Guest post from Anne of Modern Mrs Darcy
At my house we love our coffee, and not just any coffee will do. We enjoy high quality, freshly roasted beans — and if you know anything about great coffee, you know that gets expensive, and fast.
But we found a way to cut our coffee costs in half, without sacrificing quality, and I’m shocked more coffee lovers don’t know about it:
Cut your coffee costs in half by roasting your beans at home.
The process is simple. You only need two things:
- Green (unroasted) coffee beans. Your local coffeeshop may sell these (in my town green beans typically sell for half the price of roasted) or you can order online from Sweet Maria’s, the go-to source for home roasters.
- A hand-cranked popcorn popper OR a baking sheet, and a wire perforated colander. (Both are easy to find secondhand.)
There are two methods for inexpensive home roasting:
- Oven roasting (on a baking sheet)
- Air roasting (in a popcorn popper).
Both methods take 8-15 minutes a batch.
Oven roasting isn’t hard, requires no special equipment, and is cheap to try out. Find directions here.
Air roasting requires more hands-on time and nonstop cranking, but your results will likely be better. Find directions here.
Home roasting isn’t perfect: you’ll probably have to throw out your first batch. Roast level can be inconsistent. Your kitchen will get a little smoky. And you’ll never be able to use that popcorn popper for anything else.
But the benefits are pretty fabulous:
- You can custom roast your beans to suit your taste.
- Green coffee beans stay fresh much longer than roasted, so you can maintain a steady supply of freshly roasted coffee without running to the grocery twice a week.
- You can cut your coffee costs in half.
Home roasting is for serious coffee lovers!
Don’t try this at home if all you care about is the cost savings. If you don’t love it, it’s not worth it; you’ll be happier buying Folgers with coupons. But if the craft of coffee roasting appeals to you — if you think roasting your own sounds fun and fascinating — try the DIY route. Many serious coffee geeks enjoy the process, and the savings.
(For further reading, I recommend Home Coffee Roasting: Romance and Revival.)
Anne Bogel loves strong coffee, long books, and big ideas. She puts a timely spin on timeless women’s issues at her blog Modern Mrs Darcy. Head here to get her free ebook Paper Gains: A Guide to Gifting Children Great Books from Modern Mrs Darcy.
The coffee from home roasted beans is far superior to anything you can buy in the store. So much more flavorful.
My dad and husband actually roast their beans in old popcorn poppers. They found some at the thrift store for only a few dollars each and somehow rewired them to override the temperature automatic shut off function. They can roast the beans outside in the popcorn popper and not stink up the house. It is fabulous!
Oh! Oh! You just excited me so much! I love coffee! I like to grind my own beans! I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO TRY ROASTING MY OWN AT HOME!!!! Thank you for this little article and I’m book marking it right now. 🙂
Using a simple popcorn popper (which Sweet Maria’s highly recommends!), you can get your coffee dirt cheap AND delicious.
I got a new popper for Christmas, but they’re $20-25 new (or $1-5 at a thrift store!).
Then I ordered green coffee beans off of Amazon. I got a 6 lb batch to “experiment” with. Green coffee beans don’t go bad, so I just store it all in a Tupperware container. The beans were something like $4/lb (and they are organic!). There are places all over the internet where you can find green coffee beans.
(In Wichita, The Spice Merchant also has green coffee beans, so I’d imagine that spice stores elsewhere might carry them too!)
If you love coffee, this process will only make you love it more. And at such a low initial cost, it’s a worthwhile investment with little risk and high reward.
If you have any questions about getting started with this process, I’d love to be of help! Feel free to e-mail me: independent739@yahoo.com
I have been wanting to try this for quite a while, but have frankly, been intimidated. I am excited to see that it doesn’t look nearly as difficult as I had expected. I think it is time to give it a shot! 🙂
We’ve been home roasting for three years, and the taste really is superior. The least expensive online supplier I’ve found is thecoffeebarn.com. However we recently have been able to get green beans locally. It drops the price a lot if you don’t have to pay shipping.
I LOVE home roasted coffee. If you check the labels on coffee in stores, you may be surprised at how old it is. I found a high end name brand on the shelf that had been roasted over a year prior. No way THAT is going to compare with the beans I roasted yesterday!
Sue, thanks for sharing your experience and the coffee supplier!
I didn’t realize coffee was so expensive! I don’t like the stuff, and I’m glad I don’t :). Even with young kids (one who still doesn’t sleep through the night), I find that a warm shower, a glass of cold water, and a healthy breakfast wakes me up just fine 🙂
Another place to look for the roasting supplies are homebrew shops. Many of them carry the green beans and roasting materials, and cheese making materials. Once you start making one thing yourself you tend to want to do other things too. 🙂
Interesting, Michelle. I didn’t know there WAS such a thing as a homebrew shop! Thanks for the tip; now I’m off to see if there’s one in my town!
My husband and I have been home roasting our coffee for five years now. Last month we just invested in a $299.00 roaster that should last for years and years. But before this we had been using air popcorn poppers that we purchased at thrift stores. Using principals that I learned from you, Crystal, we started out really small. Once a year I would go to the strip of thrift stores by our home and purchase 4 popcorn poppers for about $1.50 each. We would line them up on a bench on our back patio and roast large batches of coffee at one time. Each popcorn popper can only roast about 50 batches before it dies. We moved to a new state two years ago and haven’t been able to find popcorn poppers at thrift stores, so after two years of difficulty searching for replacement poppers we did the math and decided to buy the roaster. It will pay for itself in about 15 months compared to buying good coffee from Costco. We already have the habit of roasting our own so we are convinced we’ll use the roaster( we already are!) and save money. I love that green coffee beans don’t go bad so we purchase 8 months worth of coffee at one time and never run out. We have saved a lot of money over the past five years by roasting our own. Home roasted coffee has made good, affordable gifts, too!
Jennifer, thanks so much for sharing your experience!
We’ve tried this. I found that we lost so much weight in the roasting process that it was questionable if we could save money unless we bought the green coffee beans in a bulk I was unwilling to store.
I LOVE this idea! Thanks so much for sharing!
What are some of the less expensive sources to buy green coffe beans? The ones I have found so far add up to not less Thant $5 per pound – still can’t really compare with Trader Joes.
Sarah, I would be shocked if you could find green coffee beans for much less than $5 a pound. Coffee costs have gone up quite a bit in the past few years and it’s going to be very hard to beat that price at this time for the quality of what you’ll get at Trader Joe’s.
If you like TJ’s coffee, stick with it. TJ’s beans are medium-quality and individuals can’t get those beans without buying them in enormous quantities. If you decide in the future that you want to play around with high-quality beans, you might want to try roasting your own then. Otherwise, it makes sense to pass on home roasting.
I’m intrigued! Definitely looking into this some more.