How to Roast Coffee at Home

Roasting your own coffee at home is a great way to get the exact roast you are looking for and a superior taste. Most who try roasting their own coffee never go back to the stale beans in the grocery stores, and since it is such an easy process, you could easily do it, too. In fact, you don’t even need any special equipment. For the small amounts needed for a family, an oven will suffice.

First, you will need to set the rack in your oven to the middle position. The oven should be preheated to 5000 at least ten minutes before you put the beans in. This ensures a good roast. High temperatures are important when you are trying to get a decent roast, so if your oven won’t cooperate, you’ll need to think about getting a roaster.

You will also need green or raw coffee beans and a cookie sheet or two to spread them out on, depending on how much you want to roast at once. When you spread the beans on the cookie sheet, be careful to keep them in one layer and evenly spread. Beans that are bunched up will roast unevenly.

Leave the coffee beans for 8-10 minutes. They will start to crackle and smoke at this point, which means they are almost ready to be removed from the oven. Within another two or three minutes, the beans will be roasted to the appropriate color and you can take them out of the oven. The coffee beans will tend to continue cooking for a bit, so it’s a good idea to spread them out on a wooden board or dump them into a colander to shake so they will cool faster.

These roasted beans can be ground as soon as they are cool and the taste will be far better than any pre-ground coffee you pickup at the supermarket! If you decide to roast larger quantities of coffee beans, you may want to buy an actual coffee roaster. They come in all sizes, for personal use all the way up to professional and commercial sizes

Roasting your own coffee can be a very rewarding experience and it is worth trying at least once. However, be forewarned, you may never go back. Home roasted coffee may take a bit to get used to, to reach the exact roast you prefer, but once you do, you will have a coffee bean tailored to your exact tastes, and who can resist that?