Why?
Even though green coffee beans tend to be heavier due to the higher water content, generally itâs cheaper to roast your own compared to buying them pre-roasted.
You can roast the same beans at different levels to get some variety without having to go out and buy a new batch.
Itâs kind of fun and a decent conversation topic.
Notes
Donât be scared by how long this post is. It basically just comes down to spread beans on a cookie sheet, put in preheated oven, wait around 12-15 minutes and then take them out and cool them.
Since weâre talking about roasting beans, naturally youâre going to need a grinder to actually use them.
The process will create some smoke, even with a light roast. Basically, darker roast, more smoke. So far Iâve mainly done pretty light roasts and even though my kitchen doesnât have much ventilation (and my oven doesnât have fancy modern contraptions like, you know, a light or a fan) it hasnât been an issue.
Your oven should be reasonably clean if you donât want the roasted coffee to taste like random stuff.
If youâre a super coffee snob and it has to be perfect, this may not be for you. Itâs pretty easy, but odds are the first few tries arenât going to be perfect especially if you like darker roasts.
Youâre going to want something like a large metal mixing bowl and colander for the cooling process. My colander is plastic, so you can probably get away with that if you donât put the red hot beans in it directly out of the oven.
Youâll also probably need access to an outside area where bits of coffee chaff blowing around arenât going to bother people. I donât think thereâs really an easy way to deal with coffee chaff indoors.
By the way, donât try to grind green coffee beans in a normal grinder. They are insanely, and I mean insanely hard and tough. Youâll destroy your grinder unless it is an absolute tank. (Iâd say itâs also not really worth trying, green coffee didnât taste very good to me.)
How
Hereâs the process:
- Start preheating your oven to 500f/260c. (Some people say as hot as possible, some people use a slightly lower temperature like 460-475f.)
- Get a cookie sheet ready. Just a standard cookie sheet. Mine arenât super clean so I put a layer of silver foil on it. Donât preheat the cookie sheet itself.
- Measure out about 1 cup of green coffee beans. (Iâve found you can fit about 2 cups on a single sheet but itâs probably better to start small.) You want to make sure the beans are spread out evenly in a single layer.
- Look for beans that are discolored/damaged and toss them away. Donât be a perfectionist though, just get rid of 10-15 of the worst looking beans. Something like that.
- Place the cookie sheet in the oven once itâs reached the correct temperature. I put mine on the bottom rack near the (electric) heating element. If youâre going for a darker roast, I guess this might make burning them more likely.
- Set a timer for ~12 minutes. I wouldnât recommend roasting longer than 14 minutes your first time.
- Now you wait a bit. Probably around the 8 minute mark, youâre going to start hearing sharp cracking/popping sounds. Donât worry, the beans wonât jump around like popcorn and the sound is fairly loud so youâre not likely to miss it. At this point (or in 1-2 minutes) you can remove the beans and have a light roast. This point is known as the âfirst crackâ.
- After a couple of minutes, the sounds will die off and you wonât hear anything for a little bit. If you keep roasting, youâll start to hear a softer, more muted crackling sound start. This is the âsecond crackâ. I would not recommend roasting past this point until youâre comfortable with the process and have an idea of how roasted the beans are at this point. If you roast much longer, itâs very easy to burn them and thereâs also going to be a lot more smoke.
- Remove the beans from the oven. You can let them rest for 1-2 minutes on the cookie sheet if you want, then transfer to something like a metal mixing bowl. It has to be something that can deal with 500f stuff touching its surface.
- Ideally get another mixing bowl/colander/whatever as well. Pouring the beans back and forth through the air is a good way to cool them off and remove chaff. Whatâs chaff you ask? The beans are coated with a papery layer of chaff. Donât worry though, once theyâre roasted itâs really easy to remove. You want to try to cool off the beans pretty quickly at this point.
- Go outside and blow gently on the roasted beans in your bowl. You should see a bunch of super light, papery chaff fly out. You can pour the hot beans from one bowl to another, and if thereâs a bit of a breeze thatâll help a lot. Otherwise, you can just blow on them. You could also stir them around with a wooden spoon or something to encourage the chaff to separate.
- Once the chaff is mostly gone (itâs fine if thereâs a little left, or little pieces stuck to some beans) and the beans are fairly cool you can just leave them in a safe place for around 12 hours to fully cool and vent CO2. Donât put them in a sealed container for the first 12-ish hours.
Conclusion
One thing to note is you donât want to actually grind/use the beans for at least 12 hours. It might seem unintuitive, but from what Iâve read as freshly roasted as possible isnât necessarily best. Depending on the beans/roast level, the coffee might reach its optimal tastiness even a couple weeks after roasting.
Iâm far from an expert, but feel free to ask questions in the comments if you want. I can recommend a grinder/beans to get started with if anyone needs information like that.
Obviously it doesnât. Either your time is so valuable that itâs clearly better to pay someone else to prepare stuff (which appears to be your position) or itâs not. The equation doesnât change when weâre talking about 10 meals or 1 meal. You donât seem to realize the inconsistency in your position.
You donât save âhundreds of dollarsâ by preparing one meal yourself, you might save a couple dollars at the expense of your time. Roasting some coffee is a roughly equivalent amount of effort to preparing one meal yourself and you probably save about the same amount of money. So if your time is so valuable that roasting coffee would be a ridiculous waste of your super valuable times, then if you were consistent this would also apply to meal prep.
The âI know you are, but what am I?â turnaround seems a bit immature, donât you think?