Roll That Beautiful Bean Footage...

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know I adore coffee. You also know I'm weird in a lot of ways, and my love for coffee is no different.

I can only drink coffee two ways.

At Starbucks or when I make it at home.

Let's just talk about Starbucks for a minute. I usually call it FourBucks, cause that is how much it costs. I love Starbucks though. I love the colors in the store, I love the smell, I love the 'feel' of the place. I love the cups, and the gadgets and the baked goods and the aprons the baristas wear and the ...and the....

You get the idea.

Don't be dissin' Starbucks.

Glenco and Aaron have been trained how I like my coffee, so I will drink it if they make it too.

If I come over, and you offer me coffee. I can't drink it.

It's something mental I'm sure.

I just can't drink 'regular' coffee, as in 'made in a drip machine'

It makes no sense, cause my little cheap espresso maker is just that.

There is no figuring me out.

Let me introduce you to a whole 'notha world of coffee.

Roasting your own.

I'm not going to go into the whole process here, I'll leave that up to some one much more qualified, and I'll share some links at the end of this post. I just want to let you know that this can be done!

You don't need a lot of fancy things. I use my Whirley-Pop popcorn popper. A lot of home coffee roasters use a hot air popper, but I find it doesn't roast enough at one time for me.

I do this out in the garage or the yard, depending on the weather, using my camp stove.

It smokes.

A lot.

Trust me on that one.

See this little contraption here? It's a KitchenAid Proline Burr Grinder. $199 on Amazon.com. Guess where I got it?

GoodWill.

Guess how much?

$12.

God is Good.

Here are some of the roasted beans. Bottom left are the 'green beans' that you get. Top picture is a medium roast that I did. I'm still not getting a consistent medium roast. I've not been roasting for long at all, and it just keeps getting better, the more I do it. The bottom right is the dark roast, that I like for my espressos.

I'd always thought that a coffee roasting factory would smell awesome. Fact is, it stinks. Smells like burnt popcorn while your making it. Doesn't smell like coffee until the beans start to cool a little.

Then, wow, does it ever smell good.

Add this to the list of things I'd like to roll around in nekkid.

Warm, freshly roasted coffee beans.

Don't look at me like that.

You know you have a list too!

Why roast your own you ask?

For me, it's the following reasons:

• It's cool.
• A pound of GOOD coffee costs about $10 in the store. When was IT roasted? It's still good, but home roasting you can get a pound of green beans for about $4.
• It's just SO much better than what you can get in the store.
• It's cool.

When I went to Missouri last month, and brought my cousin some home roasted coffee, he promptly ordered 25# of beans and started home roasting.

When I gave my friend Donna some freshly roasted and ground beans, she jokingly said she wept while she drank it.

Oh, it's that good.

Here are a few links to get you started. You will be AMAZED at the coffee selections, and the entire culture that there is with home roasting. I really encourage you to give this a try.

I've ordered coffee from the following two places and have had good customer service from both:

www.burmancoffee.com

If you sign up for their newsletter, you can get some great deals.

www.coffeebeandirect.com

What I like about this place is, when you order 25# of beans, they will ship it free.

I wouldn't order 25# until you really knew you liked what you were ordering. Try a pound of this, and a pound of that until you find something you REALLY like. The shelf life of green beans is several years. As with most things, the more you buy, the more you save.

Another really fun website is www.coffeegeek.com

You can search it, and it will tell you everything you'd ever wanted to know about roasting coffee at home, and everything else related to coffee.

You can also just Google 'roasting coffee beans'

Life is too short to drink bad coffee.