Friday, February 10, 2012

Want Fresh Coffee?

Roast it yourself...

Last week at Siciliano's, Steve sweet talked Matt and I into purchasing green coffee beans with the allure of roasting being a "simple" process. Simple. Absolutely. But only at the cost of completely smoking out every floor of our house. Here was our adventure:


 Ethiopian Guji Natural Sidamo in a nice handy zip-loc foil pouch. Purchased from Siciliano's at 6.49 a pound.

Pale green tint and a wonderful smell of chocolate and nuts. I was expecting something "greener" like a nice floral or grassy aroma. But nope. Chocolate.
Matt got the pan nice and hot and tossed in the beans. 
Constantly stirring with a wooden spoon, the crackles and pops slowly started to come.
Getting darker with louder and more frequent popping. 
The beans really started to smoke at this point. I can't say the smell was anywhere close to coffee. Just smelled burned...
The beans smoked for a good minute before they started to turn really really dark.
At this point, the beans were consistently dark. Matt was reading that green coffee beans have the highest amount of caffeine and the more you roast it, the more the caffeine roasts out. 
We have to quickly cool the beans so that they would stop roasting.
Good thing its winter.
I was worried these were too dark. My anxieties were kindled, however, when we brewed a quick batch with the french press. Dark, fruity, and smooth. Quite unexpected.
Middle of winter and had to open all the doors. Smoke was everywhere.
In the end, with the simplicity of dropping some beans into a hot pan for 8 minutes combined with the aggravation of smoking ourselves out of our house, I'd say this tasty cup of brew was well worth it. But then again I'm the type of person who has no qualms about putting some extra effort into something I know will be a greater reward. I'd have to recommend doing this outside next time though, or at the very least during a season where you can comfortably open all the doors and windows.

Come to think of it...this would be absolutely perfect to take on a camping trip!

2 comments:

  1. That sounds really good! do you have some left over coffe beans?

    ReplyDelete
  2. We do! Matt and I only roasted half of what was in the bag. We put the leftover roasted beans in a ball jar which should last a couple weeks. The unroasted beans we kept in the handy zip-lock bag it came in.

    ReplyDelete