Equipment
A simple technique for roasting green coffee beans is to stir them in a skillet or wok over high heat. Coffee can be roasted in the oven provided that they are put only one bean deep in a perforated baking tray. These methods produce coffee beans with a variety of roast levels as it is almost impossible to achieve a consistent roast merely by stirring, however, some people like the resultant melange roast.
This lack of control on stove top roasting has led some home roasters to innovative adaptation of equipment intended for other purposes and fabricating custom equipment. Heat guns (normally used for stripping paint) aimed into metal bowls, home-made steel drums suspended and rotated over outdoor gas grill burners, and modified hot-air popcorn poppers are examples of coffee roasters made from readily available parts. Heat guns and modified hot-air popcorn poppers are the least expensive home roasting equipment. Home bread-making appliances can be modified to roast coffee, too.
There are an increasing number of consumer coffee roasters. They automate the roasting process and avoid the hazards of using equipment not designed for high temperature operation. The main drawbacks with many of the dedicated home roasting appliances are their small 75-to-300-gram (2.6 to 11 oz) capacity, limited roasting control, and often slow cooling abilities.
Some home roasters design and build roasting equipment from scratch making full-sized sample roasters, diminutive commercial-style coffee roasters, or inventing new roasting machines. Others use off-the-shelf materials, found objects, and simpler construction methods. Such machines typically have greater capacity or roasting control than home roasting appliances.
Read more about this topic: Home Roasting Coffee
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—Joseph O’Donnell, and Clifford Sanforth. Arthur Perry (Bela Lugosi)
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—Betty Rollin (b. 1936)
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—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)