Home Coffee Bean Roasting

Our friends own a coffee roasting company, Caravan Coffee, in our area. They held their first annual Home Coffee Roasting Festival this weekend. It was really interesting, and all the different home coffee roasting equipment was quite unique. I have put together a web page showing some of the different home coffee roasters at the festival: http://whatscookingamerica.net/CoffeeRoasting/HomeCoffeeRoasting.htm

This festival really peaked my interest in trying to roast some coffee beans myself. One of the men used, what he called, the Cowboy Coffee Roasting Method. He roasted his beans in a cast-iron fry pan. I took a “large” series of photos showing the process of the green coffee beans from start to finish.

Has anyone else in the forum roasted their own coffee beans? I would be interested in hearing your stories and seeing any photos of your unique coffee roasting equipment.

Please ignore my typos above. I should have proofed before sending.

Hi Linda - First of all, when you view a post that you wrote, in the upper right hand corner, next to the "quote" button is an "edit" button. If you click on that you can edit and make corrections to that post you made. Secondly, several years ago I re-roasted whole beans when I was out of espresso. I used regular 8 O'Clock coffee beans, placed them in a single layer on a cold cookie sheet. Then I put them in a cold oven, on the top rack, and set the oven to 450 Deg.F. As soon as it reached the temperature, I turned to oven off and left the beans in the oven until it cooled down. I then ground the beans and made espresso. It was better than before I re-roasted them, but not quite as good as if I had gone to the store and bought some good French or Italian roast.

I've had decent results using a hot air popcorn popper. Not great but decent.

My neighbor has been able to roast coffee so that it tastes better than most beans one can buy. We get our green beans from Sweet Marias (rather inexpensive) and the roaster, which is a little bigger than a blender and does about a cup or 2 of beans at a time, cost something like $200.

The popcorn popper has a thermostat which keeps the coffee from getting that really nice dark color. That is one reason why the roaster does such a better job.

http://www.sweetmarias.com/

There is an amazing amount of information on the website about how to roast and what equipment to use.

Haven't tried this myself, but a friend of mine bought a roaster a couple of years ago and he's run through the process with me. Don't know which brand he has, but it's not real big and does small batches. The coffee he roasts is excellent and he ends up paying much less per pound than what good roasted beans go for. Only downside was the pungent vapors emitted during the roasting process. They don't have a good range hood and he usually roasts outdoors because of this. If you go this route, I'd recommend making sure there's some sort of good ventilation system to handle the smoke.

I bought a roaster a number of years ago and always have a supply of green beans. It takes only about 10 minutes for a dark roast. And, of course, there's that wonderful smell.

Been roasting for years - not sure how many any more. Second Sweet Marias. I get all my beans there and have purchased both of my roasters there also. Started with the freshroast which works well enough but the batch size is small and the roast profile too quick. Now use a Gene Cafe which I love. More roast control and larger batch size. I can really taste the difference when I am on the road and have to buy commercial. Also Green beans keep a lot longer than roast coffee so I usually buy coffee only twice a year.

I'm told folks have had success roasting using the Whirley-Pop popcorn popper. I use it, too, but just for popcorn.