Own An Air Popcorn Popper? Roast Your Own Coffee Credit.com

Do you have an air popcorn popper taking up space in your pantry? Why not turn it into a multi-tasking tool and roast your own coffee beans. Mark Frauenfelder, founder of Boing Boing and editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine, did just that. It's easier (and less time consuming) than you think!

Mark explains that he has three main reasons for roasting his own beans. First, unroasted coffee beans are cheaper than those that have been already roasted. Also, green coffee beans keep for a year without loosing their flavor. And roasting in small batches saves him time.

Basically, he roasts the beans for about ten minutes in the air popper and then allows them to cool for 24 hours. He can roast enough for just a few cups and always have freshly roasted beans on hand.

Do you roast your own coffee beans?

Read more: Save Money and Have Fun Roasting Your Own Coffee at Credit.com

(Images: Mark Frauenfelder/Credit.com)

Comments (9)

Does the next batch of popcorn taste like coffee?

I'm not a coffee drinker but I toast pine nuts in my air popper. In the oven or pan they always turn out with burned and raw spots but in the air popper they are perfectly browned all over. They only problem is trying to wipe out the oily pine nut residue before it cools and solidifies.

Hah, what a brilliant kludge! I knew those air poppers were good for something else . . . toasting spices too, maybe? Though you'd need a dedicated popper, lest you end up with cumin-scented coffee . . . Love the pine nuts idea too, Katilan.

I will be looking for one of these air poppers next time I'm at the thrift. They're always there, often sans cover. I'm not a big popcorn person, but it never occurred to me that I could roast/toast other things in there!

What a wonderful idea!

You can get surprisingly good results roasting coffee like this at home. In fact, if you go in to a Whole Foods, or other similiar store that roasts some of their coffee on site you'll probably see a giant air roaster in there, which is basically just a bigger version of your home popcorn popper.

In fact, you might even get better coffee out of a popper because the WFs employees probably just throw a few pounds in, set a time and walk away. If you watch the roast you can learn what the different levels look and smell like, and stop it where it tastes best to you.

Plus, fresh roasted (and fresh ground) coffee is in a whole different league than stale coffee (anything more than a couple weeks old).

I wonder if this would work with one of those popcorn poppers that are basically a hot plate with a stirrer. For popcorn you're supposed to add some oil of course, but if you left that out it seems like it might do the job too.

Yes, you can also roast almonds, cashew or any dryfruit to munch a handful. Careful with peanuts, some times the husk flies all over (only some varities).

I've been roasting coffee at home for a couple of months and it's going very well. I'm using a heat gun instead of a popcorn popper (hoping to get more control for consistency). Here is a write-up I did about it: http://anyonecaneat.com/2011/06/27/is-roasting-coffee-at-home-worth-it/