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How To Roast Coffee Beans Professionally

Place Beans In A Ceramic Container

Nesco Coffee Roaster Demo with Home Roast Coffee

Now that youve finished your coffee beans, transfer them into a stainless steel or ceramic container. Plastic is not suitable. It will often melt because of the high temperatures of the coffee beans. An opaque glass container works well.

Once they have cooled for a couple of minutes, use two colanders and toss the beans gently between the two. This helps get off the protective chaff, or skin that green coffee beans have on them come off. If this isnt removed, the coffee may taste a little bitter.

What Makes Coffee Taste Different

There are hundreds of ways to enjoy a cup of coffee. A simple adjustment in the brew can instantly transform its taste. But why does coffee taste so different? The things that make coffee taste different are due to its ingredient, and partly, it is also about its science.

One key factor that addresses the question of what makes coffee taste different is the beans’ origin. Each growing region renders a specific trait or characteristics to your coffee and enhances its flavor profile.

For instance, Kenya and Sumatra are popular origins of coffee, and they have different climates for growing their beans. Heres what we know about the parts that make coffee taste different from one another.

Home Coffee Roasting Methods

If you have a kitchen then you are pretty much good to go. This article is directed mainly at anyone that wants to try roasting coffee at home cheaply.

You can spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds on a home coffee roaster but if you go down that road you are looking at a major investment in something that you dont even know if its something you want to be doing over the long term.

If you are just getting started there are other ways that will cost you from zero to about £50.

There are a number of different ways to roast coffee at home, some better than others but you can try out most of them for little to no cost so our recommendation is to try a few and see which one you get on with the best and go from there.

Coffee roasting machine

A machine that is specifically made for roasting coffee beans will require little to no learning as it is made specifically for one purpose only.

Each machine differs slightly but essentially you choose the temperature you want the beans to roast at and how long you want to roast them for and the machine does the rest.

If you dont mind spending the money then its the easiest way to get good results but its not very much fun and not recommended for beginners because if you decide its not for you then you have wasted your money.

Try one of the other methods first and if you like what you produce then you can consider a dedicated coffee roasting machine later.

Roasting coffee with a popcorn machine
Roasting coffee in a pan

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See The Roastery For Yourself

Extract encourage all consumers, restaurant, hotel and cafe owners to get to know their local roastery to find out more about the coffees on offer. They provide free training to all their accounts, as they want to ensure their coffee always tastes as it should.Simply walk in to Extract Coffee where they roast to order.

Inside the roastery you’ll find a selection of freshly ground coffee and beans, along with a friendly, passionate and enthusiastic team. It’s well worth a visit whether you’re a coffee-lover, barista or café owner as getting to know your local roastery can only benefit the coffee chain.

The guys at Extract also pointed out that speciality coffee capsules look set to make a big impact in the coffee market soon…

How And When To Build A Team

Coffee Roasts Guide

As a coffee roasting business grows, there are four key positions to hire people for:

  • Sales and marketing, which grows a roastery by seeking new customers
  • Packaging, which packages up roasted coffee
  • Delivery and customer service, which delivers packaged coffee and answers customers inquiries
  • Profile roasting, which roasts coffee according to set parameters

The first three positions let you focus on finding new coffees, developing new blends and growing the business. Hiring a profile roaster ensures coffee will still be roasted if you become sick and provides you with an opportunity to take a vacation.

Next Steps

Check out our How to Start a Business page.

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There Are 30 Million Coffee Drinkers In The United States Who Order Specialty Coffee From A Coffee Shop Every Day

While roasting coffee is the primary skill of a professional coffee roaster, its only one of many responsibilities that comes with the job. Coffee roasters will have some part in almost every step of production. From assisting the purchase of green coffee, to quality control in blending and packaging, todays coffee roaster is a jack of all trades for the business.

The Coffee Roasting Basics How To Roast Coffee Beans

Coffee. The journey starts with the green bean and ends up as the perfect beverage entirely made to your liking. Whether you like your coffee as a cold brew, dripped or filtered, espresso, or any other possibility, they all have one thing in common it all starts with the green bean. In this article, we share the basics behind the process of roasting coffee beans. What steps does the green bean go through to eventually become that delicious roasted coffee bean we all know and love, and whats the science behind it?

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Hot Air Popcorn Popper

One of the best portable alternatives to a coffee roasting machine, this method is perhaps most common for first-time roasters. If you have a deck or patio with an outlet, this will ensure you can keep the heat and smoke out of your kitchen while roasting your coffee beans.

But, be careful. Most popcorn poppers have warranties that will be voided if its used for anything other than popcorn. They dont last too long, so buy a cheap one to start.

Coffee Beans At Each Stage Of The Roasting Process

Video: A roastmaster explains the art of roasting coffee

The raw, green unroasted beans can be seen at the top left of the picture. This is how they look fresh out of the sack. The top row of beans show the phase between the initial drop, to the point after about four minutes of roasting time. There is not much sugar development during this period, as the beans only start to do this after about six minutes.

The final three examples shown bottom right are over-roasted, for a demonstration of how far the roast can go. At this stage, the sugars stop developing and the beans start to burn. They will turn a shiny colour as the oils are forced out, and the beans become dehydrated. These beans are what you might expect to see in most commercial coffee shops to cater for western palettes, tasting ashy and charred. In the western world, most coffee is roasted to this level which creates a bitter taste, which is why milk and sugar is often added.

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A Great Basic Overview

Before you buy the beans and fire up the stove, youll want to give yourself a little bit of know-how regarding what exactly happens when youre roasting coffee, and how to generally achieve the best results. Youll need to know that coffee typically roasts at very high temperatures, that there will be a somewhat slow development for the first five to seven minutes, and after that things start to snap, crackle, and pop pretty quickly. See the roasting coffee overview.

A post shared by Trevor on Jun 15, 2019 at 2:32pm PDT

Friends and family during a coffee ceremony in Ethiopia and cowboys huddled round a campfire both drink coffee made this same way: Simply toss some green beans in a pan and hit em with heat until theyre done. This recipe utilizes the high, direct heat of a grill, but you can get roughly the same results with a gas stove. See the tutorial.

Lodge Seasoned 10.25-Inch Cast Iron Skillet, $14.88 on Amazon

One of the most versatile tools in any kitchen.

Roasters Have Two Tools: Heat And Time

The roaster we have has different profiles that you can express on a graph based on how hot the roaster is for how long, and how it varies the heat over time.

You can approach the bean by warming it up slowly, or you can fairly quickly heat to a certain level and vary it strategically from there. As bean distributors learn about how the bean responds to different ways of roasting, they may suggest particular approaches.

One of the things that Ive learned is that roasting is an art: roasters develop an ear for how the beans crack in specific ways when they are still cooking versus when they’re finished and ready to be ground up. But its also a science, in the sense that if you take enough notes on how roasts turned out after certain time and heat, you can observe patterns.

After all, thats how Behmor programmed those original settings to make it a little easier for home roasters we dont have to burn as many beans in order to learn the ropes anymore.

That being said, we still fry batches occasionally, and have beans that seem to have been roasting forever and still look way too green. Roasting for yourself really helps you appreciate just how much professionals put in to understanding heat and time before they can consistently roast a great batch.

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Roasting For Filter Or Espresso

Have you ever thought what actually is the difference between filter and espresso coffee? Filter extraction is done by gravity and its process is quite gentle. You may use very aromatic and more acidic coffee for filter. On the other hand espresso is extracted with a 9 bar pressure. That means more flavour is extracted to the cup. Sometimes coffee roasted for espresso might not be as good when brewed as filter coffee and vice versa. Some roastmasters want to roast only for the bean and not for the extraction method which means the aim for golden middle way between too light and too dark so that coffee is suitable for both.

Traditionally espresso is dark roasted coffee with low acidity and big body. Filter coffee is roasted differently in different countries, but roast degree is typically lighter than for espresso. Nowadays roast styles are more flexible than traditionally. For example, our Ethiopia Amaro Gayo espresso was third in Helsinki Coffee Festival espresso competition. The espresso was light roasted with a fast profile which made it really aromatic with low roastiness. Body was rather juicy than heavy. On the other hand, we want some of our coffees be more full bodied as espressos. Then we roast a little bit longer and make the development stage longer to develop flavour and decrease acidity.

Further reading:

Start Your Roast And Stir Your Beans

Best Home Coffee Roasters: So You Can Roast Your Own ...

If youre using a popcorn popper or coffee roasting machine with an automatic agitator, turn on your machine and record the time.

If youre using a manual crank or stirring them on the stovetop or in an oven, make sure to constantly stir! Oven times may be longer since you will be taking them in and out of the oven stir every 30 seconds.

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Learning From The Experts

After the most recent dispiriting cup, the one that smelled like plain hot water, I figured its time to get some expert perspective.

Sweetleaf in New York, where I drink a lot of excellent coffee, has a sure yet delicate touch with roasting, so I invited myself to watch Rich Nieto, the owner, preparing to make espresso. He dumps 20 kilograms of green coffee beans into the heated belly of his Joper roaster, a Smart carsize machine from Portugal with a napped black metal finish that makes it look like a goth Thomas the Tank Engine.

Where my home machine uses a flow of hot air, the Joper, like most commercial roasting machines, is built around a rotating drum, sort of like a clothes dryer, that tumbles the beans above a powerful gas burner. While it does, our eyes stay on the screen of the laptop hooked to the Joper, where a temperature graph is slowly etched from left to right. The beans temperature rockets upward, 200°F , 250°F , slowing gracefully as it passes 300°F . Nieto dances back and forth between the screen and the roaster, making small, choreographed adjustments to the temperature and airflow to help the coffee beans follow a precise path along the graph.

Second crack is when the cellulose itself starts to weaken and break apart under the influence of sustained heat. Carbon dioxide pushes out from the fractured cell walls, and so do oils, which will glisten and bead on the surface of darker-roasted coffee beans.

What Else Do You Need To Do

Once youve decided that this is the job for you, register a business name and get a website url as soon as possible. If nothing else this will make it a little more real in your own mindand secure that awesome name youve come up with.

Ready to hit the shelves and hoppers of local cafés. Credit: Coffee Post AU

Also be prepared to work your butt off! In a small coffee business youre the roaster, marketer, administrator, spokesperson, packager, delivery driver, sales rep, and more. Its a business and as much as you might only want to roast, if you dont find a way to take joy in every aspect of it, it might not be a very successful one.

Loading up the hopper between roast cycles. Coffee Post AU

Are you a roaster? Or dreaming of roasting? I wouldnt be where I am without the help and support of everyone else in this industry. If anyone out there has questions or recommendations for me, Im only too happy to talk. Let us know your experiences in the comments or on facebook.

And good luck!

Feature Photo Credit: Matt Biddulph

Perfect Daily Grind.

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At Home Roasting Methods

So there are 4 different types of coffee roasting that can be done at home, all with their own pros and cons, lets have a brief overview.

  • Pan Roasting Coffee Beans
  • Roasting in a Popcorn Popper
  • Roasting in a Home Coffee Roaster

They are pretty self-explanatory. Pan roasting is roasting in a pan, usually a cast iron skillet. Oven roasting is roasting beans in the oven, and so on. While all of these are valid roasting methods, the one Ill show you today is how to roast coffee beans in a pan, which is my favorite method besides using an actual coffee roaster.

So whats wrong with the other options? Well, oven roasting coffee beans produces far too much smoke for me. While pan roasting produces smoke as well, if your room is well ventilated you should be fine. But when you roast beans in the oven, that smoke builds up and can be overpowering when you try to take them out.

The popcorn machine method, which I see often on the web, is a joke in my opinion. While you can get success with this method, I think its just too dangerous and not cost effective. There is too much chance of starting a fire, as well as the fact that eventually you will break your popcorn machine after a couple of months of roasting.

But surely the best method is using a purpose built coffee roaster, right? Right! However, theyre either so damn expensive, or ridiculously difficult to use.

So, unfortunately, there is no cheap and easy method. Well other than buying beans that have already been roasted.

Growth Of Specialty Coffee

How to Become a Coffee Roaster

Specialty coffee has become big business over the last 10 years. Consider that in 2005 there were 42,909 coffee shops in the United States and by 2015 that number had increased to 53,987. Is this a result of the third wave coffee movement? It certainly is a factor, as coffee drinkers are more savvy today than ever about what makes a quality cup of coffee.

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The Actual Roasting Process

After pouring the beans, an endothermic process begins where they take in heat and slowly start to turn yellow. At this point, you get a toast-like fragrance. Roasting machines need you to check the temperature levels in intervals, varying by a minute or so.

At around 205 degrees Celsius, you get the first crack. What happens is that the beans enlarge in size as the trapped moisture tries to escape. Other physical and chemical changes are still taking place. During the first crack, the coffee seeds acquire a light brown color but lose an average of 5% of the total weight. The first brownish color is a sign of light roast.

After the first crack, the temperature rises to 220 degree Celsius to turn the beans from light brown to brown. That means you have a medium roast with a 13% weight loss. As the color shifts, the beans undergo pyrolysis, a chemical process that changes the beans composition as they release carbon dioxide.

What Supplies Do We Need

Like any other task, you will need some essential equipment and ingredients while doing it. However, do not miss anything otherwise, you will not succeed and, all ingredients and efforts will be wasted.

First of all, you will need an oven that provides high temperatures. You can do it in an oven, but make sure that the coffee is getting enough heat all over. Moreover, the heat should reach everywhere evenly. The Gas oven is more suitable for this purpose.

Then you will need some green and fresh coffee beans. If you do not collect beans, what will you roast? So, that is an essential thing you will need.

The next thing you will need is a steam pan or a cookie sheet. Steam pan or cookie sheet lets the steam go through the beans and crack the outer lair.

A whisker or wooden spoon will be the next thing you need. Stir the beans while roasting. Therefore, there will be no risk of coffee beans to be over roasted or under roasted.

Another thing you can keep is a stopwatch. You can monitor the time with a stopwatch. So, you can roast the bean exactly as the required time, not more or less.

Only roasting perfectly will not do. Use an airtight container to preserve the roasted coffee before further processing. Do not let any micro-organisms grow there.

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