I’m home roasting coffee beans these days. My son decided that I should get back to coffee roasting and bought me a new roaster for Christmas.
Since I’ve been home for several weeks and have more time, I’ve been roasting frequently. One of the things we discussed in our podcast episode 57, Improve Your Healthy Immune System with Dr. Victoria Shaw, was doing things by hand. Nobody brought up roasting coffee beans but I think it works.
How does it work to roast your own coffee beans? It’s not difficult and there are a variety of ways to do it. I have a Fresh Air SR540 roaster which is a small hot air roaster. Some people use popcorn poppers to roast their beans, which is one of the cheapest ways to roast coffee. Others buy larger drum roasters that cost considerably more than what I’m using.
I buy green coffee beans on the Internet. The advantage of buying green coffee beans is that you can buy a variety of beans from different parts of the world and try them. I usually do a bit of research on the beans that I’ve bought so I can see what kind of roast works best for them. Just like buying coffee at the store, you can roast your beans in a light, medium, or dark roast.
Green coffee beans still have moisture in them. Roasting dries the beans and then they “crack.” The cracking sounds a lot like popcorn popping. Coffee beans will crack twice if you roast it long enough. I might go through the second crack if I’m going for a dark roast.
Here’s how I roast the coffee beans. I measure out the green coffee beans into the roaster.
I adjust the settings on the roaster and then roast the beans. Once the beans have made it through the first crack, I then judge by appearance and sound how much longer to roast. As the beans roast, they change color.
First they become a yellowish color and then begin to turn brown. If they’re roasted to a dark roast, they develop an oily sheen to them.
Each session takes somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. Once the beans have roasted to the level I want, I pour the beans into a metal colander and let them cool.
Finally, I pour them into a glass container and let them sit for at least 24 hours. When I’m ready to make coffee with them, I grind them in my coffee grinder and use them in the same way I use beans I bought from the store.
It’s fun trying different beans from different parts of the world and then roasting them to different degrees of darkness to determine which I prefer. If you have a chance, give home roasting coffee beans a try. Let me know how it goes for you.