I’ve never had too much luck roasting my own coffee. I tried using a popcorn popper; The beans seemed to turn out fine, but the coffee tasted like hell. Clearly I was doing something wrong. (If only we could get a professional coffee roaster and expert in to write about coffee… next week.)
It’s unlikely that you’ll ever run out of store-bought coffee and yet have a batch of green, unroasted beans around, but that doesn’t make this instructional guide about pan-roasting coffee beans any less interesting. It’s enough to make a man hit Sweet Maria’s to order some fresh beans. Just in case someone was going to be around on Dethroner next week to talk about coffee.
Or something.
What do you want to know about coffee? We have a small roasting business, and we started as home roasters. If you did not have good luck with the popcorn popper it is likely that your popper either was underpowered, resulting in a long roast time (more than 20 minutes in a popper will taste bad) which baked the beans, or it wasn’t able to get the beans hot enough, or you burnt the crap out of them.
Poppers are still the cheapest way to get into roasting coffee, but a small purpose built roaster like the iRoast or FreshRoast will get you started, and once you taste the coffee you won’t want to go back.
Joel
I’m not a big time coffee snob but what’s the difference between a high quality, fresh ground coffee from a supermarket and beans that you buy and roast yourself?
Is the taste really that much more noticeable?
Hmmm…Patrick maybe someone could answer that query…like, say…next week mebbe?
I dunno…just thinkin’ out loud over here.
I got started via that same popcorn popper article, and I’d wager if your coffee *looked* okay but tasted like junk, you never hit “2nd crack”. When I roasted using my 1500W Poppery outdoors, I found it challenging to get the temp high enough. (The beans darken the same, but without the 2nd crack, the coffee is just bad.) Do you recall hearing the audible 2nd crack?
Patrick- the taste is significantly better, when done correctly. Unless you’re buying freshly roasted coffee every week or less, chances are your coffee is old (and probably over roasted anyway, given American’s tastes these days.)
I have been roasting my own coffee for a couple of years, and I can say that the one critical part about roasting is the cooling after the roast. The pan roaster description has the right idea about setting the beans on a fan. The popcorn popper roaster does not really describe anything beyond swapping the beans back and forth between two colanders - I am not convinced that will cool the beans fast enough to halt the roasting process before the batch is ruined - unless it is 20 degrees outside when you do it. A fan will also make it easier to eliminate the chaff.
Patrick, the difference is absolutely jawdropping. It almost brings me to tears on occasion
“High-quality” and “supermarket” usually don’t work together ;) Whole bean coffee from a place like Intelligentsia here in Chicago and a good grinder (in other words…not a Braun blade grinder but a nice burr grinder) are your best bet for good coffee if you dont want to roast your own.
http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com
No I don’t work for them but a big fan.
rama,
I’ve never had issues with beans tasting bad under 2nd crack. In fact, I rarely bring my roasts that far, just resting them on the verge of 2nd crack before getting into it.