Coffee roasting at home – Stove top roasting in a saucepan (If you try this method use an old one without the nonstick coating). Keep the green coffee beans moving with a wooden spoon or hold the lid on and shake it back and forth every 5 second.
Saucepan coffee roasting on the gas cooktop
This is the simplest method but it’s difficult to keep the beans moving enough to achieve an even roast.
Practice with 100g of green coffee beans and about 15min. roast time. If you try to roast too quickly you will burn them and too long they will be baked not roasted (don’t go beyond 19min).
Whirley Pop popcorn maker, this is the method I use. It’s inexpensive, reliable and can roast 600g no problem. I put a pan under the whirley pop to slow the heat transfer.
Pre heat for a 2 minutes, put the beans in and start turning thehandle. The most important thing is to keep the beans moving so they roast evenly. After about 5 minutes you will see the beans start to change colour.The first crack should happen around the 11-14 minute mark and the second crack about 3-4 minutes after that (if you take it that far).
Whirley pop before and after my modifications
If you get tired of turning the handle do what I did. I bought a small geared motor 60RPM, made a wooden coupling and mounted the motor on top. It works well, below is a nice even roast from the modified whirley pop.
Roast from the modified Whirley Pop
Automatic home coffee roasters like the Behmore 1600, these type of roasters make roasting easy, you can program roasting profiles so repeating your roast is easy and the agitation of the beans is done automatically. It’s well priced for a 500g/1lb roaster around $299US/$399AU
Note Roasting produces smoke, the darker you roast the more smoke, so turn on the exhaust fan, open a window etc.