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Step 2Roast! (but not before you read the following steps)
Before roasting, you need to gather beans and gear, and prepare a place to roast. But if you are like me (and I know I am!) then you are too impatient to wade through that to get to the fun stuff. So first I'll tell you how, then I'll tell you all the hard stuff.
Roasting is actually really easy. You pour green coffee in a bowl, then heat it with heat gun for a while while stirring it with a metal spoon. When it is roasted enough, you stop and cool it off. Really, it is that simple.
Ah, but how much coffee? Well, that depends on the capacity of the bowl, and on how much you want to do. Each bowl has a maximum amount of beans you can reasonably stir before you spill all over. You need to find out by using a measuring device (I use a 1/2 Cup measure) to fill it. Usually about 1/2 to 2/3 full is all you can stir; measure and put in some green coffee and stir. When you start spilling, that was too much. :-) Since I measure in 1/2 cup increments, I then know that 3-1/2 cups was too much, so I call my maximum capacity 3 cups. Now the hard part. The maximum amount you can roast in that bowl is 1/2 the amount it can hold. Because here is unexpected coffee fact #1: coffee grows when it roasts. Some coffees grow only 25% larger, others (like most Kenya AA) will double in size. So if your bowl can hold 3 cups, and you expect the coffee to double in volume, you can only put 1-1/2 cups in when green. Got it so far? Good.
Bowls also have a minimum amount of coffee they can hold. Generally speaking, you have to cover the bottom about 1/2" deep. (For our non-US friends, that's about 15 mm. I have no idea how many liters are in a cup.) You know it is enough if the coffee beans fill in over the bottom of the bowl behind your spoon. Since most bowls (not all, see later steps) have a very limited range they can hold, I actually keep 3 bowls. One can do 3/4 to 1-1/2 cups, one can do 1-1/2 to 2-1/2, the other can do 2 to 3-1/2. If I need more, I swipe a bigger bowl from a Kitchenaide stand mixer. :-)
It is kind of hard to describe how to point the heat gun at the beans to cook them, so you'll have to look at my wretchedly cheeseball drawing below to understand. Basically, you point the gun down at about a 45 degree angle, towards and parallel with the side. This allows the air to swirl around the bowl, across the tops of lots of the bean at once. If you do it right, it should come shooting back up out of the bowl somewhere in the vicinity of the heat gun (though I rarely am that lucky.) This VERY HOT air will rapidly heat the surface beans. So, since we want all of the beans heated evenly, we start mixing immediately and don't stop until they are done. My roasting buddies and I discuss stirring methods occasionally, but the one that works best is the one that you find you can do for 15 minutes straight and actually mixes all the beans.
Roasting is actually really easy. You pour green coffee in a bowl, then heat it with heat gun for a while while stirring it with a metal spoon. When it is roasted enough, you stop and cool it off. Really, it is that simple.
Ah, but how much coffee? Well, that depends on the capacity of the bowl, and on how much you want to do. Each bowl has a maximum amount of beans you can reasonably stir before you spill all over. You need to find out by using a measuring device (I use a 1/2 Cup measure) to fill it. Usually about 1/2 to 2/3 full is all you can stir; measure and put in some green coffee and stir. When you start spilling, that was too much. :-) Since I measure in 1/2 cup increments, I then know that 3-1/2 cups was too much, so I call my maximum capacity 3 cups. Now the hard part. The maximum amount you can roast in that bowl is 1/2 the amount it can hold. Because here is unexpected coffee fact #1: coffee grows when it roasts. Some coffees grow only 25% larger, others (like most Kenya AA) will double in size. So if your bowl can hold 3 cups, and you expect the coffee to double in volume, you can only put 1-1/2 cups in when green. Got it so far? Good.
Bowls also have a minimum amount of coffee they can hold. Generally speaking, you have to cover the bottom about 1/2" deep. (For our non-US friends, that's about 15 mm. I have no idea how many liters are in a cup.) You know it is enough if the coffee beans fill in over the bottom of the bowl behind your spoon. Since most bowls (not all, see later steps) have a very limited range they can hold, I actually keep 3 bowls. One can do 3/4 to 1-1/2 cups, one can do 1-1/2 to 2-1/2, the other can do 2 to 3-1/2. If I need more, I swipe a bigger bowl from a Kitchenaide stand mixer. :-)
It is kind of hard to describe how to point the heat gun at the beans to cook them, so you'll have to look at my wretchedly cheeseball drawing below to understand. Basically, you point the gun down at about a 45 degree angle, towards and parallel with the side. This allows the air to swirl around the bowl, across the tops of lots of the bean at once. If you do it right, it should come shooting back up out of the bowl somewhere in the vicinity of the heat gun (though I rarely am that lucky.) This VERY HOT air will rapidly heat the surface beans. So, since we want all of the beans heated evenly, we start mixing immediately and don't stop until they are done. My roasting buddies and I discuss stirring methods occasionally, but the one that works best is the one that you find you can do for 15 minutes straight and actually mixes all the beans.
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