The best way to get good, fresh, cheap coffee the way you like it is to roast your own coffee beans.

Unroasted coffee beans are easy to buy online or from local suppliers and much much cheaper than at the grocery store. Unroasted beans stored in decent conditions will usually last a year at least. If you just want a small amount, try going to that local Coffeehouse known for roasting their own -- they'll probably sell you some.

Anything -- from a cast-iron skillet to a popcorn popper to a several-hundred dollar coffee roaster can be used to roast beans.

Roasting is messy business. Lots of smoke is produced, and when the beans crack, they produce lots of chaff. At least open up a window or something.

I recommend starting out with a cast-iron skillet. The roasted beans will be a somewhat unevenly browned -- but when you grind them, they'll average out and produce a fine brew.

  • Sort through your beans and remove any abnormal ones (optional).
  • Wash and dry the skillet thoroughly.
  • Place the skillet on your stove on a low heat, and toss the beans in. Start small.
  • Stir the beans continuously.
  • After a few minutes, the beans will start to crack. This is the first crack. You can stop the roast anytime after this. If you stop as this is happening, you'll have either a Cinnamon roast or if you wait a little, you'll have a Light roast.
  • Halfway between the first and second cracks is called a City roast.
  • Stop the roast when the beans are slightly lighter than desired. Pour them into something large and aerated if possible -- a colander works good for this.
  • If you keep roasting, four or so minutes after the first crack, you'll hear the second crack. As this is just starting, you have Full City roast. After this, the beans are either a French, Dark French, or some horridly charred thing more akin to charcoal.
  • When you're done, take the roasted beans outdoors and pour them between two large bowls in hope that the chaff will be blown away.
  • Congratulations! You have fresh coffee beans! It's best to store them in airtight glass containers and use them within about a week.

Practice and experience are very important in roasting. You'll get much better as you go. And chances are, you'll end up with a much fresher morning cup of Joe, shot of espresso, or what have you.

I started roasting for the economy of it. I mean, who can resist Cup of Excellence-level coffees at five or ten bucks a pound?

Okay, I'm also a control freak.

My coffee must be roasted my way.

Grrrrr.

Of course, the most important thing to be gained from homeroasted coffee is not economy, or even control. It's flavour. Fortunately, economy need not be dropped as a consideration: you can go for cheap on both the roaster and the beans, and still have excellent coffee: green coffee, even the stuff in the top 5% of all coffee produced — which is what most homeroasters — get is not an expensive product.

An example I like to use is kopi luwak. No, you don't want it. You really don't. Honest. Don't even click on the hardlink.

But if you did, you could procure it from a co-op for about sixty-five bucks a pound. Depending on water loss in your roast, that leaves you with around thirteen ounces of coffee, which would make (accounting for waste) about twenty doppios.

That doesn't sound cheap yet, does it?

It will when I tell you that for $3.25 for coffee and a quarter's-worth of milk, you can make a double cappuccino that beats even the nice local coffee joint, to say nothing of Charbucks. So, $3.50 for a cappa? With one of the more expensive green coffees available, no less.

Convinced, yet?

Okay, first you'll need a popcorn popper. This is your roaster. Spend a lot of money. Buy one for five bucks at a thrift store. I don't care. I've not yet heard of anyone finding a popper that couldn't be used entirely unmodified. Modifications will come later: if you want to make a Frankenpopper, just Google it. You'll find them.

The only overarching concern is that you will need a chimney of some sort so the beans don't go flying out the top as they get lighter. Some people use soup cans, some use dryer ducting, some use glass lamp chimneys.

Other than that, you really just dump some greens in a popper and stir the beans while they roast.

Second, you need green coffee. The vendor I recommend is Sweet Maria's. You'll pay less for better coffee and better service there than anyplace with slightly-lower prices and bottom-of-the-cargo-container beans. I rarely purchase coffee anywhere else, and highly recommend them. Besides, they're a great source for information on all things coffee.

Third, you need a way to cool the beans quickly. People come up with all kinds of expedients, including spraying with water, freezing, refrigerating, winnowing, ignoring, and so on — all of which techniques are to be avoided as either too slow (winnowing, ignoring) or too apt to damage the coffee with moisture (spraying, freezing, refrigerating). Your best bet is forced-air cooling.

Get a fan. Any fan you can aim upwards will do: a small air-circulator is what I use, but a box fan on a couple stacks of books is just as serviceable. On top of that fan put a screen or a colander or something. Dump the beans in and turn the fan on. Simple. Fast. Your beans will be cool to the touch in thirty seconds to a minute.

Roasting seems more complicated than it is; and indeed, you can take it to any level of complexity you want. I used to "roast by the numbers", with a high-range analog thermometer poked into the heart of the storm, a stopwatch to mark time, and a notepad to record the time-and-temperature "roast profile" of every roast I did.

Bah.

All you need to know about roasting is that coffee cracks audibly twice as it expands. First crack marks the beginning of "roasted coffee". Second crack marks the beginning of "Starbucks coffee". If you like very light roasts, take the beans off sometime during the first period of "popping sounds". Medium roasts are about halfway between first and second crack (Yes, I did just say, "Get off the bus the stop before me." You'll get to know your beans and your roaster, and it'll click.). Dark roasts are anything once second crack has started.

My Apparatus

  • A cheap popcorn popper
  • A hurricane-lamp chimney that fits the "roast chamber"
  • A long chopstick used for cooking in a wok — for stirring
  • A Vornado air-circulating fan
  • A steamer tray from an old stockpot
  • An oven mitt
  • Canning jars

My Procedure

  1. Plug in fan.
  2. Put colander on fan.
  3. Dump coffee in roaster.
  4. Plug in roaster.
  5. Stir, wearing an oven mitt, until the coffee is light enough to move by itself.
  6. Wait until the coffee is to the desired roast level.
  7. Unplug roaster.
  8. Dump coffee in colander.
  9. Turn on fan.
  10. When coffee is cool (about a minute), dump into canning jar.

It's much simpler than, say, making pancakes.

Bottom Line

So:

  • $10-$20 for the roaster, depending on what you get and where.
  • $5-6/lb for coffee, plus shipping

$25-$40 should get you started. That money, if spent on roasted coffee of the quality you'll be getting by roasting your own, would get you two to three pounds. Saving money already!

A note about roast level

Charbucks, Seattle's Best, Peet's, and other so-called "specialty" coffee vendors have sold us on "dark roast is where coffee is at its best". This is similar to a low-grade steak restaurant that dared tout "extra-well done": if a steak is burnt, who's to tell how good a steak it really was? A filet mignon wouldn't taste much different from chuck-roast with that treatment.

Officially, a City roast (halfway between first and second cracks) is the ideal brewed-coffee roast. For espresso, anything from City through Full City (the raw beginnings of second crack) or even Full City + is acceptable. Play around, though. For espresso, give the mediums to medium-darks a try. For brewed coffee, give the lights to mediums a chance. You may be surprised at the flavours lurking in truly good coffee that you'd otherwise burn off in the quest for "dark roast".

The only coffees I take more than a few seconds into second crack are Indonesians, and I rarely allow anything to get into what's termed "rolling second".

Tips for using a popcorn air popper to roast coffee


"At first, I did it because I could, and wanted to learn. And I learned I could make better coffee."
— Dave of Zolo Coffee Roasters.


Why roast my own?

It's fun. You hear people tell of roasting to save money, as green coffee is cheaper per pound than roasted. That may be true, but the real reason, I suspect, is that we roast because we enjoy making coffee at home, possibly coffee has become a hobby and we want to learn more about it, and get closer to our goal of better understanding our coffee. We get to make our own blends, roast them to our taste. It's fun and it's satisfying as heck.

What you'll need

I use an electric air popcorn popper to roast, which took a massive investment of $7 from a local thrift shop. Other machines are available, but most of them are relatively cheap. Mine is a 1000 watt unit and can comfortably roast 80 grams (roughly ⅖ cup) of green coffee in about 7½ or 8 minutes. More powerful machines will roast faster and possibly darker. Look for a machine in which the air is blown through the beans through radial vents inside the popper, which moves the beans in a circular motion whilst working. This results in a faster and more even roast than a popper which simply blows air in from the bottom. You'll also need a scale to weigh the beans before and after, oven gloves or similar, two colanders or metal bowls, a couple of sieves, a notebook and something to time the process.

Preparation

Plug the popper into the mains, preferably near the stove's extraction fan. If you can, avoid using extension cords as this will slightly reduce the power available to the machine when it's working. Some poppers will draw up to 1500 watts, and even being further away from the mains distribution panel can have a negative effect on roast times.

The process will produce some smoke and smell, so I advise you to roast near an open window, or under the extraction fan in your kitchen. I keep the fan on low, and it's enough to clear the air. The other thing this process will produce is chaff. This is the remaining parchment skin left after processing the beans. It manifests as small papery scraps that, if unchecked, will cover the whole kitchen. I direct the output of the popper toward a colander in order to collect the mess. Afterwards, either dump it on your garden or into the compost.

The Process

Switch the unit on a couple of minutes before adding the beans in order to warm everything up and give the process a running start. Once the beans are added, start a stopwatch and stand ready so you can a) take notes and b) be on hand in the unlikely event that Something Goes Wrong (i.e. fire). The latter is unlikely as poppers all have a thermal cutout switch to prevent overheating and thus, fires. I strongly advise you to take notes on the process, so you can track what happens and when. I note the start of yellowing, the time of first crack, total roast time and the weight of beans at the outset and the finished weight. This helps me to track what works (and what doesn't) when it comes to tasting the coffee.

After a minute or so, you will notice the beans turning from green to yellow as they start losing moisture. Soon after this they will begin to turn a pale brown as the Maillard reaction starts to work. Soon after the beans begin to darken, you will start to hear little cracking noises. This is known as "first crack", which happens as the interior of the beans starts to really heat up, driving the moisture out in tiny explosions. After first crack, keep a close eye on the colour of the beans, and stop the roast when the majority of them are as dark as you want. If you leave the beans longer, you may hear a second series of cracks, the "second crack" which is caused by escaping CO2. At this point you may notice the beans becoming glossy. This is because the oils are being forced to the surface of the beans by the offgassing. At this point you have a dark, possibly even a "French" roast. It's generally thought unwise to roast to this level in a popcorn popper as the thermal stress may be beyond the ability of the machine's designed limits. It's also possible that you'll go beyond second crack to "third crack" The crack is the sound the beans make as they the beans begin to combust. ("At some point it just turns to carbon and then catches fire. I don't recommend that"—James Hoffmann)

Once the beans have hit the level you want, off with the power, on with the gloves. Dump the beans into a metal colander or sieve, pour it from one container to another until it's at room temperature. You might want to do this outdoors because there' likely to still be some chaff in those beans. Seriously, you don't want that stuff invading your house. That done, record the weight of the finished beans in your notebook, then pop the beans into a Ziplock bag or single-wall coffee bag and leave it in a cool, dark place for a couple of days.

The reason you're leaving it is to allow the CO2 to escape and the flavours to finish developing. I generally leave mine for at least 48 hours, and still notice improvements if I leave it for a while longer, up to about a week. Be patient, and don't forget to take some notes of how the flavour changes.

How Long?

There seem to be two schools of thought as to how long to roast. One says "roast until they look about right", which is fine as long as you know exactly how you want them to look. The other school says to be more scientific and drop the beans at a particular temperature. Judging colour can be tricky, so I prefer to go by both colour and temperature. Sweet Maria's Coffee have a good colour/temperature guide here. But if you're taking notes, a little experimentation will guide you in the right direction. FOR GOODNESS' SAKE, I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH, TAKE NOTES.

Modifying your roaster

If you want to measure your bean temperature, you'll need to modify your popper. This is managed by drilling a small hole in the side to accept a temperature probe (which could be as simple as a candy thermometer or as complex as a thermocouple and display). The probe should be i nthe midst of the bean mass as thy're roasting. You may also want to disable or remove the thermal cutout switch attached to most poppers as it will not allow the temperature to get high enough for darker roasts (if that's your preference!). It goes without saying that you should be careful with any modification you make (there are many websites and videos dedicated to this, so do your research well, and don't attempt it if you're unsure. Safety First! . Your mileage may vary, of course; I've not felt the need to remove the thermal switch as I can get to a good medium roast with it in place.

Final notes Be more careful with decaffeinated coffee - the beans roast very differently, often being more done inside than appears on the outside. More on that soon.

You may also want to go a step further and calculate the water loss from the roasting process. To calculate this, take the weight of the green beans, subtract the final weight and multiply by 100. This gives the percentage weight loss, and can be a good guide to how well roasted your beans are. I drop my beans at about 425°C, with a weight loss of about 12.5% for a medium-dark roast. Again, YMMV according to taste and the beans' origin.

Next up will be on how to store your coffee.






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