Home Roasting: Top 5 Online Resources

After a short search on the Internet, it turned out that a coffee roasting machine was not actually necessary. As my intuition (and I am a home barista, after all:) told me, there are quite simple ways to roast coffee at home using improvised methods.

The Most Basic and Simple Way – A Pan

Let’s say you have a frying pan. What is the most important thing when roasting coffee? The main thing is not to overroast it. Therefore, any cast iron skillet that you have in your kitchen utensils will do, it prevents the coffee from burning immediately. Spread the beans in a thin, and most importantly, very even layer, roast it veeeeery slowly either on electric or gas oven. You shoul stir it constantly to get an even roast, you consantly just have to act like those vending machine in a roastery – stir, stir and stir all the time.

During the roasting, the green coffee beans change their color. By the way, “green” is not a color, the term simply means that the coffee beans have been dried and prepared for roasting. So, the bean should change their color from the natural patina swamp green to a rich dark chocolate color, the way you see them when you open a bag of store-buyed roasted coffee. The surface of the beans should become slightly oily and glossy. Another sign that the beans are sufficiently roasted and it’s time to stop is the taste. Try to bite into the toasted bean, it should taste like – Yes, bread! as that smell in my fav roastery:).

Okay, but how do you know if the beans are overroasted while you’re thinking about the final result for a minute? In barista jargon, overcooked beans are called “baked”. They look like they have sides that are more roasted than they should be, in fact, burnt, and most importantly, the oil is sticking out on the beans. Whereas properly roasted coffee beans have the oil mainly inside, thereby stabilizing their flavor.

How About Oven or even Aerogrill?

You can do the whole process in the oven as well. The trick is that the oven ensures more even heating and browning of the grains, but because the baking sheet is too hot, you need to be very careful when stirring the grains. To protect your hands from burns, always use a long-handled spatula and a potholder. as well. The trick is that the oven ensures more even heating and browning of the grains, but since the baking sheet is too hot, you need to be very careful when stirring the grains. To protect your hands from burning, always use a long-handled spatula and tack.

It’s not an easy task, and I bet you’ll ruin your first batch of refried beans and throw them in the trash. In my own experience, it wasn’t the first or even the second attempt that was successful – I wasted almost a whole foot bag of dried beans before I got a satisfactory result.

Where to Search for Roasting Tips?

Nowadays, many things have found their way into the virtual world of gadgets, and this trend has not passed the home barista and roaster business by. Currently, there are a number of coffee roasting apps available, such as Artisan or Cropster. All you need to do is enter the initial data on the type of coffee and weight, and then trust the app to guide you through all the roasting steps.

Home Roasting: RoyalCoffee.com

The Oakland-based company, which imports coffee from more than 30 countries of origin, has also opened a huge learning hub for coffee lovers. Even if you don’t buy any of its products, you’ll find a lot of interesting things to learn about the history of coffee, coffee varieties, brewing methods, and more. You can not only read informational materials. The resource is a hub in the fullest sense of the word – it’s a laboratory, a space for events, testing new coffee devices, and more.

The site offers many webinars and master classes that will really help you raise your personal level – now not only as a home barista, but also, I’m not afraid to say it, as a home roaster.

Home Roasting:Home-Barista.com

Although this resource is not a conventional presentation site, it is a rather informative forum for questions and answers from both professional baristas and coffee amateurs. And the ability to upload videos or photos makes the discussion even more substantive.

Unexpectedly, in the comments to one of them, I found a hint as to why my favorite roastery has a coffee roasting drum fenced off from the rest of the room. It turns out that the roasting result is also strongly influenced by the ambient temperature, which is rarely, if ever, mentioned in courses for beginners. This way, you can transfer the temperature of each individual bean to the entire roasting volume, which is valuable for an even and pleasant taste.