Roast your own Coffee at home

Step 8 Stirring and cooling

You will need something to stir the beans with while they are cooking. While some people have hacked together various automated methods (and I have considered making something based on a power mixer for drywall mud) I still use the same thing most people use: a wooden spoon. They run about $2 anywhere you can buy basic kitchen stuff, though you will probably want to opt for a longer handled one. You will need to dedicate a spoon to this task, because the spoon will turn black. It never catches fire, but after just one batch it will be permanently darkened, and after 5 batches it will impart a slightly smoky taste to your favorite dishes. (And it is not a good kind of smoky taste, trust me on this.) Your best bet is actually to steal your wife's current mixing spoon, and buy her pretty new ones. That way she lets you have them because she gets new ones, and you don't have to ask to buy more. :-)

I also recommend gloves, especially for the mixing hand, and especially in the summer. This is going to get HOT, and you need some protection. Plus the gloves come in handy when dumping out the super-hot bowl.

You will also need to cool the coffee when you finish. There are tons of ways to do this, from carefully hitting them with a slight mist in a very controlled environment (way beyond me) to just setting them on a cookie sheet outside in the winter. When I first started, I would dump the hot beans into a metal colander (did I mention it was metal?) and flip them around a lot until they were cool enough to touch. Then I would spread them on a cookie sheet to cool more while I roasted another batch. A friend actually has a wicker harvesting/chaff sorting thing that is used for rice harvesting; he puts the beans in and flips them in the air till they cool. Nowadays I use the contraption in the photo, which is a metal screen (did I mention metal? That's pertinent!) stapled to the bottom of a 2x4 frame, with small cross bracing under that in the corners. I put that on a box fan which I have elevated off the ground, then blow air up through the beans. It cools very fast.