Learn how to roast coffee beans at home! 14 days after roasting, coffee beans have lost over 80% of the aromatic volatile compounds which give it its complex flavor have evaporated, and even $100/lb coffee is no longer ‘specialty coffee’ quality. The answer is buying them green and roasting your own coffee beans. You roast what you need and drink it fresh. And it’s cheap to get started, with no learning curve. Even on a hurried morning, I can wake up with no roasted coffee and still roast, grind and brew a fresh cup by the time I’m ready to sit down to eat.
Course Drinks
Cuisine Italian
Cook Time 10minutes
Total Time 10minutes
Servings 6servings
Author James di Properzio
Ingredients
1/8poundgreen coffee beans
Instructions
Put the measured amount of beans into the hopper of your coffee bean roaster. Sit the chaff catcher/filter on top, and set the timer for 6 minutes for a medium roast. When you hear the sound of popcorn popping, that’s ‘first crack’, when the water in the beans has boiled and exploded, just like with corn but without such noticable change in size. You can turn it off anytime now to stop the roast when you think it’s almost where you want it–just anticipate a bit, like you’re steering a boat.
After another couple minutes, if you listen carefully you will hear a ticking or crackling noise, ‘second crack,’ when the hard structure of the bean starts to break down in the temperature, and from there on it’s all dark roast. You can either set the timer for ‘max’ and eyeball your degree of roast, or set the timer for a certain level, once you get to know how long it takes, and forget it.
The timer kicks into an automatic cool-down mode for a few minutes at the end to stop the roasting, then shuts off. Remove your beans from the roaster, grind them as you would any other coffee beans, and prepare the freshest cup of coffee you've ever tasted.