David here.
So I got to drinking coffee at a very young age, and as any family or friend will tell you... it's kind of what I think water should actually taste like (I kid, I kid).
Anyway, my morning brew is kind of a ritual for me these days and since I don't drink anywhere near the amount of coffee I used to, I want what I do drink to be pretty tasty.
I'd been reading about roasting coffee for years and hadn't paid too much of a mind to it, but recently I figured what the heck.
You don't need all that much, really.
1 hot air vortex popcorn popper
1 bag of green coffee beans (sourced from the internet)
1 metal colander
1 pair of oven mits
1 glass mason jar for the final product
First up, turn on the popper and pour in about 1/5 lb of beans.
This is about 90 seconds into the roasting process (aka "First Crack" in roasting parlance). The beans will begin to pop (much like popcorn), and start to shed their hulls.
After a while, the hulls will come off the beans, they'll lose water, expand, and begin to darken. This is the window where various roasts can be achieved. The bean I'm roasting here for Erika is from Rwanda and is said to do well at "Full City" roasts, which are in the darker range.
After about 4 more minutes we hit "Second Crack", which is much more quiet. This is when you begin to enter the range of "Full City" roasts. I let Second Crack go for about another minute and turned off the popper. I immediately dumped the beans into the colander and shook for a couple of minutes to cool them.
In the end, this is what they look like.
And here they are in their jar, awaiting tomorrow morning. The lid is on very loosely because the beans will give off gas over night as they cool and recover from the roasting process. By the morning they'll be good to go.
A bit later I did a batch of an espresso blend for myself, but went a bit farther into second crack to darken the roast a bit more. Both final products are resting away in the cabinet right now, and I must say the kitchen smells utterly fantastic.
