About Roasting Gourmet Coffee

Beans

If you are reading this article, then you have probably had an interest in gourmet coffee. Who hasn’t? Gourmet coffee – smooth, silky, luxurious, and almost decadently-flavorful – is the best blend of coffee money can buy, and learning how to make it at home is a skill worth pursuing. There is something special about a home-roasted, home-brewed cup of gourmet coffee that just speaks to the heart and the soul, which is why people all over want to learn how to roast coffee beans themselves. This article will help you learn how to roast gourmet coffee beans and give you a little insight into how it is done by the professionals so that you get the best tasting coffee possible.

What Are Gourmet Coffee Beans?

People probably wonder what the difference is between regular commercial coffee and gourmet coffee. For the most part, it is in how the coffee beans are made and what flavors are added to them. Like with gourmet food, gourmet coffee generally refers to coffee that is prepared more extensively than regular blends, usually involving flavored syrup (like French vanilla or Irish flavor). Gourmet coffee beans also tend to be of a higher quality (and thus are more expensive) than what we call commercial blends that you can find in instant coffee or on supermarket scales. Most popular or upscale coffee houses, such as Starbucks, specialize in gourmet coffee.

The Coffee Bean Roasting Process

While it may seem easy to make, because all we have to do is pour coffee grounds into a filter and press a button, making coffee from start to finish is actually an art in and of itself. You first begin with the coffee bean itself. Before you can extract any kind of flavor from it, it must be roasted. You can do this at home, either in a pan over heat, an improvised device (like a popcorn popper), or a personal roaster. For the best results, most people roast the coffee beans at 380-480°F. The time really depends on how strong you want the coffee to be. Generally, the longer you roast a bean, the darker it will be. The darker it is, the heavier the flavor will be. Therefore, for more mild blends, it is best to not roast the coffee beans too much.

After roasting, you should rapidly air-dry gourmet beans with an air jet (some use a hair-dryer!) to get rid of excess heat. You can then grind the coffee into grounds. This can be done by a simple hand-held coffee grinder (which can yield the best results, but is tedious) or an automatic coffee grinder. Keep grinding the coffee until it is small enough to put into a filter, but be careful to not make it so fine that it robs the coffee of flavor. If you have not purchased coffee beans with flavors already added, you can add flavored syrup during any stage. Which one depends on your preferences.

Following the grinding, get rid of the waste (called chaff), place into your coffee maker, wait a few minutes, and enjoy! You will find that the best tasting coffee out there is the kind you brew yourself, in the comfort of your own home. So what are you waiting for? Go try it out!

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