Home Coffee Bean Roaster Guide
- You don't even need a coffee roasting machine!

Roasting beans is quite easy, even without a coffee roasting machine. If you don't have one, you can use a frying pan, or a popcorn popper.

Whether you use a coffee bean roaster, or an on-hand alternative, the most imnportant thing is to make sure that it is totally clean. More than anything else, this will spoil the taste of the coffee made from the beans.

What type of roast do you want? Dark roasts will have less caffeine than lighter roasts, but they also don't have the acidic taste that dark roasts do. It all depends on your tastes, and whether caffeine is an issue for you.

Roasting Temperatures

Coffee beans need to heat to between 460F (223C) and 530F (262C). So, you will end up with a bit of smoke in your kitchen. If you have a stove top exhaust, that is ideal. If not, put a small fan in the kitchen, and open the windows! If you're fire alarm is very sensitive, you might want to disable it temporarily.

Some coffee roaster machines have a built-in thermometer control. If you're using a fry pan, a candy thermometer will do the trick.

Roasting beans will turn from green to yellow, and then to brown. You'll need to decide how brown you want them to go. Perhaps use your favourite coffee roast as a guide if you're unsure.

What Happens During Roasting?

As the coffee beans heat up, the oil and water within them will put a pressure on the 'shell' of the bean. If you hear a loud crack when it bursts, don't worry! This is normal. Stir the mixture every 30 seconds or so, and the beans will start cracking open after 4 to 7 minutes of heating.

During this process, the sugar inside the beans begin to caramelize. The color is an indication of how much caramelization has taken place. Again, this is a matter of preference.

After a certain point, the coffee beans become quite dark and a second crack occurs. Unless you like strong, somewhat bitter coffee, this will be a little overdone. Roasting the coffee beans past the point of the second crack results in burnt coffee beans.

Once your beans are at the desired level, taken them out of the coffee roaster machine, or fry pan doing double duty as a coffee bean roaster, and place them in a metal colander to cool. Shake them a bit, as the roasting process produces a fine skin that comes off the coffee bean when they're agitated. These need to be removed. Mesh cooking screens are one way of doing this.

Experiment to get the flavor you like. Remember though, that heat remaining in the coffee bean after it has cooked will continue to cook it for a little while. So, stop roasting just before it would be as you'd prefer.

If you're using a popcorn machine as a roaster, get one that lets you stir the beans so they don't stick to the surface.

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