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Roasting Coffees At Home
By Randy Wilson, Fri Dec 9th
Roasting Coffees at home is a passion with many coffeeaficionados, and there are even societies, special interestgroups and online mailing lists dedicated to this hobby. Butwith so many options for pre-roasted, pre-packaged supermarketvariety coffee, why would anyone in their right minds want totake the trouble of doing it all themselves? First, with a little practice you can soon learn to do it justright, to perfectly suit your taste buds. Secondly, you knowexactly what goes into your coffee, without needing to dependupon the small print on shrink-wraps. Thirdly, there is ofcourse the satisfaction of being able to roast good coffeeyourself, and enjoy the rich taste of a pure home brew. Finally,there's the fact that green coffee beans cost about half theroasted variety. Even if you decide to buy dedicated equipmentlike a coffee popper instead of using the good old-fashioned gasoven, you can soon recover the hardware costs with RoastingCoffees at home. Choosing the right beans is a very important step. There arenumerous varieties of green coffee beans available; you need toread up a little and also experiment with different kinds beforedetermining what's good for you. How much relative importanceyou attach to the smoothness, thickness, weight, flavor,complexity or body of your coffee will be the factor behind yourchoice. For Roasting Coffees at home, always buy Arabica beansrather than Robusta. Arabica, though costlier, is certainly moresavoury, and has more richness and complexity.
Depending on whether you prefer a bright, acidy taste or afull-bodied flavor, vary the roasting temperature of your gasoven. Preheat a perforated pan to between 500 and 540 degreesFahrenheit. Lower temperatures will yield more body, while thehigher range tends to produce coffee with more pungency,brightness and
acidity. Buying some sample roasted beans of yourfavourite flavor is good for comparison study in the earlystages of your home coffee roasting.Arrange the beans one-layer deep on the pan and insert in theoven. In about 7 to 10 minutes after you begin the coffeeroasting, you should begin to hear the beans popping. Starting 2or 3 minutes after that, keep peeping in every minute or so, tofind out whether the beans are approaching the colour andtexture of your sample variety. You'll see that coffee beansnearly double in size during the process, and develop an oily,dark texture. Conventional wisdom has it that you need to wait for at least 4hours (and up to a day) after coffee roasting, before you cangrind and enjoy your drink. However, fresh roasted coffeedirectly from the oven is also delicious. Use a conical burrgrinder for grinding if possible, because they use an optimalrevolution speed. Other grinders that rotate too fast cangenerate excessive heat, thereby compromising the taste andflavor. Roasting Coffees at home is easy to do, and you should get thehang of it after only a few trials and errors. In addition tobeing cheaper and more customizable than supermarket varieties,Roasting Coffees also recaptures some of the romance about thispassion that has been forgotten since the coming of mass coffeeproduction and large scale advertising. If you want to really get into roasting your own coffees, youcould purchase a Coffee Roaster. At any rate, your coffee willbe much fresher and better tasting if you choose to roast andgrind your own coffees.
About the author:© Copyright Randy Wilson, All Rights Reserved. |
