Home Roasting: Taking Your Coffee Passion to the Next Level

Roasting coffee at home is an incredible way to elevate your coffee experience. You get to control all the aspects of the coffee you brew, from roast choice to quality of ingredients. Home roasting can even cut down your coffee costs in the long run as you buy unroasted (AKA green) beans. 

Let’s embark on a home roasting journey together. In this guide, we will review everything you need to know to start the exciting adventure of home roasting coffee. 

Getting Started with Home Coffee Roasting

The first step of home coffee roasting is to know what equipment you need. Most home brewers enjoy using a dedicated coffee roaster, also known as a roasting drum. 

Of course, many alternative brewing options exist. Using an oven is cheap, so long as you have the necessary pans and parchment paper for your coffee beans. Stovetop brewing is both affordable and convenient, reducing how much you need to invest in home brewing. If you’re a coffee beginner who happens to have a popcorn machine, that is another beginner-friendly option that can facilitate a simple, even roasting process. 

Next, it’s time to pick a suitable heat source. Most commonly, coffee brewers use gas or propane grills at home.

A cooler or other cooling method is also important as it ensures your roasted coffee can be cooled down to your desired temperature. More advanced cooling trays can improve your control over your roast temperature and flavor. 

Finally, consider adding accessories as you continue your home coffee journey. Not every accessory is necessary or helpful, but as you gain more experience in roasting coffee at home, accessories can be a great way to enhance your process. Here are some popular accessory options for home coffee roasters and brewers:

• A digital scale for increased consistency
• A gooseneck kettle for pour over 
• Temperature control kettle 
• Cleaning tablets for your grinder
• Quality coffee mugs
• Containers for different beans 
• Storage containers for green coffee beans

Sourcing high-quality coffee beans 

The quality of your green coffee beans can make a big difference in terms of your drinking experience. They can generally be stored for up to a year. 

Explore different green coffee bean merchants to see which ones might be the tastiest for you. Consider your roasting budget when purchasing your coffee beans. 

After you source your chosen green coffee, it’s time to experiment with the roasting process. 

Safety precautions 

After sourcing your beans and procuring the necessary equipment, it’s important to stay safe while roasting your coffee. The safety rules may vary based on what coffee roasting equipment you use. 

Here are some common risks to beware of when roasting coffee:

• Burns from hot equipment
• Trip risk with cords 
• Using the wrong equipment for coffee roasting 

Storing your green coffee correctly is also important so you can avoid the raw coffee getting damaged or spoiled. It’s usually ideal to store green coffee in a cool and dry place, away from direct sunlight. Humidity and sunlight are key enemies of green coffee beans. Don’t place the coffee near other ingredients or items with heavy odors either, since these strong smells can infiltrate your green coffee’s natural aroma. 

Selecting the Right Green Coffee Beans

The quality, source, and type of your green coffee beans can greatly affect your roast.  

You can also source green coffee beans from coffee clubs, which may give you membership discounts and exclusive access to high-quality unroasted coffee. Coffee clubs are a great way to procure green and roasted coffee conveniently and affordably. Here are a few popular coffee clubs to get you started: 

• Atlas Coffee Club
• Driftaway Coffee
• Bean Box
• Amazing Clubs

The Home Roasting Process

1. Choose the roasting method

The most popular roasting methods are by oven, stovetop, and dedicated roaster. 

Oven roasting involves spreading your green coffee beans out on a baking sheet and then roasting them in a preheated oven. 

Stovetop roasting lets you roast coffee beans over direct heat using a skillet or stovetop popcorn popper. It’s important to stir properly and carefully to prevent uneven roasting or scorching. 

Dedicated coffee roasters grant avid home coffee roasters the most control when it comes to roasting their green coffee beans. Before purchasing a coffee roaster, make sure you look into customer and expert reviews so you find a suitable, affordable coffee roaster. There are many types of coffee roasters, such as hot air and drum, each with its own pros and cons. 

Regardless of your roasting method, make sure you follow the official safety guidelines so you can avoid injury and accidents in the kitchen.

2. Prepare and measure your green coffee beans

After selecting your desired roasting method, it’s time to get out your green coffee beans. Choose your batch size and consider how much green coffee in weight you want to use in your roasting process. To ensure a smoother coffee roasting experience, inspect your batch for any defects, strange smells, or foreign objects that might hurt the flavor profile of the batch. 

The higher the quality of the green coffee beans, the more likely you will be able to roast coffee with a tantalizing aroma. It’s a good idea to decide in advance whether you want a light, medium, dark, or other kind of roast for your beans. That way, you can buy green coffee that suits your desired roast type. 

3. Pick a suitable roasting temperature and time 

How long it takes to prepare your beans and what temperature is suitable will depend on your chosen roasting method. Usually, roasters need to be between 350 and 500 degrees Fahrenheit when yellowing beans at home. 

Monitor and roast

First, you need to go through a yellowing process of the beans. Yellowing is the drying stage as moisture evaporates from your beans. It’s important to agitate and stir the beans so they don’t end up burned. 

Next comes the browning stage. Your beans are roasted, with wonderful chemical reactions taking place, resulting in roasted beans. 

Light roast: You will hear an audible popping or cracking sound within the first 3 to 5 minutes of roasting. 

Medium roast: After the second crack, it’s considered a medium roast.

Dark roast: Roasting your beans even after the second crack will result in a dark roast. 

Cool and store your freshly roasted coffee

Now, it’s time to use your cooler. You can cool the roasted coffee in a sieve, baking paper, metal colander, or other cooling method of choice. 

It’s usually a good idea to degas your coffee for 12 hours to 3 days before you seal the roasted coffee away. This degassing process is important because it helps prevent CO2 in the beans from increasing the pressure in your coffee container to an alarming amount, resulting in ruined beans. 

Roasting Profiles and Flavor Development

Before coffee is roasted, it is green and lacks the typical coffee aroma and flavor people are used to. How you roast your green coffee has the largest impact on how your coffee tastes, smells, and feels in your mouth. As you spend more time mastering the craft of home roasting, you will get a better idea of how to extract flavors and textures from your green coffee beans. 

Here are the three main roast profiles. 

Light 

Light roast results in light brown coffee and a floral or fruity aroma. To get a light roast, the green coffee is roasted for less time and under colder temperatures. If you want tart or bright-tasting coffee or are roasting single origin coffees, light roasts are a good place to start. Lightly roasting your green coffee also tends to better draw out the natural flavors of your beans, as opposed to flavors that might be added in after the roasting process. 

People often misconceive light roast as being flavorless after brewing, but that is not true! Light roasts are more challenging to extract and may require more experience and advanced techniques during brewing before you can get a rich, smooth light roast. If you want a stronger taste in your light roast, be ready to tweak how you grind the beans and how hot your water is.

Medium

Medium roast looks shiny and medium brown. It’s the most balanced roast type and is relatively easier to brew due to its increased solubility. Compared to light roast, medium roast may grant you a more distinct aftertaste. 

When aiming for a medium roast, the timing and method are important. For example, if you’re using an oven for your green coffee, the beans typically enter medium roast after 10-20 minutes when there is a noisy “second crack” (the clear popping sound you hear after the first crack).

If you prefer a lower acidity coffee, try the cold brew method. This is a popular way to brew medium roasts. 

Dark 

Dark roast is dark brown and glossy. It usually comes with the thick aroma of roasted nuts and cacao. 

If it’s your first time making dark roast by yourself, it could be risky to try making dark roast since you might end up with overroasted coffee, which will taste like smoky ashes in your mouth. Like with all kinds of roasting, it’s essential to keep experimenting with home roasting until you discover what you like. 

Tips and Techniques for Home Roasters

Advanced techniques and tips 

• For pour over coffee, take note of how high and quickly you pour–also decide whether a dispersion screen affects the texture of the coffee 
• Higher water temperature tends to extract more 
• Spend more time grinding the beans if desired 
• Use soft, low alkaline water for light roast 
• Use more coarsely ground coffee for medium and dark roast
• Don’t overload your roaster 

Roasting log 

Another way to improve your home roasting technique is to create a roasting log, which is a journal that records the details of each of your roasting sessions. Make sure you highlight both the successes and mistakes of your roasts so you can use the log for future reference.  

Home Roasting Challenges and Solutions

Don’t be scared of making mistakes. Roasting green coffee at home is a journey that involves continuous learning and experimentation. If you find yourself with uneven roasts or chaff that is hard to remove, look into expert help online, with your coffee club, or in a local coffee community. Fixing one issue with your roast at a time can help make the learning process more manageable and enjoyable. 

Sourcing Coffee from Coffee Clubs

Coffee clubs are subscription services that deliver weekly or monthly coffee to their members. They can be a fantastic way for coffee enthusiasts to try out a wide variety of delicious coffees from around the world. If you are already a member or want to join a coffee club, consider sourcing green beans straight from your coffee club. This lets you conveniently procure high quality beans. Coffee clubs often showcase their roasts with various origins, flavors, and green coffee types. 

A great advantage to sourcing your coffee from a coffee club is that many coffee clubs emphasize environmentally friendly, sustainable coffee roasting and sourcing. This means fair wages, freshly sourced beans, properly stored green coffee, and more. Pick a coffee club that highlights their fresh beans. If you’re interested in diverse tastes, this is also the perfect time to look into coffee clubs that offer beans of different origins and regions around the world. 

Summary

Home coffee roasting is an exciting endeavor, with roasting options for both coffee amateurs and connoisseurs. You can decide what green coffee beans you want, learn how to roast coffee at home, and experiment with different flavors and roasting methods until you find the coffee taste and mouthfeel you love the most. 

Remember, you probably won’t get the flavor or roast right on the first–or even the first dozen–tries. Roasting coffee at home can be a complicated process. Be patient and embrace the trial-and-error process of roasting coffee.