As we talked about in our previous blog post, coffee is made out of coffee beans, which are the fruits of the coffee plant, also known as coffee. The coffee plant usually produces flowers after three or four years after being planted. The fruits, also known as coffee cherries appear from these flowers after one more year. The cherries are harvested eight months after the emergence of the flower.
Most of us are familiar with the dark brown version of the coffee beans, which means they were already roasted and are ready to grind. However, there is also the option of buying green coffee beans and roast them by yourself. Why should you do this when you can buy already roasted coffee beans? Well, there are some advantages, like:
- Green coffee beans have a longer shelf life than roasted beans – you can stock green beans for 3-6 months without losing any flavour
- There’s nothing better in this world like the smell of fresh roasted coffee
- Roasting coffee beans is fun – of course, you will mess up a few times by burning the beans or making clouds of smoke, but as you get more experienced, you’ll become a roast master 🙂
Now that you’re convinced on why you should consider roasting your coffee at home, you’re probably wondering how to do that and what tools do you need.
First of all, you should think about how much you want to invest in this. Do you want to become a pro or you just want to have some fun on a rainy weekend? If you go for the first option, there are a lot of professional tools and machines out there to help you roast coffee beans like a professional.
Of course, you’ll have to open your wallet pretty large for those tools. If you’re going for the fun part, all you need is a common frying pan and maybe some low expectations (at least at the beginning). If the first time doesn’t work as expected just keep trying and you’ll see yourself becoming more and more skilled at this job.
You can use almost any usual pan for roasting beans, but at least make sure your pan is thick and doesn’t have any kind of coating. In terms of metal, carbon steel, cast iron or stainless steel are the safe choices.
The frying pan method is probably one of the most approachable ways to roast coffee, but it’s also one of the more challenging methods to master. We highly recommend trying this method at least once; it’s a great way to experience the magic of coffee roasting. Just know that there are much easier ways to go about it.
- Step 1: turn on the exhaust fan. If not available, open your windows since you’re about to create some smoke
- Preheat the pan over medium heat until it’s pretty hot
- Pour the beans in the pan – make sure you don’t use too many beans, as you need to be able to easily stir them
- Keep stirring the beans for about 10 minutes. Watch as they turn from green to yellow, to light brown and dark brown. Keep in mind that you’ll have to take the beans out of the the pan just before they are the light color, because they’ll continue to cook for a little while even when cooling
- When the beans are ready, take the off the fire and dump them in a cool metal colander and continue to stir
- Once the beans are cool, you’ll have to allow them to off-gas for 4-6 hours (or overnight).
- After that, you can grab a coffee grinder to grind the beans and enjoy a well deserved cup of coffee
- The freshly-roasted beans will stay fresh for 5-7 days