I haven’t quite yet taken the plunge into buying green coffee beans to roast at home. But I have experimented a bit by pouring regular brown coffee beans bought at the local supermarket onto a pan and popping them into a 400 degree oven. I felt that the results were rather good. After grounding up some of the darkened beans and brewing up a cup, the end-product was generally quite satisfying. Once or twice I had over-darkened the beans such that the liquid end-product tasted mostly like tar. But there is a middle zone where the brew becomes more chary and robust but is still full of coffee flavor. Any sour notes are drowned out.

As a rough guildline, it would be good to get the beans that are being re-roasted out of the oven once you can hear them popping. Yes, you literally hear them popping. Pretty neat.

I haven’t had any great, deep or worldly thoughts to discuss (or attempt to discuss) lately; roasting coffee beans is about the best I can do right now. Perhaps I’m in an early-winter / post-holiday funk. Perhaps I need a good pick-me-up. Like a good cup of double-roasted coffee!!

(But wait — the more roasting, the less caffeine in coffee. So, my brain certainly won’t be kicked back into high gear by these wintertime coffee roasting experiments!)