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Home Roasting

For the truly rabid coffee aficionado, nothing short of home roasting will suffice. Even with Turtle Creek Coffee’s fanatical devotion to quality, there is no way of competing with home roasting for the ability to control freshness.

Up until a few years ago, home roasting was a difficult and tedious task. Some folks got pretty good at roasting beans using a heat gun and a stainless steel dog bowl, but the margin of error was small, and many batches ended up as charcoal sacrifices to the coffee gods.

One aficionado discovered that a certain type of popcorn popper, no longer in production, worked pretty well for roasting coffee. If not monitored carefully, however, fires could occur, rendering this method less than ideal.

Backyard mechanic types figured out how to combine a barbecue and a metal drum, and roast coffee. Not for everyone, and certainly not capable of creating the consistency roast after roast after roast that is needed for true specialty coffees.

Currently there are a number of “Home Roasters” offered commercially. These are simple and safe to operate, and capable of creating very nice roasts. Quality varies, as you might guess, with price, though price does not seem to be the only factor. My experience has been that some of the lower priced versions actually do a better job than one of the more expensive models.

These home roasters run from around $75 for a Fresh Roast hot air, popcorn popper style roaster, up to just under $700 for the latest digitally controlled drum style home roaster from Hot Top.

Form, features, and capacities vary from machine to machine. If you are interested in home roasting, please give me a call, as I am more than happy to provide more detail. Turtle Creek Coffee is committed to helping home roasters where possible, and offers green beans at very competitive prices.

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