Coffee Roasting

    Roasting Coffee doesn't have to be some mysterious art form that is strictly reserved for professionals.  While it isn't practical to purchase an industrial machine capable of preparing batches of thirty kilograms at a time, you can easily roast enough for a week's worth of beverages for a reasonably small amount of money or even use items you already own. 

    Even though I am an individual coffee drinker I still have taken some opportunities to learn a little about professional coffee roasting to better understand how to improve the quality of my cup.  The simplest form of roasting is to put some beans on a baking sheet and set it in the oven or to use a pan over heat.  If you would like to try a little more elaborate you can always use a popcorn popper.  From there the price increases to just over $100 for a basic home roaster and can get to the point of ridiculous if you need more features or a bigger capacity.

    One of the features to consider in picking your roasting method is temperature control.  When roasting over a fire the temperature is nearly non-existent.  Contrast that with commercial roasting drums that have computerized controls allowing flavor profiles to be pre-set with multiple stage temperature settings.  This would look like a program that specifies one temperature for a time length that then adjusts to the next once it is set up.

    Another feature is a chaff separator.  When I roast with a method that doesn't have this, I was able to achieve it by setting the beans on a cookie sheet and using a hair dryer to blow out all of the material since it is light enough to float in the air while the beans are heavier and stay down.  The chaff is a thin skin similar to the stuff that gets stuck in your teeth when you eat popcorn.