Roasting Coffee at Home

Our first stop is in Yirgacheffe
To check Ethiopian fields
The natives smile and pass along
A sample of their yield
Sweet Jamaican blue mountain
Golden Mexico nights
Then Sumatra, and the East,
Fly by morning light


The other day The Dulcinea spotted an air popper at a ridiculously low price and brought it home for me. A couple days later I tried my hand at roasting coffee at home for the first time. With coffee prices having shot up over the summer, perhaps roasting my own could save me some geld. (My favorite, Just Coffee's Yirgacheffe, went up about $1.80 per pound. Stupid speculators.) My beans weren't exactly fresh, but why let them go to waste? They were from Ethiopia and I got them at a Ethiopian grocery store in Chicago.





The websites I looked at all said that roasting coffee at home wasn't particularly difficult to do. Just pre-heat the popper, throw in your beans, and let 'er rip. Also, put a bowl beneath the exhaust port to catch all the chaff. After a couple minutes, there was a noticeable change in the beans' color.





I can't recall how long we roasted the beans but I'd guess it was around 12 minutes as I personally prefer a darker roast.





Twelve minutes was a lot longer than the websites said I'd be roasting. I'm not sure why but I suspect that it's because I put more coffee in there than recommended. When the beans were sufficiently dark, I tossed them around in a colander for a bit before throwing them in a baking pan and putting it outside to cool them off.





You're supposed to let the roasted beans sit for several, if not 24, hours before grinding. I let mine sit overnight and brewed some joe the next morning. It turned out pretty well. The coffee had that nice earthy flavor that I like in African coffees but didn't have the depth that I'm used to. I am putting this down to the fact that the beans were old which means I have to get some fresher ones to try my hand at roasting.

Anyone know where to get green coffee beans in Madison?