“I found your website about roasting coffee at home and how easy it is. I also found others that say it can be really difficult. I would like to try roasting at home to see what kind of results I get. Do you still offer a sample that I can try?”
Thanks for writing! …Yeah, it really is pretty easy.
Like a lot of things that require some familiarity, if you ask a rocket scientist for a description of how to fry an egg for instance, they may give you way more info than you need, they’ll want to tell you everything they know, and make it sound like… well, rocket science.
It’s not rocket science.
Home coffee roasting is as difficult or easy as you want to make it for yourself. If you can measure- exactly the same way you measure oatmeal or flour, and you can turn a dial- exactly as you turn the timer on a stove, then you can easily roast coffee too.
There are a lot of professional bakers out there, or professional chefs, and there is some arcane knowledge in most arts and crafts. But there are also a lot of everybody else who also bake or make PB&Js or cookies every day. Home coffee roasting is the very same skill set as making a batch of cookies or frying an egg. Pretty doable.
Yes, we still do the sample beans. The sample beans will be a good introduction for you. They’ll certainly take the mystery out of it. AND you’ll wind up with some coffee to drink. The sample isn’t huge but you’ll get the idea.
Home coffee roasting is easy, cheap, fun, good for the world; there’s really no downside and no barrier to giving it a try. You’ll probably want to eventually have a real home coffee roaster with a plug, but you can do it on a stovetop for free to get the concept. Its easy.