Lesson 9: Home Roasting‏

Today's lesson is all about home roasting; the benefits and
potential pitfalls of roasting your own coffee.

Home roasting has become increasingly popular in recent years with
the release of the 'Hottop', 'Cafe Gene', 'I-Roast' and 'I-Roast 2'
home roasting machines.

Without doubt, home roasting is a rewarding hobby that lets you get
more involved in the process of making coffee.

There are many benefits to the home roaster over buying pre-roasted
coffee:

Freshness. It allows you to roast the coffee exactly when you want
it;

Cost. There is a cost saving when shipping green beans in bulk
versus a number of smaller bags containing roasted coffee. There
usually also a discount of 30-40% when buying green beans instead
of roasted (see below for potential loses for the home roaster);

Allows the consumer to have a wider range of coffees available at
any given time as green beans will store for a much longer time
than roasted coffee.

However, there are also potential loses consider when home roasting:

Burning the roast. If you burn the roast, you will probably end up
with something unusable that will be wasted;

Shrinkage. Most people roasting at home do not take into account
the shrinkage when roasting coffee. On average, depending on the
roast style, around 15-20% of the starting weight is lost in chaff
and moisture reduction. This means that allied with wear and tear
on the roasting machine, it is not always a money saver to roast at
home;

Experimentation. To develop a roast profile for a coffee, a
professional roaster will try out many different roast styles
before settling on the one to use. The home roaster may not have
this luxury, and consequently may not be able to enjoy the same
standard of coffee.

On the whole, home roasting is very rewarding and many people view
it as an exciting hobby rather than a way of saving money over
buying roasted coffee.

There are many coffee resources offering information about home
roasting, such as:

www.toomuchcoffee.com

www.coffeegeek.com

www.homebarista.com

www.homeroasters.org
Grind per brew! Coffee101.co.uk