Roasting coffee beans

Our friend Brian put us onto roasting our own coffee beans a few months ago, and now we do it exclusively for our coffee needs. It's great fun, teaches you a lot about what makes coffee taste the way it does, and makes you more conscious of the tastes in your coffee :)

Get a can, cut off both ends and clean it well (get a can with a lip on both ends, so your can opener can grip both sides for a clean cut). Put it inside of an air popper. Get a long metal spoon. Put 2/3 of a cup of green coffee beans in there, turn on the popper. Stir constantly until beans begin to crack and turn brown. Once you're satisfied with the roast, dump into a metal colander and swirl beans to dissipate the heat. Holding the tube attachment of a vacuum cleaner underneath the colander helps. Put beans in a jar with the lid off for one or two days, then put the lid on. The beans will be ready to grind and drink in about a week and a half. This is all done to let the CO2 formed inside the coffee beans while roasting escape. Drinking them earlier makes the coffee taste a sour, not very nice.

It will take a few roasts to get used to the process, but those are the basic steps.