About Roasting Coffee

From Light Roast to Dark Roast

For anyone getting into brewing fantastic tasting coffee at home, it's a good idea to get to understand all the processes involved - from bean to cup. Obviously we want to focus on grinding coffee, but before we get into all the possibilities for grinding your own coffee, let's take a step backward to what's been done to the coffee bean before you reach the grinding stage. The coffee bean, which is actually the dried seed of the coffee cherry, left the coffee plantation green and shipped nearer wherever it will be roasted and sold. You cannot grind green beans -- well, you could if you wanted to, but the results would not be at all pleasant. Green coffee beans must be roasted before being ground. The manner of roasting will determine what type of grinding should be done.

Different Roast, Different Flavour

Roasting coffee beans is both an art and a science. You have to know how to start and you have to know how to continue the process until the roasting is done. The length of time spent roasting the coffee bean can be varied to produce the levels of roast:

• - Light Roast, for a mild acidic coffee with little flavour of the roasting, also known as the American commercial standard
• - Medium Brown Roast, for a coffee balanced between roastiness and acidity, also known as the American specialty standard
• - Full High Roast, for a heavier spicier coffee tending toward a strong roasty flavour
• - Dark Roast, for the heaviest coffee with an intense roasty flavour
• - Double French Roast, paradoxically producing a lighter-bodied coffee due to the boiling off of some oils, but still having a very strong roast flavour

Final Stages

Once roasted, coffee beans will be usable for about two weeks, though the second week will show a marked decline in coffee flavour. Keep the roasted beans in an airtight container, burping the lid daily. Grinding the roasted beans should not been done until moments or seconds before the brewing. Once ground, coffee beans lose most of their aromatic oils within two hours - some of the more volatile oils vanish within minutes.