How to Roast Coffee - Part 1

Here is a little lesson on how to roast coffee.  Over the next three blogs you will see it does not take a great deal of time to roast green coffee beans.  The knowledge of knowing a good coffee bean from a bad coffee bean is the first step.  The second is developing the skill of knowing and understanding the beans and their roasting level.  Learning how to roast takes years to perfect.

Green coffee bean

This is where it all begins for every cup of coffee.   All beans start out as "green" or "unroasted" beans that are selected in one of two ways.  Traditionally beans are picked by hand and the berries  are selected at the peak of ripeness.  The less labor intensive way, the crops are stripped of all the  beans regardless of the ripeness.  After picking the beans, they go through either a dry or wet process method for roasting preparations.

Dry process is the best method to prepare the bean for roasting.  Most African coffee is dried in this manner and is becoming the desired method.   Wet process is a fermentation type process, which yields a milder coffee then the dry process.

Ok, let's start roasting!

Light Roast

This is the roast level that the average coffee drinker has when they go into their local restaurant.  It's also called American Roast because it's the traditional of American styled coffee.   This roast level is the point where coffee beans have achieved their medium brown color without the coffee's natural oils appearing on the surface.  This is also the roast level used for flavored coffee. 

Roasting time at this level is 9 - 10 minutes.

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