Roasting coffee beans at home is fast becoming as popular as grinding coffee beans. In the beginning the only thing the home roaster needs is unroasted or green coffee beans and either an air popcorn popper or a frying skillet. Later, if the process goes well and the coffee drinker enjoys roasting their own beans they can purchase a coffee roaster.

Roasting coffee beans is an art form that takes time and practice to perfect. It requires learning to smell the various stages of the bean visually know the colorizations of each stage and learn to know the sound of the different stages by the cracking of the beans.  Listening is one of the most important parts of the roasting process because some of the methods do not have a visual component and the roaster must rely on their hearing.

When coffee beans are roasting they make cracking noises as they heat. In the beginning the first couple of cracks will continue on and slowly start to taper off. The more the beans crack the darker they are becoming. Learning this allows the roaster to determine the roast of the bean by the sound of the cracking.  Cracking noises that continue on for a long time means that the beans are dark roasted, if they continue to crack for too long they will scorch.

Once the beans have roasted to the proper roast for the coffee drinker they need to be cooled off quickly to stop the roasting process.  If the beans are not cooled quickly they will continue to roast and possibly scorch. Cooling can be accomplished by pouring the beans into a stainless steel or metal bowl and stirring them quickly and constantly until they cool down and stop cooking.

Unroasted coffee beans are part of the process of preparing coffee at home from the green bean to the final ground product that brews the best pot of coffee on the street. All that is necessary is green coffee beans, a coffee roaster and a grinder in order to have the freshest post of coffee ever.

Green coffee beans & roasted coffee beans

Green coffee beans are simply unroasted coffee beans. Naturally, the quality of green coffee beans determines the flavor, aroma and body of the resulting roasted coffee it can yield. Hence, it is important to know the possible defects that green coffee beans can have, so that you can watch out for them. The following are some of them.

Green coffee beans can be over-fermented and when this happens, they develop a soiled-looking appearance and have a brownish tobacco color. Over-fermented beans yield roasted coffee which is sour and somewhat pulpy. It is also somewhat dirty and, worse, it gives off an odor akin to rotting flesh or a cowshed. Even mildly over-fermented coffee beans will yield coffee which has a sour and onion-like taste.

Coffee beans may also be afflicted by insects, such as berry moths, which tend to punch black holes into the beans while laying their eggs. Another insect would be the antestia bug, which leaves black or yellow spots that resemble bruises on the coffee beans. These insect-damaged green coffee beans will give you a predominantly musty coffee which can also be musty and alkaline.

Diseased green coffee beans are those which have been afflicted by diseases such as Leaf Rust and Coffee Berry Disease (CBD). The usual manifestation of a diseased coffee plant is premature beans, which are small, brownish and often with a chipped portion which is ragged and flaky. Nonetheless, they can still be reaped and mixed with normal coffee beans, and even sold to make regular roasted coffee.

Under-ripe coffee beans are those which were picked from the plant while still immature. These green coffee beans are rough and greenish with a tinge of silver. They yield roasted coffee which has no acidity, with a heavy body and flavor which has been described as grassy.

Amber coffee beans, which have a gold color, are the result of a lack of certain minerals, such as iron, in the soil on which the coffee plant was cultivated. Amber coffee beans, when roasted, will give you coffee which is bitter, flat, dull-colored and lacks acidity.

Foxy beans, which get their name from their rust red hue like that of a fox, are generally overripe coffee beans. When roasted, they produce coffee that tastes nutty, fermented or fruity.

Stinker coffee beans are yellowish, and are the result of coffee beans being overripe or over-fermented. By the name itself, you can guess that they give off quite an unpleasant odor. Even one or two of these flawed green coffee beans can lend a foul-smelling and bad-tasting cup of coffee, and you naturally would want to steer clear of them, such as: faded coffee beans, which get their faded quality from being dried too much or being exposed to too much moisture. Also, those which are pale to whitish brown in color; they give you a dull roast and consequently, coffee which has a woody and musty flavor.