Alley and I roasted our own coffee for the first time today.

I cannot believe how easy it was. Recently we replaced a espresso machine, and the guy who sold it to us showed me how he roasted his own coffee with an air popcorn popper. We took his advice and ordered beans from coffeeproject.com for less then 4 bucks per pound for "Beans of Unknown Origin". I guess these beans are spilled during the ordering process and could be anything. The guy who recommended the beans is a coffee nut, and he says the mixture is always good, and since it's our first go-round, what the hell..

To roast coffee properly you have to roast them until at least the first crack, and unless you like acidic blond roasts, you have to make the second "crack".

A crack is just that. As coffee roasts, the bean darkens and expands breaking out of the beans skin. This lets our a definite cracking sound. I was worried that I would not be abel to discern between first and second cracks. We kind of chickened out and stop at the first crack on the first batch (1/2 cup of green coffee beans). These beans will be given to a friend tomorrow who likes a light roast. The second roast we let the beans go through the initial crack, and held our breath till we could hear a second crack that sounded like described, rice cripsies. During the second crack of the second roast we shut down the popper and dumped the beans in to a colander for cooling and chaffing.

The beans were nicely toasted, but not quite as dark as we tend to like. We did the third and last roast all the way through most of the second crack until just before we got to a french roast color. The beans were beautiful classic coffee brown. The odd thing is that the coffee smell does not really awaken for a few hours or more.

Our new grinder won't get here until a week or so. I looks like commando Alison will have to sneak in the Trader Joe's at the end of the block to get the batch properly grounded.