Home coffee roasting – for the freshest cup of coffee every time.

The practice of home coffee roasting goes back for centuries.

In fact, being able to buy roasted beans in bags became popular only a little over a century ago.

Before that, everyone bought green coffee beans and roasted them at home. Transportation was not as it is today, and green coffee beans stay fresh a great deal longer than their roasted counterparts.

The only reason to buy your coffee beans roasted, and ground - and even prepackaged in K-Cups and coffee pods - is to make life a little more convenient.

If you really want to taste a fresh brew, you’ll want to roast your own coffee beans at home, and then use them as soon as they have cooled.

The basics of home coffee roasting...

There are several ways to roast your own green coffee beans.

You can roast them in the oven, on your stovetop and even in a hot air popcorn popper. Perhaps surprisingly, a good popcorn popper can do an excellent job of roasting coffee.

Or you can buy a home roasting machine. There are several different brands and models on the market, most of them using a column of hot air to both roast and agitate the coffee beans.

These home coffee roasters include a variety of useful features, like chaff collectors and various different time settings.

The time settings give you the flexibility to take the same batch of green coffee beans and try a medium roast, a dark roast and even a very dark roast.

Some other benefits of home coffee roasting.

There are several good reasons to roast your own beans.

First, it gives you the opportunity to experiment with different roasts. Take your favorite beans, and then adjust the roasting times and see the difference it makes to the taste and aroma.

Second, you can store green beans for a year or more, and still get a fresh brew once you have roasted a small batch and let it cool.

Third, you can quickly offset the cost of a home coffee roasting machine with the money you save on the beans.

Unless you are buying something very exotic, you’ll find that you can often buy five pounds of green coffee beans for about the same price as you would pay for one pound of roasted beans.

Happy roasting!