Home roasting for the masses?

Home roasting of coffee beans is a funny business. Indeed there are many reasons why people take this task upon themselves and some of these reasons hold more weight than others. I know a lot of people state cost as a factor, that buying green beans works out cheaper than commercially roasted beans. That may be true to some extent, but there is often a lack of consideration for factors that reduce the apparent cost benefit, such as the difference in weight between green coffee and roasted coffee and the inevitable roasts that will go wrong from time to time, not to mention the cost in terms of time to do the roasting (how valuable is your time?), and the cost investment of a roaster. So while cost may not entirely hold water, it can be a useful tool to convince a loved one that the introduction of a coffee roaster to the home is a sensible decision. Another factor that is often claimed is the ability to always have the freshest possible coffee. To a certain extent this is true, but many home enthusiasts quickly get over the buckets of gassy crema produced by a one-day post roast bean, and realise that you can have coffee too-fresh. With that realisation, there certainly are options for getting adequately fresh coffee outside of home roasting. Quality and variety of bean is one I actually tend to agree with to a larger extent. At least in Ireland, variety can be somewhat lacking. Hasbean for example offer 50-odd different beans as greens, ranging from CoE winners all the way down to robusta filler. Sweet Marias in the US and kaffeespezialitaet.at in Austria also offer excellent selections of greens, and while many of these are stellar quality greens, home roasters must concede that while they can probably do these beans justice on a good day, the product will probably never be as good as a top quality commercial roaster at the top of his or her game. A reason that is rarely considered or given by someone entering home roasting, but is often given by those experienced in it is knowledge. If you devote the time and attention, you can learn so much about the coffee bean, about particular origins and varietals, how they react to levels of roast, how it influences the cup. Whether by design or not, fresh insight, and a deeper connection to the process is learned. (more…)