Excerpts from the whole book of self-baking of coffee

Coffee roasting book-reasons for roasting coffee beans at home

Reliable, economical, turning stone into gold

When the author published the first edition of this book in 1996, roasting coffee beans at home was something that only tireless coffee addicts would do. At that time, roasting coffee beans was a very difficult thing to master, and roasters had to work hard to find a way to roast coffee beans to a moderate brown.

Today, it is still not easy for individuals to roast coffee beans at home, but at least they must have sufficient background knowledge to help us explore this dark field. Now, people who want to roast coffee at home no longer need to knock and assemble homemade bean baking utensils, nor do they have to stir the coffee beans in the pan all the time; at least ten new household bean baking devices have quietly entered the market, and some coffee equipment stores are stepping into the market. Today, people who bake their own coffee beans at home no longer need to fight alone and talk to coffee beans alone (although a few of us still insist on doing so for health reasons), and there are many websites and chat rooms set up specifically for this ethnic group. let our enthusiasm for roasting coffee beans at home can resonate more.

However, roasting coffee beans at home is something that only a few people with strong enthusiasm can do, who start baking coffee beans themselves, which in turn arouses greater curiosity to explore a long list of underlying principles.

Baking coffee beans can be as simple as this: once you know what you're doing, the difficulty of "baking coffee beans at home" is between "boiling eggs" and "making great spaghetti sauce". In that case, why are there no more Dode people to play with their own hands? Why can't baking coffee beans at home be as common as baking cakes, snacks, making spaghetti and popcorn?

First of all, most people don't know how much coffee brewed from freshly roasted coffee beans can brighten people's eyes, which is different from the stale coffee they usually drink. But in a different place, almost everyone knows how delicious freshly baked bread is, and almost no one disagrees with their popcorn at home, which is as chewy as rubber chewing. However, the aroma of coffee beans drifting from the bean dryer has long been a yellow flower in most people's minds, and it is difficult to remember.

The second reason is that people don't know how simple and fun it is to bake coffee beans at home. Before advertising and convenience food became popular, it was almost a national movement.

Reasons for roasting coffee beans by yourself

So for those of us who didn't smell the aroma of roasted coffee beans when we were young, or those of us who lived in newly developed areas of the western United States and remembered only Pepsi and Maxwell instant coffee, what's the reason to bake coffee beans at home? Baking your own coffee beans is a simple thing, but it is also a forgotten art. So why are we working so hard on baking? Here are some of the most important reasons:

Freshness and best flavor: stale bread is not like stale coffee, the former cannot be eaten if it is not fresh, while the latter can still be drunk even if it has changed, and some people even enjoy it! But in the world of coffee, in just a few days, the taste will be very different! Freshly roasted coffee beans within one or two days from the roasting date, the brewed coffee will have an explosive taste with a strong aroma, which seems to reverberate in the human nervous system, constantly swinging in the brain like Aura (the aerial dancer in Greek art). The Aftertaste of coffee brewed with real freshly roasted beans can immerse you in the beauty of the coffee throughout the morning, but if the beans are roasted for a week or so, the aftertaste may only last for a few minutes. The reason for the constant surprises of the shoemaker described in Eduardo Philip's article must be attributed in part to the coffee he drinks, the fresh coffee beans that his grandfather himself bakes on the balcony every week, not the half-flavoured coffee beans bought from the supermarket.

The flavor of coffee beans is the best on the first day after baking, after which the flavor of coffee beans will decay brutally and rapidly. Because after baking, the coffee bean itself will release carbon dioxide to prevent the attack of oxidation, but after the emission of carbon dioxide, the meticulous coffee flavor oil will be oxidized and stale. So for coffee addicts, the sharing smell of freshly roasted coffee beans is undoubtedly the biggest reason they choose to bake coffee beans themselves.

Understandably, if the coffee beans are baked in the store after an appointment, or if the roasting location is very close, you may be able to buy fairly fresh coffee beans, but due to the rapid expansion of regional and national boutique coffee chains, the coffee beans they use may have been roasted thousands of miles away, and I don't know how many days have passed in your hands! However, the coffee beans sold in these boutique cafes are not completely useless, at least they are more fresh than pre-ground coffee powder or canned coffee powder, but definitely not as fresh as their own coffee baked in the kitchen at home!

Personal satisfaction: roasting coffee beans at home can give us a sense of hands-on satisfaction, because we grow up in a pure consumerist society, once we can do it ourselves, how successful it is to unravel the mysteries of the mysterious process of roasting coffee beans (in fact, we have been deceived for a long time). Roasting coffee beans at home is an art, which may be said to be non-mainstream, but it is an art that can make people very successful.

Saving money: obviously, this factor is more important to some people than others. The raw coffee beans you need to bake coffee beans at home can save you about 25% to 50% of your expenses, depending on how you buy them and where you buy them. You can find the rules for buying raw coffee beans in the "related Resources" section.

Become a coffee connoisseur: to really understand a coffee bean, you must bake it yourself! In addition, once you start baking coffee beans at home, it is possible to develop a personal "raw bean collection". Unroasted raw coffee beans are less uncertain in preservation. If stored for one to two years and then baked, the flavor will be a little different, but it still tastes interesting, and even if it is roasted for a few more years, it is still drinkable. As long as you use the right way to store some coffee beans, some coffee beans will perform even better after aging. Therefore, you can store a few of your favorite coffee beans and choose which ones to bake one day according to your mood or visitors' taste preferences. For the idea of "Raw Bean Collection", you can find a discussion on the same topic on pages 126-127 of this book.

The right to boast: imagine if you roasted Guatemala Huehuetenaego coffee beans in Guatemala and Sumatra Lintong coffee beans in Sumatra in the kitchen of your home, giving off an exciting but pleasant smoke. When your friend comes to your house for dinner with a bag of roasted homemade coffee beans bought from a street cafe. The author does not want to say any more about this kind of thing, after all, the behavior of flattery and boasting is not worth encouraging, the previous body, just to let you feel this picture!

Romantic feelings: finally, do-it-yourself roasting coffee beans can give you a better understanding of the dramatic evolution of coffee and its romantic feelings. Although the author has boasted about the coffee industry for more than 20 years from semi-professional to professional identity, but feeling romantic feelings still belongs to the stage of Huang Kou children. The romance of coffee is that when a bunch of stiff, tasteless gray-green seeds suddenly magically turn into an aromatic medium that we flock to, and become a topic of chat after tea and wine.