No matter what type of coffee you buy, there is nothing like roasting your own coffee. Coffee beans are the most flavorful when they have been recently roasted. Any store-bought coffee can get stale and lose its flavor. This is why true coffee lovers roast their own coffee.
While you might think that roasting coffee at home can be a tedious and difficult job, we are here to prove otherwise. If you follow the following steps, you would be able to roast your own coffee easily!
Step 1: Buying unroasted coffee beans
The first thing you would need to do is to buy raw, green coffee beans. While buying your coffee beans, make sure that you get the correct amount. Coffee beans tend to increase in size when you roast them, however, they also become half their weight. So, if you want a pound of roasted coffee beans then you should get at least 2 pounds of unroasted coffee beans.
The type of coffee bean depends on the coffee flavor that you are looking for. Each coffee type comes with its unique flavor. Before buying, do some research and see which flavor profile will best suit your needs.
Step 2: Preparing the Equipment
While many large scale coffee places will use industrial roasters to roast their coffee, you won’t need that kind of expensive equipment for roasting at your house. You can either go for an inexpensive coffee roaster or look for alternate options like a popcorn popper. A popcorn popper is not only cheap but it also helps heat up the coffee beans in excess temperatures that can go up to 450 degrees. However, if you don’t want to buy a popcorn popper, you can also use a cast iron skillet.
Step 3: Roasting
This is the main step for the entire process as it does not just let you maintain the freshness of your coffee beans but it also lets you have complete control over your coffee flavor as well as caffeine level.
For this step, place your beans in whatever equipment you will be using for the roasting. Start heating the beans. You will notice that your beans will slowly start changing their color from green to yellow and then brown. While roasting, keep your ears open to hear that cracking sound.
Step 4: Removing the beans
Depending upon your desired darkness of coffee beans, remove them accordingly. If you like your coffee with more caffeine, then remove it as soon as it turns light brown. If you want darker coffee, keep it on heat until it reaches Viennese. Just make sure that you remove the beans before they turn black, because that ruins the flavor completely.
Step 5: Cooling the beans
After removing the roasted beans, it is time for them to cool off for a few hours. To cool them off, use either a baking sheet or a strainer. Place the beans on the baking sheet or the strainer and place it in some cool, dry place. While transferring the beans, make sure that you do not burn your hands as they can be extremely hot.
Step 6: Storing and brewing
After cooling the coffee, you can now transfer your roasted beans to an airtight jar. However, keep the lid loose till the next day as the jar might explode due to the release of carbon dioxide from the roasted beans. For a fresh cup of coffee, brew your beans within 5 days.
Now that we have guided you step-by-step on how to roast your own coffee, there is no excuse for you to not roast your own coffee at home!