Home Roasting Coffee
For all you coffee gourmet fiends–here’s something new to try! Roast your own coffee from green beans. We not only grind our own coffee and own an espresso machine, we roast green coffee beans to perfect brown little gems every week.
First, I must confess, I much prefer tea or hot chocolate to coffee. I use the espresso machine to steam milk for my frothy hot chocolate, but coffee-roasting, a little known hobby, produces some very high quality coffee drinks.
Roasting coffee is not at all difficult, although it does involve planning; green beans must be roasted at least one night before use because the fresh roasted coffee must “rest” for several hours. Rest is my word; coffee books refer to this as “degassing,” a rather less appetizing term.
When coffee is first roasted it smells more like roasted pecans than coffee. We usually roast enough beans for a week and then grind the roasted beans each day as needed. For die-hard coffee lovers that want the freshest coffee possible, roasting at home is the only way to go. The green beans last a long time without any change in flavor or quality so you can order more coffee at one time than you can when obtaining already roasted beans.
Expense
What about the expense? Getting started wasn’t terribly expensive, although a lot depends on which grinder and espresso or coffee maker you buy. There are various web sites out there that do a good job of selling these things. As for the roaster, we bought both the roaster and continue to buy green beans from Sweetmarias.com. Check out the web site; the guy that sells the beans is an entertaining writer, and he provides detailed information about coffee and all the various beans that he sells. He also offers the roaster and beans, a necessity of the hobby, for a very reasonable price. Another excellent site is: coffeekid.com.
Note: Green beans are cheaper than already roasted beans. Coffee roasting opens a whole new world of exploration; learning where coffee is grown, which regions supply the best coffees for your particular pallet and the hobby makes for great conversations. Of course if you have guests often, you could get stuck making an awful lot of coffee!
For more answers to equipment/roasting questions:
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On coffee from various regions:
The Brazilian coffee was just excellent followed closely by the Indonesian Sumatra. Both had excellent aroma, full flavor and a pleasant aftertaste. The Brazilian was like the Ultimate Coffee and the Sumatran was a bit more on the dark, exotic side. Both were excellent.
The Ethiopian “longberry” was also very enjoyable. It had a definite fruity flavor which made it seem almost like a flavored coffee of some sort. I did enjoy it, but I am not a big fan of flavored coffees, so it did not top my list. La Minita Tarrazu I had gotten once from Vermont coffee. It has a very earthy (kind of muddy flavor) and no aftertaste to speak of. I just can’t get excited about it.
After brewing the Ethiopian and La Minita Tarrazu together, I decided I liked them better when brewed together.
Comment by Brother-In-Law — July 22, 2006 @ 12:21 pm
If you’re wondering where to start with experimenting, I would try a Guatemalan. The two or three we have tried from that region are good, hearty coffees. I would rate them “a coffee lover’s coffee.” They are well-rounded, and you don’t have to worry about anything exotic creeping in.
The Kenyan coffee has a “fruity” taste to it. To me it’s a bit lighter in flavor than the Guatemalan and has interesting flavors other than just “coffee.” We’re thinking of trying this in an espresso blend to fill in the upper range of coffee taste.
Oaxaca is probably a good coffee for people that don’t love coffee. It tastes like coffee, but it’s quite mild. I have several friends that drink coffee on occasion, “just to warm up” in the wintertime. This is a great coffee for that. The flavor is smooth without any sharp edges and just as you swallow, you get that “coffee” flavor.
The Peruvian coffee that we tried was probably my favorite. This is the best coffee for people that don’t “love” coffee—that only occasionally drink it. This coffee was mild and smooth from start to finish with no overpowering scream of “coffee.” A good mild coffee.
Comment by Maria — July 22, 2006 @ 12:23 pm
Hi from Houston with Toby and Britt.
Two tips: you actually can get halfway decent espresso from a steam machine IF you do one simple thing: use a full basket of grounds, but stop the drip at the number “2″ cup mark on the carafe. Never, ever go to “4,” because all you are doing then is just diluting fairly good coffee with bitter tasting dregs. We have both a steam and pump machine, and usually mix them because the steam machine gives great foam.
Tip #2: for preserving beans, vacuum packing is the ONLY way to go. A Foodsaver or similar product works great. You use their canisters, vacuum as soon as you purchase or roast the coffee, and each time after use. We can enjoy coffee for two weeks that tastes almost the same as the day it was roasted. Foodsavers can be bought for less than $100.
Comment by Roger Kaza — February 6, 2007 @ 8:18 am
Hi Roger and thanks for stopping by!
I think you are right about vacuum packing–if you aren’t roasting weekly, the vacuuming packing is probably the only way to keep it fresh!
Comment by Maria — February 6, 2007 @ 8:27 am