Home coffee roasting is now having a renaissance!

This renaissance is due to coffee lovers’ return to taste. A growing number of people are realizing that they are drinking mediocre coffee and that there is a lot more in coffee that could be enjoyed that they are missing in exchange for convenience.

While the goal of the early commercial roasters is to produce quality roasted coffee, the goal nowadays is mainly to maximize profits. To maximize profit the commercial roasters could:

• buy the cheapest raw coffee beans
• choose roast level with minimum shrinkage
• use outrageous practices like quenching roasted beans with more water than is necessary to make the end product heavier
• use of dishonest labeling (i.e., calling a blend a Kona Blend when only a minute amount of Kona is in the blend)

Reasons why it is good to roast your own coffee

Thanks to the Internet, people now have information on their fingertips. Better informed people makes better decision, and many are making the decision to roast their own coffee. Although this may seem a step back to the mid 19th century, this move will give the home roasters the following advantages:

• Most of the home coffee roasting machine available today utilize the state-of-art technology.

For Gene Café, the home-roaster only have two knobs to operate. One for the temperature and another for the roasting time (just like most oven’s control) and both could be modified anytime during roasting to giving the home-roaster total control all of the time.

• You can buy the best quality raw coffee beans (that suits your taste and budget). This also gives you an option to buy Fair Trade (to financially help the coffee farmers) and/or organic coffees (to help the improve the ecological health of Mother Earth).
• Home-roasters could choose the roast level that he/she likes (from light to dark roast level).
• Fresh roasted coffee on demand (most roasted coffee starts to deteriorate in taste after 10 days whereas raw coffee beans could remain at its best for a year or more)

Drinking instant coffee is analogous to eating microwave-ready frozen meal, they are convenient but it could not offer the taste and aroma a freshly roasted coffee could offer.

The Internet is a home-roaster’s friend

There is a wealth of information about home coffee roasting in the Internet. And to get you off into a good start in your journey into home coffee roasting, the Gene Café home coffee roaster is now available in Australia. Gene Café is a home coffee that could evolve with you. Thus, its ease of use would make your initial foray into coffee roasting enjoyable. As your coffee knowledge advances, its feature of total control is there for you to tap. There is a growing community of home coffee roaster that exists in Internet forum that would gladly welcome you into their community.

Some pointers for making a good cup of coffee

The following are things that are absolutely essential for a good cup of coffee:
Quality green coffee beans.
Freshly roasted coffee
A good grinder to ensure the correct and uniformly-sized grind for your preferred brewing method
A good brewer. This could range from the simple (like French Press or AeroPress) to sophisticated (like prosumer espresso machine). Any of these brewers could produce good coffee as long as the following variables are correctly factored in the brewing process:
Water temperature (usually between 90 to 96 degrees Celsius)
Extraction time relative to grind size
Amount of ground coffee to use
Reputable manufacturers of coffee brewers would give you recommendation on the above-mentioned variables. The Avacuppa team will be happy to guide and help you in your pursuit for good coffee.

This article was taken from AvaCuppa

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