Roasting your own coffee at home

…it’s not difficult and you don’t need fancy equipment. A frying pan will do! For us, whilst hunting and discovering new coffees, this process was one of the most enjoyable.

Home roasting means that you get the freshest coffee, with minimal wastage.

Green beans can be stored for up to a year after harvest without going stale. Roasted beans, however, start to lose their flavours and aromas after just a couple of weeks albeit if the roasted coffee is stored well the losing of flavour is most often very slow.

It is also true that green beans are cheaper to buy than ready-roasted.

Home roasting the beans starts a chemical process that results in the flavour that can be controlled by you to get the taste you want, whether it is light to medium or a stronger flavour.

Green coffee changes drastically during the roasting process. Moisture is forced out of the bean, causing it to dry and expand and some of the natural sugars are converted into CO2 gas while others are caramelized to help form the complex flavours in the coffee.

When the process is complete, the green bean will be transformed into a brown bean that is about 18% lighter while being 50 to 100% larger.

If you are using a skillet or frying pan you will need to pay close attention and keep turning the beans to ensure they are roasted evenly. After a few goes and once you become familiar with the process you may want to have a stopwatch, notebook and pencil handy to record different times, different states and ultimately different tastes when you grind your roast and make a brew.

The roasting process removes all the moisture from green beans and goes through stages of browning the first of which is called the first crack, when the beans start to crack open with a popping noise.

Light to medium roasts normally finish somewhere between first and second crack. Dark roasts typically finish after second crack.

Eventually, all the water inside the beans evaporates and they reach second crack. The coffee steadily becomes darker and releases more carbon-like aromatics. The majority of the sugars break down, and as the roast progresses, the beverage will taste increasingly bittersweet with reduced acidity.

Once you have roasted your beans to the level you want, Remove any chaff (dried husk). Beans need to be allowed to cool down but at this stage it is important to remember that they will keep on roasting until they are cool.

You can store the beans once they have reached room temperature, but they need to be kept in a sealed airtight container away from light and heat.

If you have a go, we hope you enjoy the process and journey to tantalise your tastebuds.