home coffee roasting

[Shuie]

Anybody here roast your own coffee beans at home? I've been brewing my own beer for a while now and I've started noticing that the homebrew supply shops are selling starter kits for home coffee roasting. I don't need another hobby, but Im interested. How much equipment do I really need to try this? I already have a grinder and a good press. Can I roast the beans on a cookie sheet in a toaster oven, or do I need a specific coffee roaster?

TIA

[Bill Douglas]

A hot air paint stripper gun and a stainless steel bowl. Do it fast so the first crack is in about seven minutes. Roasted beans should be used between 4 and 10 days after roasting, so don't try them straight away and be disapointed.

Start with Brazil aribica (spelling) beans are they are the easiest to get good results with.

And yes, there are a lot more expensive and better ways to do it too.

And have fun

[Shuie]

What about beans? Other than from the homebrew shops, where can I buy the unroasted beans? Whole Foods Market? We have really good coffee available here in the grocery stores. I usually buy a pound of whole bean Community and then coarse grind it for my press. I should just be happy with that, but I'm halfway interested in trying this myself.

[Bill Douglas]

I go to a coffee roasting place and they actually just give them to me. THe whole sack costs them very little so they give me about a kg for nothing. Someone on ebay will be selling them.

[DanielDudley]

I have a friend who roasts his own. It is OK, fine actually, but more of a conversation thing and a hosting statement.

[KFC911]

Here's a thread from a couple of years ago...

the coffee thread......

I've gotten out of home-roasting as of late, but just finished some Tanzania Peaberry (from a local roaster @ $18/lb ). I'm a cheap bastige, so I think I'm gonna place an order from CCMcoffee.com and go back to roasting my own at $5/lb.

[djmcmath]

I've been roasting for a number of years, here's the skinny:

Beans from Sweet Maria's (sweetmarias.com) or CCM (ccmcoffee.com). Look for something in the $3-$6/lb range.

Get a heat gun from you local Lowe's Depot, recommend the middle-of-the-road one. I've got the $50 version, but I roasted with a $15 heat gun for a long time with no real problems.

Stainless steel bowl is a good route; I've also known people to use ceramic. Either works fine, though the religious fanatics will make cases for one or the other, both with valid points.

LONG-handled wooden spoon is the traditional option. A metal spoon would also work, but it'll get hot, so be prepared.


Process:
Roast the beans for 10-15 minutes, should be able to get a half pound, giver or take, depending on your heat gun. Look at the tutorials on the above sites for guidance on what you're looking for, but basically, you're going until the beans crackle like popcorn and start looking like coffee beans instead of peanuts. Lay them out on a cookie tray for a couple of hours (until cool), then put them in airtight containers. 72 hours later (in my experience), the beans are best for espresso -- they're usable before that, but they'll be a bit flat.

Quality -- I've done taste tests for french press and espresso with my roasts against storebought (*$, Peets, et al), and honest-to-goodness fresh roast always wins. Really good roasts -- a good local roaster, or Cafe Intelligentsia or something -- will do better than I do, but they're a lot more pricey. It's harder to tell with french press (and almost impossible with drip), but it's really easy with espresso.

So for my investment of time (half an hour of roasting every other weekend) and money ($6-8/lb as compared to $15/lb for The Good Stuff), it's totally worth it.


The other thing is my roaster: I started with an actual roaster, a little counter-top thing that my room-mate bought for me for Christmas one year. Worthless. You could do about 4oz of beans consistently, so it took forever to get enough beans to be good. Then I did heat-gun-dog-bowl for a while, which got old because I had to sit and stir the beans. So I found an old Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, drilled and tapped some bolts into the head, and made a wire-mesh stir-stick. I run it at about the 4-5 speed, set my heat gun on wood blocks, and go make a cup of coffee. Then I set with my coffee and watch the beans roast.

Cheers, and enjoy the journey.

Dan

[RWebb]

popcorn popper