As with anything else, once your knowledge of coffee expands, the more attractive it becomes to control as much of the process as possible. Buying whole beans and grinding them at home is one thing, but you’re not a real coffee geek unless you’re buying big bags of green beans and roasting them yourself in small batches.
[Larry Cotton] has made an even more portable version of the wobble disk roaster we saw last summer. Beneath the housing made of aluminium flashing is the guts of a $15 Harbor Freight heat gun pointing upward at a metal strainer. A large metal disk mounted at a 45-degree angle to the spinning axis tosses and turns the beans as they get blasted with heat from below. [Larry] used a 12 VDC motor to run the wobble disk, and an an adapter to change the heat gun from 120 VAC to 12 VDC. This baby roasts 1½ cups of beans to city plus (medium) level in 12-15 minutes. Grab a cup of coffee and check it out after the break.
Roasting beans isn’t rocket science. Even so, there are some things you would benefit from knowing first, so here’s our own [Elliot Williams] on the subject of building DIY roasters.
Do coffee beans keep better when roasted or not?
I think so.
Unroasted keeps better because all the aromatics are still bound within the bean.
Not. Green beans can last forever.
Once roasted, you’ve got a ticking time-bomb on your hands. It tastes really different a week later. Lots of volatile aromatics.
So much so, that many people think that actually freshly roasted coffee tastes strange, and most coffee places will age their beans for 24 hours, even if they’re roasting themselves. So you’re looking at like 3 days of storage window.
Roast small batches. Drink lots of coffee.
green coffee beans are said to have a few years shelf life properly protected from heat and moisture; once roasted, coffee flavor deterioriates over a few weeks. opinions vary!
No, green beans last about 20-40 times longer than roasted beans.
fresh green coffee beans can be kept for 1 or 2years in proper storage (low humidity, normal inside temps). roasted coffee is best within a week or two after roasting.
So cool, I really like coffe :) Made with a Bialetti Stainless Pots like the Musa :) And I grind myself the coffee from grain to powder thanks to a Peugeot Frères manual grinder!