i’ll never buy roasted coffee again
January 17, 2011 § 9 Comments
All I can say is “wow”! First of all I can’t believe how easy it was to roast the beans with simple instructions from Sweet Maria’s site. It took about 10 minutes all in – stirring, watching temperatures and lifting the lid to see how the beans were doing. Then they just had to cool.
This is going to sound a tad dramatic, but I don’t think I’ve ever really had coffee til now. The aroma not only roasting the beans but after grinding them is incredible. The house smells amazing. The taste has so much more depth and nuance to it than I’ve had in a cup before. There is a nice fruitiness to it that I’ve never tasted before, almost as delicate as tea. Maybe I’m just blinded by home roasting pride, but I think the first endeavor was pretty damn awesome.
Overall my roast was on the lighter side, which seems to allow the flavor of the bean to come to the forefront. For this first roast I used India Sanskriti Arabica beans from sweetmarias.com (you get beans as part of the starter kit). Needless to say the uniformity of the roast was a little all over the map (the Agtron coffee classification system) but regardless it still beats what you can buy in the supermarket hands-down. I just plucked the burnt ones out before I ground them. No harm, no foul. Next time I will put the roaster on a cast iron pan to diffuse the heat a bit more which may help.
The John Wayne mug for my first home roasted brew ever is for my Mom. 🙂
52 To Do 
Where do you buy unroasted coffee beans?
sweetmarias.com has everything you need and it is a lot cheaper than buying in the store.
Could this convert me to a lifetime of coffee drinking? I will have to come over for a cup of home roast to find out 🙂
i will be doing a little more practicing and then i think a pre-work or afternoon coffee time is in order this week. do you guys have a grinder? i’ll give you some beans too.
I no longer feel bad about missing the cocktail week because my love for coffee is indescribable. I can’t wait to taste the home roast.
we should have an afternoon tasting tomorrow or sometime this week!
Hey Darcie,
This blog rocks. If you’re keeping on the coffee kick (or looking for idea #29), maybe try Turkish coffee at some point. I’ve always wondered how that little pot thing works. Ummm…maybe not so local, though.
you can definitely roast to a Turkish roast and then I think they grind it very fine. They talk about it in the book I mention. I believe they brew it with sugar vs adding after.
[…] had around the house. 6) I tasted coffee for the first time. Not really, but it felt like it after roasting my own beans at home. This was such a simple thing to do (10 min), not to mention half the price of buying coffee. Thank […]