I recently saw an ethiopian style “coffee ceremony” where they roast beans in front of you, as part of the show.
Question: Is it really better (worth it) for the effort of roasting my own coffee beans? Or is it just for ‘show’ and the vacuum sealed beans in teh store, if high quality, are good enough?
Oh, hell yeah. It’s MUCH better coffee and it’s cheaper too.
If you drink your coffee black, you can tell the difference in coffee types and freshness. But if you put cream and sugar, or milk and artificial sweetner in it, it’s not worth the time or cost, you won’t notice much if any difference, unless you drink it black.
So what do you do? Just buy unroasted beans and roast them? How?
Your easiest option would to find a coffee shop that roasts their own coffee. Roasting isn’t too complex but, unless you are a full on coffee freak, you probably won’t notice the difference if you buy your coffee from a local shop and store it properly.
Slee, who used to run a little Mom and Mom* coffee shop.
*Owned by a lesbian couple.
Here’s a good place to start:
Sweet Maria’s
Here’s a previous thread on roasting coffee.
Does your house and up smelling super awesome when you roast beans? That would be… awesome…
Coffee smells too good.
I’ve a friend with a home roaster. It’s not much larger than a coffee maker. The smell is out of this world, and the coffee is beyond fantastic. Just make sure you get a quality roaster.
FWIW, he recently switched to a local coffee shop that roasts their own in-house for convenience.
Dude, I drink my coffee with half & half, hubby drinks his with a little bit of sugar. You can definitely tell the difference between cheap crappy coffee & good coffee even if you put stuff in it. Bad coffee is bad coffee, regardless of whether or not you sweeten or cream it.
(of course, if you’re talking 3/4 milk and sweetener and 1/4 coffee then the importance of quality coffee goes down. But I’m just talking a bit of half & half or sugar in a cup, not some Latte Monstrosity)
I buy my coffee whole bean from a local roaster. It’s fresh and delicious. I’m not at all tempted to try roasting it myself, I’ll leave it to the professionals.
I agree. And it’s not just the coffee…it’s who makes it and what technique they use. Two different people can each make a latte with the same beans on the same equipment, and one can make ambrosia and the other can make swill.
No need to be a pro with this.
It’s easy. Two roasts (about 15 minutes each) last almost a week for two people. The link goes to Amazon, but if you buy the roaster from Sweet Maria’s, you can opt for the roaster plus 1 pound sample packs of green coffee - I chose the 10 one pound samplers. It was a great deal and a great way to sample a lot of coffees.
Missed the edit window. I’ll add that the iRoast2 is no longer available from Sweet Maria’s.
From my experience (having visited a friend who was roasting his own beans) the smell during the roasting process is very different from the smell of fully roasted beans. Very pungent and not particularly pleasant— after a first attempt, said friend decided to do the roasting outside on a back patio from them on, so as not to inundate the house with the smell.
That’s my experience as well. Also, roasting generates smoke that will set off every smoke detector in your place.
The roasted beans begin to smell heavenly shortly after roasting.
You don’t live 2 miles from my coffee roaster guy. Trust me, there’s nothing I can do at home with a $200 machine that will in any way even come close to the magic this man does.
I used to live about a block from a coffee shop that did their own roasting. There was an almost-constant acrid smoke smell that you could smell half a block away. Of course, they went through a lot of coffee beans, but I think you would probably still have enough smoke to where roasting inside the house would be unfeasible.
From what I understand, due to transit and shelf time, it’s usually at least a few weeks from roast to coffee cup for most grocery store coffee. You probably won’t get a better roast than you’d get from a busy coffee house, but you should get better than the grocery store. Is it worth it? That depends on how serious you are about your coffee.