Why not roast coffee beans at home?

The coffee ritual can be one of life’s most enjoyable pleasures. When it comes to making sotvetop espresso coffee, how do you choose one brand over another? What makes the perfect espresso? 
There are two main coffee plants that supply most of the world’s coffee, Arabica and Robusta. Coffee beans harvested from the Aribica plant, account for around 75% of coffee consumed. It is grown is subtrobical and tropical climates and producers a finer coffee. The Arabica bean have a rather more bolder aroma and flavour, yet not as bitter as the Robusta variety.

Robusta is considered a lower quality to Arabica and is therefore predominately used in blends (where beans of different qualities and flavors are mixed together) and are typically found on your local supermarket shelves. If you want the highest quality coffee for you stovetop espresso, you need to ensure it’s 100% Arabica.

If you are after high quality coffee you should always buy beans and grind at home as you need, or if you don’t have a grinder, have the store grind a small enough amount for you to use over a few days as ground coffee doesn’t store all that well and tends to drop in quality in a short time frame.

A great alternative and a way to ensure you get the highest possible quality coffee is to roast your beans yourself at home. It really isn’t as difficult as you might thing and if you take a little time to get it right, it is well and truly worth the reward.

The most difficult aspect of roasting coffee beans at home, is actually sourcing green / raw coffee beans. Local markets and coffee supply retail stores usually carry a selection of green coffee beans for you to roast yourself.

Today there are more and more online stores supplying green beans from around the world.

With a little research you should have very little trouble finding a supply of fresh green coffee beans.

The roasting is the fun part. You can start with something as simple as your everyday popcorn maker , a frying pan over the stove (my preference), through to dedicated coffee bean rosters. The frying pan method requires a medium heat and takes about 15 minutes of regularly turning over the beans to avoid burning.

After this time you will notice beans starting to turn that beautiful chocolate brown and oil forming on the bottom of the pan. Another 5-7 minutes of roasting the bean’s own oil and you are done.

All that is left is to place the beans on a sheet of tissue paper to absorb the excess oil and dry. Then all you have to do is grind as per normal, setup your stovetop espresso maker, kick back and indulge in that perfect cup.