How You Actually Roast The Coffee  

Make sure the vents in the chamber of your popper on on the side, not the bottom.

Now, assuming that you have everything, here are the basics. 

The first thing you want to do is to go outside, preferably near an outdoor electrical outlet. The next thing you want to do is to go back inside because you forgot to get your popper, coffee, and bowls. The reason to do this outside is because at first, the smell of roasting coffee is wonderful. Unfortunately, the smell loses its charm, and if you do it inside, it lingers for quite awhile.

Next, plug in your popper and turn it on to let it get warm. While it's warming up, scoop out about 1/2 to 2/3 cup of beans (you might want to measure the first time). An educated guess will do, but don't put too many beans in. You don't want so many beans in the popper that they can't move about freely. Too many beans will result in an uneven roast. 

After a minute or two of letting your popper warm up, take the top off and dump those beans in, and put the plastic hood back on. Now for the waiting........... (assume that's about three minutes worth of periods).

After about three minutes or so, you'll start to notice a fragrant smoke, and you might even start to hear the beans crack. That's called "first crack". It's the thin outer part of the bean cracking and coming off. You'll see what I'm talking about because a little bit of it will be coming out of the popper. 

Now is a good time to start paying attention to your beans, most importantly, the smells and the sounds. That's how you roast coffee, with smells and sounds. After about a minute or so, you can stop if you want and you'll have a very light roast if that's what you prefer.

If you decide to keep going (which I recommend), after that initial cracking, the sound might slow for a bit, but it will start to pick back up again, with a slightly sharper sound and a little more smoke. That is called "second crack". I wouldn't advise going too much longer than that. Second crack should happen after a total of about 5 or 6 minutes. 

Stop the popper and take your beans out when they're a little bit of a lighter than you want. (Guess what, if you mess up and roast too long, you can do it all over again. No big deal. Or if you want, you can try that super dark roast, you may love it.) You'll want to dump those beans into one of your bowls (or whatever you decided to use). Cooling the beans off quickly is important, because they're still roasting because they're really really really hot.

A method I like is to slowly pour the hot beans back and forth between the two bowls, this helps cool them fairly quickly. (Don't be a smarty pants and try to cool them in the freezer, condensation will form on the beans and the water will ruin them. Nice try egghead.) 

That's it! You've successfully roasted your first batch of the freshest coffee you'll ever drink. Now, you can go drink it right now, and it ought to taste great. Over the next couple of days, the beans will cure (and unload CO2), and the taste will develop and improve even a little bit more. In fact, I find it tastes best within the next 4 to 24 hours. Don't store them in the fridge or freezer, but preferably out of direct light in an airtight container of some sort.

After a week or so, if you have coffee beans left over (which I doubt), grind the beans up and make compost out of them. One great thing about unroasted green beans is that their shelf life is more than a year, easily. So you need not be in a hurry to roast it quickly. 

I've since started buying my green beans in bulk, since the shelf life is so long, and I know that I'll eventually drink it. A word of warning, once you learn to do this, you probably won't want to go back to grocery store coffee!

Matt Hancock is the owner of the blog: WoahMatt

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