Why Roast Your Own Coffee?
Once you taste fresh home-roasted coffee you won’t ever again be satisfied with canned, ground, pre-roasted coffee from the grocery store. I know of many people who have tried my single country of origin home-roasted coffee who said that they didn’t like coffee and changed their attitude after sampling mine. Why?
Taste
Because, it doesn’t taste like the coffee you are conditioned to drink. You will first be struck by the smoothness of the coffee. It has no bitter after-taste. Green coffee can sit on a shelf in storage for up to a year without much degradation in the quality of the coffee. However, when you purchase pre-roasted coffee from the store, whether it is a specialized coffee retailer or the grocery store, you have no idea of how long the roasted coffee has been sitting on the shelf before you purchased it.
Once green coffee has been roasted, it starts to lose its flavor after about three days and in full decline after a week. When you roast your own coffee, it won’t last much longer than a week because you will have consumed it all in a week’s time.
Cost
Using my method, with an investment of $25 in equipment, you can roast a pound of coffee in 20 minutes. The high quality, green, single country of origin (Sumatra, Bali, Honduran, Brazilian, Indonesian, etc), coffee I purchase will run anywhere from $4 a pound to $8 a pound on the high end with $5 being about average. Compare that to a pound of “premium” coffee from a specialty coffee retailer that you will pay anywhere from $8.00 a pound on the low end to $16.
This is why I first became interested as an alternative to the costly “boutique” coffee I was buying. I preferred my “boutique” coffee to the canned grocery store coffee, but it got to be an expensive habit. As I searched the internet for a less costly solution I found a plethora of home roasting coffee solutions. I will briefly cover them here to let you know that there are other methods that may be a little more convenient than mine, but not nearly as cheap, and the quality of the coffee won’t be any better than mine.
Home-made roasting solutions
Before purchasing a store-bought home roaster, my first foray into the world of home roasting was with a hot air popcorn popper. I purchased a hot air popcorn popper at the local thrift store for about $8, made some minor recommended adjustments that I found on-line, and tried roasting coffee in my kitchen. It was recommended that I put a glass chimney on the top and with aluminum foil, direct the chaff and smoke out of the window.
Ok, so picture this: I have the popper on my kitchen counter with the chimney directing the chaff and smoke to go out the cracked-open kitchen window. After about 8 minutes it starts to smoke, and I hear “first crack” (more on what this is later). By the time the batch reaches “second crack” it is smoking like the house is on fire and only a small amount of smoke is going out the window and the rest is filling the house with smoke and the smell of roasting coffee. No, it’s not cool, it’s a disaster. It took a week to get the smell out of my house and an hour to stop the smoke alarms from wailing.
Never Roast inside House
The moral of the story is NEVER ROAST COFFEE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE, regardless of the type or style of roaster used. The store-bought roasters have smoke reduction systems but it won’t stop all of the smoke, so don’t do it. I found myself at the end of the garage tending to my batch as it roasted. Yes, it does work, but the problem is that you can only roast a little bit of coffee at a time and you still make a mess. The hot air popcorn popper uses the “fluid bed” idea. It blows hot air around the base of the popper that has a half-cup of coffee beans in it. So there has to be a better solution and here’s mine.
Hot Air Gun Roasting
Using this method, you can roast up to a full pound of coffee at a time and get complete control out of your roasting process. With no more than a $25 investment in equipment and 20 minutes of your time, you can have the highest quality coffee you can find anywhere at any price.
Equipment
Hot air gun
I purchased a hot air gun at a local discount tool store for about $15. It is commonly used for removing paint and such. Before using mine to roast coffee, I used it for removing the stick-down tile in my bathroom and kitchen. Despite its low cost, it has never failed in the year or so that I have used it. You can’t use a hair dryer because it doesn’t get hot enough, and if it did, the overheat mechanism built in to it will shut it down. The heat gun I use will get to 900 degrees Fahrenheit and that is more than enough to roast coffee. It is published that you need to get a fluid bed to at least 500 degrees before the coffee will roast.
Stainless steel mixing bowl
You need at least a five quart mixing bowl. The bigger the better. A larger bowl will help to contain the heat as you stir the tip of your heat gun around the beans you are roasting.
Leather gloves or an oven mitt
I just use a pair of dollar store leather work gloves. As you stir your heat gun around the mix of beans, your hands will get hot and so will the bowl. The gloves will help to keep your hands protected.
Heavy-duty extension cord
I suggest roasting either outdoors, or at the end of your garage or carport with plenty of air-flow. As you roast your coffee, in addition to the smoke you generate, there will be chaff blowing off from your beans as they roast, and can make a mess. An extension cord will enable you to take your stainless steel mixing cauldron with the beans to roast in some area away from where the chaff and smoke will be less of a nuisance. I case you are wondering, for whatever reason, bugs and animals don’t like coffee so don’t worry about excess beans or chaff flying around.
Short stool
You will want to set the mixing bowl on the ground or on bricks or concrete. It will get hot. You need to sit next to your bowl on the ground and a short stool will help you do that.
Coffee Beans
I buy my beans through either Sweet Marias Coffee or Burman Coffee on-line. Sweet Marias became a complete source for understanding roasting and sourcing of green unroasted beans for me. There are many on-line sources for green coffee, including eBay, but I thoroughly trust the above mentioned sources. I don’t want to try and position myself as an expert in the science of sourcing and roasting coffee, but if you want expert free advice on the subject, I highly recommend Sweet Marias Coffee.
So here we have our tools and coffee and we are ready to roast.
Roasting
Connect your extension cord to your heat gun and stretch it to where you will put your mixing bowl. Place your stool next to the bowl. Dump the full pound of coffee into the bowl. Put your gloves on. Turn the heat gun on its highest setting. And, place the tip of the heat gun directly into the beans at the bottom of the bowl and stir the beans with the tip of the heat gun. You need to keep stirring in such a way that all of the beans can be heated equally as much as possible. You will continue this process until you are done.
Note the change in color from greenish to light brown.
After about 8 minutes on full heat the beans will start to pop or crack. This is the moisture from inside the beans as they roast. They will also start to shed the remains of the hull that will fly off as chaff. Use your gun to occasionally blow away the chaff from the coffee mixture in the bowl.
This is what we call first crack as it starts to smoke. First crack is a louder crack and is lower pitched than second crack:
Note the change in color again and the beans start to get shiny.
When your cauldron of heated beans reach second crack it will start to crack with a higher pitch and more frequently and almost a sizzle. At this point you are almost done. Depending on your taste, you may want to stop now. But I roast at least two minutes into second crack until the beans are nice and shiny with the oils coming to the surface of the bean.
Cooling
Don’t wait until your beans are dark before you stop roasting. Because they will continue to roast after you have removed the heat source. The best time to stop is right before they are all quite brown. As soon as they have reached a nice light brown color you have to immediately begin to cool them down to stop the roasting process. They retain their internal heat for a while and the roasting process has to stop by cooling them immediately. I will take the hot bowl and place it in a sink full of ice water and stir the beans until they are cool enough to touch. They will however smell wonderful.
Storage
After the beans have cooled to room temperature, you will need to place them into a storage container. Do not ever store your roasted beans in the refrigerator or freezer.
I suggest only roasting as much as you are going to consume in a weeks’ time, unless you plan on giving some away. I like to use various glass containers with lids. Don’t be too tempted to brew your coffee right after you roast. Your coffee needs to rest and de-gas.
The roasted beans will leave off a gas for about three days after roasting. Too soon and it may taste harsh and bitter.
The best taste, depending on the bean, will come after a couple of days. And it will last at peak flavor for about a week, after which time it will disappear. Ever notice the one-way valves on those foil bags of coffee you find in stores? Well, they package the beans right after roasted. And put them in those bags with the one-way valves. So that the tightly sealed bags don’t blow up from the expanding gas inside the bags.