Home Coffee Roasting

There is nothing quite as delicious as coffee or espresso from beans that you roast yourself and grind and brew within a few hours or days of roasting

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I have a small, inexpensive machine called the Fresh Roast Plus 8 that comes highly recommended.  I purchased it from THE COFFEE PROJECT They are an awesome company with great prices and customer service.  They also have green coffee beans  in dozens of single bean and blended varieties.  If you live in Tacoma, you can get green beans in several varieties (including the Peruvian Organic that I roasted and took pictures of for this website) THE BEER ESSENTIALS  and Bernardo the proprietor of Aroma Coffee at Pacific and 11th in Tacoma says that he will gladly sell small quantities of green beans

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I was so excited when my roaster arrived. (I have missed home roasted coffee for reasons I won't go in to) I was even more excited to see the packaging material was not environmentally reprehensible Styrofoam peanuts, but rather some sort of crinkled, shredded cardboard.

This is what green coffee beans (in this case Peruvian Organic) look like before they are roasted.

This is the beginning of the roasting process

The beans start to pop, crack, puff up and lose their hulls (it's  sort of like popping popcorn)

If you prefer espresso or French roast, you'll get some smoke.  I roast my beans next to an open window and run a fan

The beans start to get darker brown and release their oils.

The hulls are collected

And at last, dark (the picture doesn't show the true, deep color) shiny, fresh roast espresso

I'm going to go make a mocha now...

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