Alright folks! This was my absolute first attempt at roasting coffee beans in my whole life! It was a fun experience, and I'm definitely going to continue doing this! It's a fun hobby and it's rewarding to just drink something that you've prepared yourself! Granted, it might not have tasted the best, but... it can only go up from here right?!
The Beans
I will hopefully write this in a way that makes me sound like I know what I am doing, so to start it off, let's see what beans we are working with!
Here is an absolutely lovely picture of Anna holding the bag of beans that I will be roasting. They are from Nicaragua. I bought these from Sweet Maria's, they came in a 4 pound assortment that lets me test a bunch of different beans from around the world! Sweet Maria's description of the beans is...
A wild & fruited coffee with rustic sweetness, wine-like berry notes, cooked cherries, tamarind, orange creamsicle, a flavor of cranberry lambic beer.If that description doesn't wet your whistle, than I don't really know what will! I read orange creamsicle and I kind of freaked out because I thought it was gonna be awesome to taste that in a coffee!
The Supplies
A super special thanks to my friend, and associate pastor, Trevor for showing me a simple way to roast coffee beans for super cheap! Again, it's Sweet Maria's popcorn popper method , but Trevor showed me the video which got me interested in the first place!
Pictured above this paragraph is the picture of my garage home base for roasting beans. You can see that I have the popcorn popper, which I got for $5 at a thrift store. I also have my box o' beans, and a bowl to dump them in and let them cool after roasting. This picture is also featuring a blackberry bubly that has probably been sitting there for far over 3 months.
The Process
I have a few videos of the process that Anna took, and I might upload those at some point, but until then I'll just post a couple of the pictures that were taken!
This picture shows the beans in the popcorn popper getting roasted! It was honestly a really fun experience watching the beans jump all crazy! I still need to nail the time and amount of coffee that I put into it, but for my first time I think I did a good job. I let them roast for about 8 minutes in the popcorn popper but I feel I need to go longer as some of them seemed to be less roasted than others.
And in this picture is the (pretty much) final product of the roasting. They still need to cool and sit for a bit, but this is what they'll look like from here on out! I let them cool overnight and then the next morning I woke up, threw them in my grinder, and then brewed the coffee using my friend's Mr.Coffee machine!
The First Sip
Upon taking my first sip, I'll admit, I was a little underwhelmed. I put a little too much water in it so it drowned out the flavor, and I think my taste buds aren't astute enough to actually taste half of the things I am supposed to taste. Nonetheless it was a great cup of coffee and I felt accomplished! Some might even say it was "Turtley Awesome"!
Rejoice always... - 1 Thessalonians 5:16