The first batch!

Aaron and I took a class last month at Mr. Green Beans.  It is a terrific “domestic arts” shop on Mississippi that focuses on coffee roasting, but also offers materials and classes on cheesemaking, soapmaking, preserving, and fermentation. After a really informative class where we were encouraged to ask lots of questions, we were sent out into the world with a pound of green beans and an instruction booklet that contained an overview of what we learned.

As my friends know, I’ve never been a huge fan of coffee from the large chain that shall not be named, although with enough cream and sugar nearly anything is drinkable. As our instructor pointed out, the one thing that can be said in their defense is that no matter where in the world you are, you know exactly what to expect from their coffee because they strive for consistency.  Of course, the same thing goes for the world’s largest hamburger chain.

While coffee from some of the local roasters taste better because there is a shorter amount of time between the bean roasting and my coffee pot, as the companies grow in size and distribution they suffer from the same issue of striving for consistency in their well-loved varieties.

Aaron has been asking me to find a popcorn popper as recommended in the class so we can start roasting our own beans. I had been putting it off until I really noticed the drastic taste difference between a pound of locally roasted beans and a pound from a nationally distributed mid-quality roaster. That was all I needed to spur me into action, and I purchased a popcorn popper off of eBay.  It arrived today!  Since the beans should have some time between roasting and brewing, I made a batch this afternoon so we could have fresh beans in the morning.

Following the directions from the booklet, I made sure that everything I needed was on hand within easy reach, including a fire extinguisher (just in case). Since we do not have a lot of natural ventilation in our small kitchen and the hood above our stove does not vent outside, I brought in our window fan and set it to exhaust. This worked really well!  I also opened some windows in other parts of the house. My home will smell like roasted coffee for several days (such a bummer, right?), but I did not set off any of our smoke alarms. The popper’s shipping box was the perfect size to catch the bean chaff during roasting.  It just needed a couple of strategic cuts to make it fit flush against the machine. So far, so good!
I also set up a cooling station with a bucket, a metal mixing bowl, and a metal colander. After this picture was taken I added metal skewers under the colander to give it more stability.

Measured 1/3 cup of beans? Check. Put them in the roaster? Check. Camera ready? Check. I started the stop watch timer on my iPod, plugged in the popper, and I was in business! The roasting of the beans is measured by when they crack, and the first crack for this batch came in about 4:30. The total amount of roasting time was 9:30. I don’t have a thermometer to test the final bean temperature, but the ambient temperature was 44 degrees with 73% humidity.

The video is a quick glimpse taken towards the end of the roasting. Between setup and cool-down this process only took 20 minutes of my time. If our coffee in the morning is any good, it may be a while before we buy roasted beans again.

Postscript: The coffee was absolutely amazing!!!