you. Can't wait for your next adventure in mad coffee science 😂

This already flea like a great James Norman video

Sulfurhexafloride, I think that is how it is spelled. It is 10x heavier than air. It is inert, I have seen it used for arc flash protection in electric systems for industrial facilities.

That's a interesting issue. Maybe some oxidation reactions are happened in coffee roasting process. Once oxygen is moved out, chemical reactions are different. It's a significant issue.

Love these types of videos, James. A few other ideas: 1) Infrared or microwave roasting seems like a good idea (still with a physical circulator of some type), I guess it can be in a vacuum since this is based on radiation, not conduction 2) Surface area to volume roasting experiments. Does grinding to varying sizing before roasting affect the flavor? It could mean a quicker, more even roast. Buck the tradition of whole bean roasting, although prob a pain to grind dense, unroasted coffee beans. 3) Cold brew coffee with super high ethanol, evaporate ethanol to leave behind coffee residue then add to water, may have unique flavor profile. Also, you may have already covered this. But why isn't blending more of a thing in high-end coffee? I don't mean bean origin or species but instead, roast types. I used to make my own morning blend by mixing 65% medium roasted, 25% dark french roast, and 10% blonde roast - it was tasty, complex, and well-rounded. I'm guessing roasting in an oxygen environment could actually be good for flavor compound development during roasting - just like burning oak produces flavorful compounds for whiskey. So how about roasting in a higher oxygen conc. than atmospheric? Ughh, fire hazard?

Loving every video! Keep it going ❤

You could always do pressurized helium to reach the same level of density of air. Or use the bullet or a roaster that moves the coffee with mlving parts and not air

Thank you for teaching me how to brew coffee, and for making videos crazy enough that the tea-drinking girlfriend loves them too. Whether it's the misery or insanity, we appreciate the content.

I'd be curious to see what roasting in a vacuum would be like. You'd have to use something like a Behmor drum roaster that used infrared to provide the heat transfer but it might work. Only issue I can think of is the heating elements might overheat because there would be no convection drawing the heat away.

That was awesome! You know, you should review this Ikawa and a Roest unit.

Would love a video about that cool little coffee roaster!!

would be interesting to see how some halogen roasters work (ex: stronghold) and maybe have them compared to gas and air roasters

I believe that the good side oil roasting of the beans was that the oil is much denser than gas, so heat flow was much bigger. So it will be very interesting to see more results of roasting in high density environment - may be in very hot sand, or boiling in water under high pressure ( maybe 15 bar were boiling temperature is near 200 degrees), or go crazy and try something like boiling food salt (~800 degrees).

Roasting in Neon would be interesting - It's density is sufficiently similar to air that you shouldn't have the same massflow issues but it has double the thermal conductivity vs. air. It would also be cool to modify one of those roasting units for higher RPM's on the intake fan so that you could get an equivalent MASSFLOW into the roaster with non-air gasses

If we took his little freakouts and multiplied them by 4 we would get me. Makes him incredibly relatable for me, lucky me! Thanx Sir!❤