Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
Get some green coffee. The whole point is that green coffee is good for months, roasted coffee for only days. Look in hidden corners of shops where you buy coffee.
Close doors leading in and out of kitchen, turn on fan. There will be smoke at the end. Put a small saucepan over a low to medium flame, get it good and evenly hot. Dump in coffee and keep it moving.
Put a timer on so you get to know the roasting profile in your kitchen with your equipment.
Keep stirring, watch the colors change, and listen to the crack. Smoke will increase toward the end.
When it almost reaches the color you want (10-20 minutes, depending on amount of coffee, pan and heat), dump it out to cool into a metal colander over the sink, as some chaff will fall through. Better in the sink than on the floor. Go outside and stir the coffee in the colander to cool it until it's only warm, stirring and blowing to release more chaff. It's OK, your neighbors already think you're a freak.
Keep it in an open container for the next 4-12 hours to release carbon dioxide, then seal it up as with any other coffee and grind before use. Your espresso will have crema as good as if an Italian pulled it.
Hi!
Green coffee roasting seems to be a big deal. Nevertheless it's no problem at all to keep Your roasted coffee fresh for months too: just put it in the deep freezer ;-)
w/kind regs from Ol' Germany (Roland)
"your neighbors already think you're a freak."
How did you know?!
Mark, remember all those times you leaned out onto the balcony in your underwear to pull something off the laundry line, figuring no one would see if you did it quickly? Just one time, one person saw you, and she told everyone in the neighborhood. They all added something to the story when retelling it, and that's how you got your reputation. Sorry to be the one to tell you.
Posted by: nils on November 17, 2003 09:29 AMThanks Roland, but it's hard to get REALLY, REALLY freshly roasted coffee in Japan. Go ahead, try asking the clerk where and exactly when the coffee was roasted. If they can convince you that it was roasted this week, you have a good source.
Posted by: nils on November 17, 2003 09:32 AMWait wait wait... you can get San Pellegrino in Japan and ya can't get some good WOP beans? Someone needs to get to Italy on the phone for y'all!
I know SanPel got around the boot and the states (because they bottle it in both countries) but I didn't realize they shipped all over the world. Neat. The coffee, too, of course ;)
Posted by: Randy on November 17, 2003 09:42 AMIf you are using "WOP" as a derogatory term for Italians, I don't appreciate that and please don't use it here.
I can get Lavazza as well as Starbucks and Seattle's Best coffee, but what I'm after is hyper fresh coffee, for which you need a local roaster, or else you need to do it yourself.
Posted by: nils on November 17, 2003 07:57 PMThat's pretty cool/interesting.
Posted by: Atsuko on November 17, 2003 09:52 PMIf you're really into home roasting, check out Sweetmarias.com, they sell all types of green beans. They will ship international.
Posted by: Brian on November 17, 2003 11:08 PMYeah, Sweet Maria's is the most famous source for green coffee. I'm working on my roasting technique now, so I'll stick with local supplies until I think I can do something really great.
Posted by: nils on November 18, 2003 12:48 AMI came accross this article while searching the web for my web site. Mr. English coffee used to come up at the top in the Yahoo Japan site when searching but now they`ve kicked Mr. English out because we haven`t cooperated in paying their exorborant year directory charge. I suppose I`ll have to pay if I want to find more customers on the web in Japan but I just hate the ever increasing commercialization of the web. Someday we`ll probably even have to pay if we want our blogs to found out here in cyberspace.
Anyway, about roasting in a fry pan: this particular method is very interesting to me because before I started my coffee roasting co. here in Japan I roasted in coffee a Chinese wok while I was waiting for my commercial roaster to arrive. My first shipment of green beans arrived (over a ton of various high quality premium beans) and I just couldn`t wait to get started roasting, I`m not a very patient person. So I started testing various methods of home roasting. I found that the best way though actually was not stirring the coffee beans but shaking them as you would shake the pan while you pop pop corn. It helps to continue to adust the height of the pan over the heat to keep the beans from becoming uneven. Try to open the top as little as possible because as you let the heat out it will take longer to pop the beans and it will be more likely to burn them unevenly. And what ever you do don`t stop shaking. Actually, this way of roasting is time consuming but the end product can come out tasting really nice after some practice. If any one would like to order some our high grade premium grean beans from me go to Mr. Englsih`s homepage www.mre-coffee.jp (It`s not in English yet, sorry.) The prices in the homepage are all for roasted coffee but I can sell any of them green with the same 600 yen shipping price (900 yen c.o.d.) shipped anywhere in Japan for %25-%35 off the roasted price. After looking at out web shop just send me an E-mail as to what kind you`d like to order@mre-coffee.jp
Thanks,
Mr. English coffee roasting co.
Thomas G. McBay
p.s. I`ve been working on an English version of Mr. English`s web site for years but now I`m finally getting serious about it so it should be finished after I get a little more serious about it or something like that.
