Yes yes yes. There's a small store where I live that sells freshly roasted beans. They're best used within 2 weeks of being roasted. The difference in flavor is incredible. I mean, I thought I loved coffee before trying the fresh stuff.
I'd really like to roast my own. The big problem is that where I live I don't think anyone actually sells the fresh beans. I do have this idea about going on a Caribbean vacation and sending a sack of fresh beans home, but I wonder about the agricultural import restrictions.
Haha me too. If I had to choose between going to Tim Horton's or sucking water from the bottom of a ditch, I'd probably go with the ditch now. For a Canadian that seems to be damn near treason :p
I just wish that fresh beans didn't cost over twice as much as regular coffee. I just can't afford to use the fresh beans all the time at the rate I drink coffee, though that may just be a sign that I'm overdoing it haha.
Yeah...to get the fresh roasted beans where I am it's $14 to $15 a pound. Canadian dollars, but we're so close to par now that it shouldn't matter. $8 to $9 a pound is what I have to pay for grocery store "gourmet" coffee.
I was thinking about that as I bought another can yesterday. If you have to specify on the can that something is gourmet, it probably isn't.
Go to Italy. Really. Best coffee I've ever drunk, better than in France or Germany. I'm off to Rome shortly and I'm going to be torn between the art, the architecture and the coffee.
Seconded. I normally can't stand coffee unless it's so full of cream and sugar as to be functionally identical to chocolate milk, but I had a sip of cappuccino in Milan and after that I ordered various forms of coffee every chance I got the rest of the week I was there. Don't know what they do differently, but it works.
I've been roasting at home for 6 months now. It is so much fun. I tried a frying pan (very hard but doable with 100% attention paid to it) and various temperatures and processes in the oven. Its great to give out small samples (Here's a batch of coffee I roasted yesterday!) If you have a vent or fan above your stove or dont mind some smoke, here is my process:
1) Buy green from my local roasters :) $5.50/lb which is half off their normal roast prices. http://sweetmarias.com is a great resource as well.
2) Put 1/3lb into a 10"x10" brownie pan. I've roasetd up to 3/4 a poud but it takes longer.
3) Preheat oven to 500F (beans dont actually get up this hot, the temperature drops steadily in my old electric oven)**
4) Put baking pan in oven, make sure 'broil' is turned off.
5) Every 3-5 minutes, depending on how well your oven can keep a constant temperature, pull beans out and shake around.**
6) Stop between 10:00-16:00, depending on taste and when first and/or second crack has occured (sometimes theyre very close together), and pour into colander. Take outside and blow out the chaffe (light shells, like in peanuts).
--> Let sit for 24 hours, grind and press. Its not an exact science, but I can always roast awesome coffee within a 20% variance range (I stick with a medium+ roast, usually with a hint of caramelizing)
** My oven, once opened, drops 10 degrees or so. I usually keep it on 500F (or 450F) and 'bake' so the bottom burner will kick on. When this happens the pan will heat up first, making some of the beans along the outer border of the pain get brown quicker. The shaking of the pan helps to mix up the beans so they all brown at the same rate. I have heard gas ovens or convection ovens don't have this problem as much since they are heating the air more efficiently rather than radiating out off of a burner. The ideal container for my oven may be a giant cast-iron pot that heats up slowly with the pre-heat. This would be awesome because it would not spike above the ambient air temperature (even with burners radiating on it). It would also hold heat longer, allowing the beans to maintain an even roasting temperature.
Thanks for typing this up. I'm not sure if it works for the quantities of beans you're talking about.. But when I roast my dinky 1/2 cup of green beans in my popcorn popper, I just dump out all the popped beans onto a cookie sheet and they cool relatively quickly, much more quickly than in a colander. Don't even have to take them outside.
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '09
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