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Green Coffee Beans Any of you coffee connoisseurs roast your own beans? I just bought 5lbs of green coffee beans online, and roasted the first batch tonight. The smell is amazing! I can't wait 'til tomorrow morning! It's so hard to find good coffee, what what with burnt roasts being all the rave (thanks Charbucks). Anybody have any pointers on roasting?
Um... in my opinion light to medium roasted beans have the most complexity in terms of flavor. If your interested in caffiene content they are stronger as well. Darker roasts are heavy to me and don't carry the flavor of the coffee.
As to actual roast times etc... I don't have that kind of technical knowledge.
Everything I've read says you have to allow them to rest for 4-8 hours to allow any residual moisture to dissipate. Somehow, from what I've read, this time also creates complexity in the flavor. Somewhat likened to allowing a steak to rest for 10-15 minutes after cooking.Originally Posted by mcsorleyminute
OK, a follow-up for those that are interested....
In my reluctance to allow over-roasting, I pulled the first batch at a dark caramel stage. When I brewed them, it was blah...hardly anything there. As a guideline, I pulled some store bought whole beans from the pantry and used them as a color guide. I re-roasted the beans to about half=way between the dark caramel and the store bought coffee, and it was pretty good, albeit extremely light. So, this morning, I gave them another run. Because I'm doing it in a cast-iron skillet (not the preferred method), there's a lot of variation from bean to bean. This morning, I ended up with the lightest being a medium brown, and the darkest being as dark as the store bought coffee. (By the way, the store bought coffee is Don Francisco, which is a little lighter on the roasting scale already). Anyway, this morning, I threw it in the mill, and ground it to almost an espresso grind (which is about as fine as a blade grinder will grind), brewed it and ended up with quite possibly the best coffee I've ever had. Just for fun, on the second batch, I thought I'd do a flavored coffee, so I added a little cinnamon and a handful of frest toasted (not salted!!!) almonds to the grinder. If you like flavored coffees, you might give this a try.
I hope that I've influenced some of you to give this process a try. While the differences from the store-bought beans are subtle, there's something about roasting your own that's very fulfilling.
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