Roasting Your Own Coffee (Your coffee maker will thank you)

Here's what you'll need to be a coffee roaster: 

An air pop popcorn popper. There are two types out there. Stay away from the kind when the air vents inside of the bottom of the popper that face directly up. This kind could cause a fire. The kind you want has the air vents along the sides of the inside of the popper. You can get these poppers at a thrift store for a couple of bucks. You can also check Ebay . Be sure to get one with all pieces in tact.

Green coffee beans. In my opinion the best supplier of unroasted green coffee beans is Sweet Marias. They're an invaluable resource for advice on roasting your own and they offer buying advice for green coffee. One pleasant surprise you'll notice when you visit Sweet Marias is that the price for green coffee, that are the highest quality beans out there, is less than half the price that you might expect to pay at Starbucks. There are other green coffee suppliers on the web that are good. Coffee Bean Corral is another good one.

 Now that you have everything, here's what you do. (A word of advice do this outside or in your garage, the smell of burned coffee is not a pleasant one).

1. Turn your air popper on and let it heat up for about five minutes.

2. Add about 1/3 cup of green coffee beans to the popper (in the same manner that you woud popcorn).

3. Wait 5 to 10 minutes and listen for the sounds of the coffee beans "cracking". You'll hear popping sounds coming from the coffee beans. This is called "First Crack".  From here on, you can take the beans out any time. The longer you leave the coffee beans in, the darker the roast.

4. After a couple of minutes, you'll hear a slightly sharper "cracking" of the coffee beans. This is called "Second Crack". After this sound, you'll be roasting at a darker roast called a Full City coffee roast. After a minute or so, you'll be near what is called French Roast. You don't want to roast past this point. By the time the Second crack ends, you should have already taken your coffee beans out of the popper.

 5. Cool your coffee beans! This is important to cool your coffee quickly. You can dump them in to a colander and stir them while standing in front of a fan, that is my method for cooling my coffee beans. After the coffee beans aren't too hot too touch, you're beans are done.

 6. Finally, store your beans in an airtight container for about a day to let your coffee beans "rest". It takes around a day for the flavors of the coffee to develop. Certain beans can be perfect after four hours, other coffee is best after four days. You'll want to experiment, but that's half the fun of being a coffee roaster.

If you'd like more info and tips on roasting, go to Sweet Maria's. They have some great tutorials.