The Best Coffee Roasting Tips

Roasting coffee beans isn't actually as difficult as most people may imagine, thanks to modern technology it's often easier than making wine at home. If you do it well then you should expect some beans which are just as good as shop brought ones. There are loads of different types of roaster available, but you don't even need any expensive equipment, just a popcorn maker or even a frying pan is good enough.

You should make sure that all of your equipment is clean before you start though, you don't want coffee which tastes like fish! Darker roasted coffee contains less caffeine than the lighter roasts, however lighter roasts have a more acidic taste. You must buy high quality beans in order to make nice coffee. Yu need to heat the beans up to around 260C so they're going to smoke quite a lot. This smoke can be very irritating if it gets into the rest of your hose. You should use a fan of some sort to extract the smoke.

When you are first trying it's a good idea to have all the windows open just in case! All you need to do is pop the beans into your roaster and turn it on. If you have any smoke alarms then you might want to disable them! Some roasters have a built in thermometer however you may need an extra thermometer for when you have the pan open. If experimenting in a frying pan then you will defiantly need a thermometer. Candy making thermometers are good for this.

When you roast the beans they will turn from green to yellow, and then finally go brown. The darkness of the roast will depend on the brown color, this is always down to individual taste. As the beans heat up oil and water will try to escape from the bean, these will put the skins under a lot of pressure.

When they burst you might hear quite a loud crack. This is perfectly normal, so don't get too worried about this. You should stir the beans around twice a minute and they should burst within 4 to 7 minutes. The sugar in the beans will start to caramelize when you are roasting the beans.

This is another thing which is all down to personal taste. You should check the color every minute. If you roast for long enough then you will sometimes hear another loud crack. These beans will be very dark and most people won't like them. If you go beyond the second crack then you're just burning the beans. Very few people would like burnt coffee beans.

After roasting pour them into a metal colander so that they can cool down, now shake them up a bit to get rid of the chaff (skin). You should then consider using another method to completely remove this chaff, one option is using mesh cooking screens. When first starting out try a few different batches which have been roasted for different lengths of time. You may have to experiment as the heat will continue to cook the bean after you have removed it from the roaster. If using a popcorn maker style machine then make sure you get one that allows you to mix the beans around so that they don't burn. You will need to stir often!.

Linden Walhard publishes principally for http://www.coffee-espresso-maker-tips.com , a web page with topics around cappuccino makers and office cappuccino machine. You can discover his writings on how to make cappuccino and cappuccino makers on his site.