Home Roasting Coffee (the ongoing experiment): Pan Roasting

Recently in an attempt to "just see" how hard it is to roast your own coffee, I have fallen into the proverbial rabbit-hole.  As it turns out the process of roasting coffee can be pretty complicated if you decide to take it that far.  In my opinion the pros outweigh the cons for home roasting.  The benefits being that its cheaper (if you get decent coffee normally), you get fresh coffee essentially whenever you want, and hopefully it will be an enjoyable learning experience about something that you are probably addicted to.  The cons are that it can produce a fair amount of smoke (so either do it outside or have a really good range hood), and getting good roasts can and will take some practice.

However, the core concept of roasting coffee is really simple and anyone can do it.  Blast the beans with heat until brown.  My first roasts were done on a stainless steel pan on a propane grill side burner and not only was it really informative, it was pretty fun.




This roast turned out pretty well (yes I know, this pan needs some maintenance).  I don't remember where the coffee came from, oops.



I believe this roast is from Brazil.  These beans are large and have particularly flat sides.  This makes it more difficult to keep from scorching if you are using a pan.  Scorching imparts a wonderful... charcoal.. flavor at the end of the taste profile.

What I've learned so far is that its easier to use a whisk instead of a wooden spoon for agitating the beans in a pan.  This allows the beans to flip more readily preventing some of the burning of the flat sides.

Even better than that is using a cast iron pan with a lid.  After heating the pan up to around 500F, dump the beans in, keep the lid on and shake it!  This results in much more even roasts. Unfortunately its a bit more energy intensive and the lid keeps you from experiencing the color and smell changes as clearly, so I recommend the stainless steel pan for at least a few roasts first.