I can't stop thinking about that recipe for roasting coffee beans at home from Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It by Karen Solomon. I always assumed home-roasting would require elaborate equipment or a quest for raw beans, but Solomon's instructions make it sound, dare I say...simple? I'm very curious how well homemade beans stack up.
For purposes of comparison, let's go with a 12-oz bag of Starbucks whole beans. This feels like a nice middle ground between super cheap coffee and super gourmet coffee. For our homemade beans, we'll follow Solomon's technique and get our raw, green coffee beans from Sweet Maria's, an online vendor recommended by Solomon.
• 12-oz Bag Starbucks Whole Beans from at Peapod
• 1 lb Green Coffee Beans from Sweet Maria's
COST BREAKDOWN
• Starbucks Whole Beans
TOTAL: $9.99
PER OUNCE: $0.83
• Homemade Coffee Beans
TOTAL: $7.00 (this is an average based on the price range of Sweet Maria's beans)
TOTAL INCLUDING SHIPPING: $15.99
PER OUNCE: $0.44/$1.00
Green coffee beans will keep for about a year in a cloth bag in the closet. If you're consistently buying beans over the internet, it would definitely be more cost-effective to buy several pounds at a time and consolidate on shipping. Green coffee beans are also becoming more widely available at co-ops and homebrewing supply stores, so check around locally for good deals.
TIME BREAKDOWN
• Starbucks Whole Beans: 0 Minutes
• Homemade Coffee Beans: 20-30 minutes
CONVENIENCE
Solomon's recipe describes roasting eight ounces of beans in a dry Dutch oven or skillet until they toast to your desired level of doneness. You need to stand at the stove and stir the beans constantly during this time to make sure they roast evenly, but the process seems to be incredibly straightforward.
Depending on how much coffee you drink, these eight ounces might last you a while or you might find yourself making several batches of beans a week. Personally, I have trouble seeing myself wanting to take the time to roast beans more than once a week. I have a feeling that if you're a big coffee drinker, at some point it would become more convenient to buy an actual coffee roaster that would let you roast larger batches.
TASTINESS AND HEALTHFULNESS
One thing is for sure: if you do the roasting yourself, you are absolutely guaranteed fresh beans for your coffee! This seems like the biggest advantage of DIY beans over store-bought. Unless you have a local coffee company with a true commitment to quality and freshness, the beans you buy in a store are very likely no longer fresh by coffee connoisseur standards.
I also like the idea of experimenting with different levels of roastedness and trying beans from all over the world. With commercial coffee, we're stuck with whatever the coffee roaster deems best. Which very often is the best, but still, who knows?!
I am very curious about the quality of home-roasted coffee verses a really good commercial roaster. While places like Sweet Maria's makes quality green beans available to home cooks, I doubt my own ability to roast them properly. I have a feeling that I'd go through a bunch of mediocre (at best) roasted coffee beans before settling into a groove.
I also wonder about consistency when roasting in a dutch oven. Maybe it's great? Maybe the results are spotty? Maybe I'd want to upgrade to real roasting equipment after a short time? No choice but to give it a go and see how the coffee turns out, I suppose!
MAKE OR BUY?
Right now, I'm going to say that there's a time and place for both. If you're a coffee lover living in a coffee desert without real access to good beans, then home-roasting might be just the ticket. Roasting our own coffee certainly sounds like a fun project, especially given the minimal upfront costs.
VERDICT: Try it for fun; you might get hooked.
Do you roast your own coffee? What's your method?
Related: Make or Buy? Ice Cream
(Images: Starbucks/Peapod and Angie Cao © 2011 for Ten Speed Press)
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I've always wanted to give roasting my own coffee a try as I have a few friends who do it for fun. But there is a cafe a mere 5 minute walk down the street from me that roasts their own coffee with exceptional results, so I usually just buy from them.
This whole make or buy series is getting silly. I'm as big of a proponent of DIY'ing as most others who read TheKitchn are but come on! Roasting coffee beans?? Really??
This is a buy for me. For me it's the same as asking something like "Knives buy or make", is it possible, yes, is it easy, no. Granted roasting coffee isn't as hard as metallurgy. But I'd rather let someone with years of experience that has honed their craft to perfection do the work.
Well said @rosebud. It's coffee. For the most notorious of "lazy" food/drinks you're lucky to find people who buy whole beans and take the 2 seconds to fresh grind it! I think it's a bit of a stretch to think people out there hunt for and buy unroasted beans and roast them themselves.
Next time, can someone who has actually roasted their own coffee bean make the comparison? This is all based on suppositions.
Agreed. Fantastic concept, but the execution is making these less and less click-worthy.
I too was disappointed to see that Emma didn't roast her own beans before making this comparison. This series isn't really a favorite of mine to begin with, but any usefulness it has goes completely out the window when the "make" hasn't actually been made.
Plus, while roasting coffee beans isn't something I'd like to do myself, I would have been very interested to read about Emma's experience with it.
My husband roasts his own coffee at home with a FreshRoast500. It was an investment, to be sure, but we can also get cheap green coffee beans here in town (no shipping cost!) For him, it's the art of roasting each batch to certain specifications based on the region, etc, in order to get the best flavor. A labor of love, but so is my sewing hobby. I could buy clothes with less effort than making them, but what's the fun in that? My husband doesn't roast regularly, more of a special occasion type of thing, but he's hoping to roast more once his home-beer-brewing gets into it's own routine. I think it's all about the gratification you get from doing it.
The one huge advantage home roasted coffee beans has is that you know they're fresh roasted, and the difference between any fresh roasted coffee and stale coffee (anything more than 2-3 weeks past roast) is night and day. There are tons (most? a vast majority?) of beans out there that were roasted well and then sit in bags for months before they even end up on the shelf, nevermind back in your kitchen. If you don't when the coffee was roasted it's almost impossible to get a great cup of out of it.
The cost of home roasting can be high, but it doesn't have to be, you can roast on the stove top for practically free, or buy a used popcorn popper or breadmachine (and heat gun) at the thrift store for a few bucks. But it will still take a ton of practice and experimentation to be able to roast 1/2 as well as the really great artisan roasters out there.
Which is fine because you can get fresh roasted beans, from some of the best farms in the world, fair trade, shade grown, ect. from some of the best roasters in the business shipped to your door for a couple bucks more a pound than what you find in the groccery store (or at starbucks). And most cities have a roaster or two that is good or even great, they might be right in your neighborhood. In fact if you're buying more than a pound or two, you might even be able to get artisan beans from a small roaster cheaper than what it costs to buy some starbucks.
I go through about a pound of coffee a week, and I'd guess that 90% of that is bought online. I do roast a little bit, but that's more for fun, or to try out coffees that you can't get roasted for whatever reason.
Also note: popcorn popper is a very good roaster for small batches.
Tough crowd :-)
I've roasted my own coffee for years, and I do recommend it. The difference in freshness, and in terms of being able to control degree of roast, is very considerable... you can tease flavors out of a dry-processed Ethiopian that you never thought possible, for example.
That said, I very much doubt that a skillet or a Dutch oven is a good way to roast coffee. An uneven roast is nearly assured, and the smoke is pungent to say the least. If you drink as much coffee as I do, though, the difference between premium green beans (at $6 or so a pound) and the equivalent roasted beans (generally twice the price) will make up for the cost of an inexpensive roaster—an iRoast 2, or even a Behmor—in the medium or long run... your break-even point is maybe in the 30-60 lb. range.
I have tried DIY roasting coffee beans using an old air popcorn popper( there are tutorials online and in coffee forums). It is worth your time if you use great coffee green beans and give yourself time to experiment. I used this great color chart to help me figure out which color and sheen equaled what type of roasting level. It took me only 3 trial and error times to figure it out. If you keep a log it's helpful. For me it is worth it to do for special occasions but not a part of my weekly routine. They make great gifts! If you find a popcorn air popper for free on craigslist like I did then give it a try. Personally if you have a good local roaster near you, it might not be worth it to do on your own. Also stale beans will never roast good coffee, invest and research or buy from your local roaster. Have fun!
You lost me at the more-than-the-cost-of-beans shipping price. Also at the fact that we drink coffee so rarely that there's just no point. Ditto many of the above complaints. I love to see these buy or diy articles, but can we move back to things that are somewhat reasonable?
I am surprised that Bear Braumoeller was the only one who mentioned the smoke issue...I hear it's pretty overwhelming, even when you have your own tabletop roaster. I can only imagine how much smoke it gives off to do it properly in an open skillet.
Luckily for me, Intelligentsia is just a few minutes away. Support your local roaster and ask questions if you're unsure of the freshness of your beans!
I think that everything thinks roasting coffee is too hard, but I think that's the point, its so easy. The hardest part by far is getting some green coffee beans (sweet marias has a great sample pack that's a good deal). Granted, you're not going to get the same results as Intelligentsia, but after a few practice runs you can easily be getting better beans than what 90% of people drink. If you make your own coffee every day it's definitely worth a try sometime.
I have been roasting my own coffee for about six months now. Once a day. The smoke can take a bit of getting used to and it varies depending on the bean and how dark you like your roast.
Worth it if you drink coffee everyday. Depending on the bean and the roast I can completely cut sugar out of my coffee because it is sweet enough as is. Best investment I've ever made.
As for getting beans, I get mine mail order. Five pounds for what I used to spend in two weeks in town.
or, you can just go the Intelligentsia route. Day-of order/purchase roasting and exceptional quality. You pay for it, but if you already spend 15-20 each morning brewing by weighing/measuring/grinding/pre-heating your device/boiling/brewing/decanting and then finally serving with your French Press, Pour-over (Kone filter), Cafe Solo, Vacuum Pot, or Chemex, it's totally worth it to buy from them with regard to time, quality, and opportunity cost.
Late to the party on this one, but make. It's easy to roast some incredibly good coffee and you can buy green in bulk for a great price. Specialty etailers like Sweet Maria's are fantastic for providing cupping reviews, no fail blends, and roasting advice. We've done plenty of roasting with nothing more than a wooden spoon, stainless steel bowl, and a heat gun.
Freshly roasted coffee beans are available online from The Daily Grind, and they offer a good selection of international choices: Bolivia, Columbia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, and Sumatra. Most are organic and/or Fair Trade, too. Prices are competitive.