Roasting Coffee at Home
Ground, roasted coffee is not a storable commodity.
Ground, roasted coffee remains adequately fresh for up to an hour. Roasted coffee beans remain adqequately fresh for up to two weeks. Green coffee beans remain useable for up to three years. From these three sentences it becomes apparent that, unless you live next door to a specialty coffee roaster, you will want to learn to roast your own coffee. Roasting can be done in a frying pan, in the oven, in a modified popcorn machine, a gas grill or other appliance. There are endless discussions on the Internet about which method is best and how to roast coffee by these means. I prefer to use a dedicated coffee roaster. I will not try to defend this decision or list reasons for my preference. It is just that, my preference. I own a number of roasters including a Hearthware Precision fluid-bed roaster (my first roaster), a Swissmar Alpenröst drum roaster, a HotTop drum roaster and a Coffee-Tech Maggiolino commercial 1-pound drum roaster (the roaster I presently use). I may some day write about my experience with these various roasters, but for the moment I will concentrate on the Maggiolino since it is probably the most interesting machine of the lot and the one I use now. For a detailed report on the Maggiolino, click on the picture below :
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