How to roast coffee at home – Roasting is both a science and an art form. It entails carefully applying heat to coffee beans in order to transform raw ‘green’ coffee beans into the brown coffee beans we all consume on a daily basis.
The unprocessed green coffee beans are leathery fruit-like compounds that lack all of the characteristics of the roasted bean, including aroma and taste.
These green beans contain over a thousand substances, only about fifty of which are required in the coffee as we know it. The idea behind roasting is to remove the undesirable substances while concentrating the beneficial ones in order to bring out the aroma and flavor locked inside the green beans.
Roasting releases flavorful substances, increases the visibility of raw beans due to moisture loss, increases their size, makes them crunchy, and causes a color change ranging from light brown to dark.
Recognizing the roasting process expands our understanding for the art and science of pouring the perfect cup of coffee. Home roasting also guarantees that our coffee is as fresh as possible and that the roast is as light or dark as we prefer.
3 Reason Why We Have to Roast Coffee at Home
There are some reasons behind roasting coffee at home for beginners. Those important reasons are:
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We can get the freshness
Freshness is an important consideration: some green beans can be stored for up to a year after harvest without going stale. Roasted beans, on the other hand, begin to lose their flavors and aromas after only a few weeks.
Buying green and roasting small amounts of coffee every week, or even every day, will keep your coffee fresh.
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We can save our money
Furthermore, green beans are significantly less expensive than roasted beans. In the long run, once we’ve refined your technique and have all of our equipment, we could save a lot of money.
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Strengthen the knowledge
Home roasting will also assist us in expanding our coffee knowledge. We’ll begin to understand what makes our favorite coffee taste so good and how we can change our roast profile or buy different beans to emphasize that. Our palate will improve with time and practice, allowing us to appreciate our coffee even more.
What are the Methods of Roasting Coffee?
Before recognizing how to roast coffee at home for beginners, we should recognize the method of roasting first. It is important to recognize because it will help us in roasting coffee. Hot air roasting and drum roasting are the two most common roasting methods.
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Drum roasting
This kind of roasting methods has a smaller scale than Hot Air roasting. It entails heating small batches of coffee to 230 degrees for about 12 minutes. Slow roasting removes all of the beans’ acidic flavors.
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Hot air roasting
To meet the needs of coffee around the world, the coffee industry resorts to the Hot Air Roasting method, also known as industrial roasting, because drum roasting takes more time and produces less coffee.
For about three minutes, a large batch of coffee is heated at extremely high temperatures in a current of hot air. However, industrially roasted beans have a more acidic flavor.
How to Roast Coffee at Home for Beginners
After recognizing important reasons and methods of roasting coffee, the next step is recognizing how to roast coffee at home. The following steps are:
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Buying green beans
It all starts with the beans, which are technically seeds. Green is the color of fresh beans. They lighten several shades after drying. They are completely transformed after being roasted, becoming the beautiful and inviting rich shades of brown that we are accustomed to seeing.
Consistency is the key to making great coffee. Choose beans with consistent size and color to ensure an even, consistent roast and flavor. It is critical to get these two elements – color and size – right in order to avoid producing coffee with an inconsistent and unfavorable flavor.
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Roasting coffee
There are some tools for roasting coffee; by using a pan, an oven, a popcorn maker, and a home roaster below. However, this article will only describe how to roast coffee by using a home roaster because it can be used for beginners.
We should recognize first about the pros and cons of using this kind of method.
Pros:
- Long-lasting and purpose-built
- Easy to use and clean
Cons:
- More expensive than other alternatives
- More clumsy than other options
- Things that’s needed
Before we roast the coffee, we will need several things below:
- Beans
- Coffee roasting machine
- Heatproof mitts
- Optional: colander x 2
- Method of roasting coffee by using a home roaster:
- Ventilation
Smoke will be produced by all roasting methods, including dedicated machines.
- Turn machine on. Add beans
Follow the manufacturer’s recommendations. Machines are similar, but the requirements vary.
- Monitor the entire roasting process
Many machines claim to be fully automated. Roasting times can still vary due to all of the variables (bean size/type, ambient temperature, machine age, etc.).
- Listen for the first and second “cracks”
The first refers to a light roast. The second denotes a medium. Once the beans have reached the desired level of roasting, remove them from the oven.
- Transfer between colanders to cool the beans
Your machine might have its own cooling system. If not, cool them down as soon as possible.
- To avoid the inevitable chaffy mess, do this in the sink or outside.
- For this step, use oven mitts.
- Allow the beans to vent CO2 for 12 hours
This is important to note. People often believe that the color of roasted beans determines the amount of caffeine in them. The darker the color, the more caffeine there is in the bean. This, however, is not the case.
As a result, there isn’t much of a difference in caffeine concentration between the various types of beans. Nonetheless, lighter roasts have a slightly higher caffeine concentration.
Coffee oil that is released during the roasting process is not oil. Depending on how long the beans were roasted, the moisture and carbohydrates released from the raw beans during roasting form a caramelized coating on the roasted bean.
In sum, those are some step of roasting coffee at home for beginner. There are several things that can be the consideration when roasting the coffee. Those things are important reasons, methods, and tools for roasting coffee at home for the beginners.
