Crema like thick amber honey, that’s the goal every time!
Man can’t survive by bread alone. He also needs coffee!
I know I do. It’s always a challenge, especially on holiday or on the road, to find good coffee. I usually end up not drinking it at all, I have been disappointed too many times, even in Italy. Life is too short to drink bad coffee. That’s why we took up home roasting. At least at home we can be sure we’ll always have good en fresh coffee.
We have been home roasting for quite a few years now. Roasting your own beans does have a few advantages and it’s not as difficult as people think. But for some reason it is hard to convince people. In Holland there’s probably a few hundred people maximum that roast their own beans. Not a lot considering we are with 16 million+ people. What’s holding them back? Time and money I hear you say. But that’s just because nobody has told them about the benefits:
Our current (2012) Bezzera Strega lever espresso machine
- With coffee freshness is key and home roasting guaranties the freshest coffee possible
- Green coffee beans can be stored for a long period of time (at least a year)
- Buying green beans (in bulk) saves you money
- You can make your own favorite blends of coffee
- You can buy exotic beans you would not find in stores near you
- You can give your guests a nice surprise by serving them coffee with a wow factor and a nice story
- Its fun!
Of course you won’t be a master roaster right away (I have work for one and his roasted beans are top notch, but the problem is getting them to my house as fresh as possible) and you have to put some effort in to learn how to roast each bean to it’s full potential. But the main road to great coffee is the freshness and the quality of the beans you buy.
We use a Hearthware i-Roast 2 which costs around $180,- / €185,- (in Europe). There are other options which cost between $110-$150. Check out the site of sweetmarias for more info on home roasters and green beans.
The green beans we buy (good quality single estate) cost us from around € 7,50 per kilo. That’s € 1,88 for a normal packet of coffee of 250 grams (compare that to Illy cafe who charge € 28-! for 1 kilo, or a very inferior brand that still charges €8,-)
Favorite coffees come from Costa Rica, Panama (La Torcaza), Ethiopia and Indonesia. But there’s such a lot to discover, you favorite may come from Australia or Hawaii…
I was wondering that maybe people who make their own artisan bread are also more inclined to roast their own coffee.
Are you a home baker and a home roaster?
Ryan says
I use a the whirley pop popcorn roaster (also featured on the sweet marias web site). This takes lots of practice to get a great result but the effort is worth it and its fun. I roast a small batch of coffee every weekend like this.
My tip for someone who wants to try hand roasting is select only one kind of bean and practise until you get a really even roast at the darkness you want. Changing beans really changes the process. Beans differ in size, hardness, the amount of skin etc and this changes the way they roast. Stick to one bean until you have mastered the process.
I usually try to bring my beans off of the stove just moments before the second crack to get a medium-dark roast. With good gresh beans i dont want them to be oily or glossy when they come out. The flavour comes more from the roast and hides the coffee flavours too much if this happens.
My last tip though is you do need to be brave. The smoke, heat and cracking sound can be intimidating but dont be tempted to take the beans off too early. A light roast still goes through a crackinf stage and produces lots of smoke. I find my “failures” are usually from under roasting because i stopped too early.
Anyway. A great cup of coffee with a slice of the weekend balery’s sourdough pain natural with good honey is my favourite breakfast any time of the day.
Cheerio
Ryan
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Ryan,
We love your comment and your excellent tips based on your experience with home roasting. We have never roasted coffee in a popcorn roaster (they are not that common here in Holland) but by your account they also give excellent results and are probably cheaper than the home roasters. Also a great way to start for ‘new to home roasting’ people.
And great to read you also enjoy the bread baking and are a fan of the sourdough pain.
Thanks very much for sharing and happy baking and wishing you many crusty loaves and fragrant beans from Holland,
Ed & Marieke
Weekend Bakers
Marieke says
Hoi Rijn,
Thanks for showing the pics.
Looks impressive and the coffee roasting looks almost scary (but in a good way!). Lots of heat by the look of it. Also something for the bike shed, not the living room or kitchen I presume…
But you do drink a lot of coffee, 300 g not being enough and going for the 550 g each batch.
Cool!
Rijn says
Here you can see a picture of the Aurora and the coffee turbowave-roaster;
i52.tinypic.com/jp7pqq.jpg
i55.tinypic.com/2rc0uhu.jpg
Skøl!!
Rijn says
Hi Marieke, Arne,
I’am a weekend bread baker and I’am also roasting my own green beans. I roast my beans in a turbowave. Before I used a Gene but the maximum of 300 grams are not enough for me. I sold the Gene and build my own roaster, see the website of my greenbeans supplier for tips and how to make it. www.degroeneboon.nl/ongeb…-links.php
I bought from ‘marktplaats’ a second hand turbowave for euro 20,– and a steel colander for eur 10,–. From Ebay an electro motor eur 10,– and a digital thermometer logger. With my turbowave I can easy roast 550 grams of green beans. The beans from the www.degroeneboon.nl are high quality beans for a low price, so on that way I have my own fresh and cheap roasted beans!
My favorite way of making coffee is making an espresso with my old Aurora Brugnetti lever machine and filter coffee with the Aeropress, yummy!!
Greetings,
Rijn
Marieke says
Not only a coffee roaster but also an inventor. That sounds so cool. Would you have any pictures of that? And the Aurora Brugnetti?
Great to hear from another roaster/baker btw!
Marieke & Ed
Marieke says
Hi Arne,
There are more and more green bean suppliers also in The Netherlands. Like ongebrand.nl and fleurdecafe.nl who both deliver green beans to your door in quantities starting from 500 grams or 1 kilo. And of course roasting beans is highly associated with espresso making but we also (lightly) roast our beans to make filter coffee and more recently brew coffee with our Chemex (which you can buy for about 35 euro). Our smallest roaster is an I-roast which costs about 185 euro. Hope this helps.
What’s your favorite way of making coffee?
Greetings,
Marieke
Arne says
I do everything with coffee except homeroasting. The trouble is the high startup cost for a good roaster and the difficulty of getting small portions of unroasted beans (in the Netherlands). After roasting you also need a lot of equipment to make really good coffee.
Ian says
I thought I would let you know how thoroughly I have been enjoying this website.
Also, in my own experience, it tends to be the person who has discovered the joy of something as beautiful as traditional baking and applied it to their life that will probably seek out other ‘artisan’ food crafts.
I am in the process of building a coffee roaster. I will, hopefully sooner than later, be able to add roasting to my repertoire to help round out brewing and baking. I was curious too; have you guys ever had a hand in brewing beer? Based on your enthusiasm for good food and the crafts involved it seems like you should give it a shot if you haven’t yet.
Thanks again.
Marieke says
Hi Ian,
We are touched by your kind words! We would love to hear more about the building of your coffee roaster or your experiences when it’s ready. Beer brewing..Ed is intrigued! So you never know. The thing is we both are not beer drinkers (up till now). A friend is introducing us into the world of specialty beers at the moment and has bought some exotic types of brew for us to try. So not yet beer brewing for us ( first there are other items on the list we also want to pursue like building a woodfired oven, keeping chickens…)
Hope to hear from you again!
Marieke
Jay in Michigan says
Hi Edwin,
Thank you for the tip about the hi-gluten flour. I had read that, but decided to use your recipe just to see the results as I had never used a poolish, per se, or the folding technique. I will probably try the additional 10% water in the hi-gluten flour and also try the recipe with King Arthur “Sir Galahad” bread flour at 82-83%. We buy our flour in 50 lb (22.68 kg) bags from the local Amish store and both bags are about half full, so buying any other flour won’t happen for a while.
I have an associate that I do work for and his wife is French. She misses her French flour. She says her bread just are not as good here in the States. All I can say is the baguettes and bread were wonderful, using your recipe. I can’t imagine them even better. 😉
I think you are wise to buy only 6 months of green coffee beans at a time. I just roasted some dry processed Ethiopian Sidamo from a 2006 purchase. Still good, but any floral, berry tones are missing. Though I only took it to a pop or two into second crack, it has a nice chocolaty finish, but it isn’t the bright coffee that I originally bought.
I will report back after my next two baguette adventures.
Thanks.
Jay
Jay in Michigan says
What a wonderful site you have created.
I found your site via TFL. I was pleasantly surprised that you also love to roast coffee.
I started off with an I-Roar I and after a couple of years switched to a HotTop, which I like even better. I find I can control the roast profile better with the HotTop. I got a bit OCD in the beginning with my green bean purchases and am still roasting green beans that are 5 years old. Still quite tasty, but some of the finer notes are missing. There are so many good coffees that can be bought at reasonable prices.
I just made my first baguettes using King Arthur “Sir Lancelot” Hi-Gluten flour. At 80% the dough wasn’t sticky at all. I made two baguettes and one loaf of bread from your 80% hydration recipe and oh are they wonderful. We bake bread weekly and this was one of my best breads to date. My next batch will be at 85% hydration. Thank you so much for posting your recipe and video.
Wishing you continued success with you baking, roasting, and site.
Jay
Edwin says
Thanks for your nice comment. We both have an I-Roast2 and an old Alpenrost roaster. The Alpenrost is also a drum roaster. We buy our green beans every 6 months or so and during this period they seem not to lose any quality.
I am glad you like the baguettes, as I was equally surprised by the taste. It is always nice to hear when somebody had success with your recipe. American hard wheat flour absorbs much more water than European flour. The flour from France absorbs even less water, it does not have very strong gluten. If you want to go authentic perhaps you could try lower gluten European style flour and perhaps let us know about the difference in taste and texture. Sadly I can not get any American flour over here, so I can not try it myself.
Edwin says
I just read on the King Arthur website;
TEST KITCHEN TIP: High-protein flour absorbs more liquid than medium-protein flour. When baking with Lancelot, add about 1 tablespoon extra liquid for each cup of flour (or more, in order to produce dough the consistency the recipe calls for.)
So you need about 10% more water in comparison to medium-protein flour; cup of flour=141gram, tbsp water=15gram
Marieke says
Hello June,
Thank you so much for your kind words. Roasting coffee is a lot easier to master than making your own artisan bread I can tell you. With both freshness is key and the rewards of making your own are well worth the effort (if you can call doing the things you like an effort). Wishing you many happy hours of baking!
Marieke
June in Ireland says
I’ve only just started making my own bread at home over the past year or so now, and loving every minute of the joy of it. I know I could never ever go back to eating commercial bread from any supermarket. I have to admit, however, that I’m still a bit intimidated by trying to make my own coffee. After reading your blog post above, though, I’m a lot more inspired and motivated. Great blog, by the way.
Marieke says
Hee Marco! We zijn natuurlijk ook ‘Weekend Bakers’. Maar zonder te bouwen huizen en mini mensjes en gasten om voor te zorgen houd je heel veel tijd over! Wat we qua bakken uitspoken kun je ook volgen op Twitter: twitter.com/weekendbakers. Krijg meteen zin om vanuit Noorwegen te komen twitteren ;-)!
Marco Robeerst says
Ola! Wat een feest om weer een nieuwe website van jullie te bekijken!! Waar halen jullie de tijd vandaan… Veel liefs uit het Noorden!!