How Do i Slow roast Coffee beans?

Question by Seath: How Do i Slow roast Coffee beans?
How would i slow roast coffee beans in an oven at 200 degrees can i do that?


Best answer:

Answer by Jolly Inquisitor
A roasting process is required to "cook" Green Coffee Beans and expose the natural flavors in the coffee. Your home style roaster may be the oven. What you need to do is turn or stir around the beans so that they roast evenly. Do this about every five to ten minutes but five is better. You might go as far as to pour the beans from a sheet pan into a stainless steel (SS) bowl, toss them about, and them pour them evenly on the sheet pan and return to the oven. Keep your oven closed while tossing the beans so it remains at temperature.

As for a 200C (392F) degree roast, it should work fine but you will not develop the richer coffee flavors and aromas the the higher temperature do. Give it a go and see.


Slow Temperature Increase: First, Green Coffee Beans are placed in a roaster and heated. As the roaster heats up, the beans are tumbled like clothes in a dryer (the tossing in your SS bowl) to allow the heat to toast the coffee evenly. The temperature is slowly raised to between 460°F and 530°F, allowing heat to penetrate slowly to the center of every coffee bean.

First Color Change: Green coffee beans contain a significant amount of moisture, and you'll notice the release of a significant amount of steam. As moisture escapes the roasting coffee, the Green Coffee Beans will first turn yellow, then turn brown.

First Crack: When the temperature reaches a critical point, the coffee beans will swell (increase in size) significantly. Soon thereafter, a loud cracking noise will be heard as the remaining moisture bursts out of the coffee beans. At this point, the sugars in the coffee have begun to caramelize and the coffee is officially considered "roasted". At the time of first crack, however, the beans are at the lowest roast level (we'll explain the roast levels a little later).

Rapid Second Color Change: After the first crack, the coffee beans caramelize and release oils quickly. During this phase, the coffee roasts very quickly. The color darkens rapidly and requires quite a lot of finesse and timing to achieve different precise roast levels. Usually the roasting process is stopped sometime during this phase.

Second Crack: another loud crack will be heard, and this is called the Second Crack. Most roastmasters stop the roast before the second crack, but sometimes the second crack is desirable. The second crack is usually harder to identify than the first crack, and the coffee is very dark roasted by the time the second crack occurs, if it occurs at all. If the coffee is roasted much beyond the second crack, all of the sugars in the coffee will have caramelized, yielding a very harsh, bitter cup of coffee.

Stopping the Roast: The roastmaster uses the aroma and color (and sometimes special instruments) of the coffee to determine when the coffee is done roasting. It takes a tremendous amount of experience to know exactly when to stop the roasting process. To make sure the beans stop roasting immediately, the roasted coffee must be cooled quickly. Cooling is usually performed by either flooding the roaster with fresh cold air, or by spraying the beans with water.

Degassing After Roasting: After the coffee is roasted, the beans go through a process called degassing. For approximately 24 hours after roasting, the bean releases Carbon Dioxide (CO2) gas. The degassing phase is critical and should not be ground or brewed until all of the CO2 has been released.

The procedure will take practice to learn well just as it did your every roast master on the planet. I suggest you start with no more than a half pound of beans. The important thing to keep in mind is that if you over-shoot your roast you still have good beans however dark roast style. Keep up the practice.

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