And so my research began:  Okay, with that low-end clunky-looking Behmor 1600 I’d hit the break-even point in a little over a year—sounds good—but there seemed to be as many unhappy users as happy ones out in the home roasting matrix.

The Gene Café, which resembles an enhanced Ball of Death for gray/green motor-roasting-cycles, got much better reviews and my financial break-even point would be in about two years.

The Hottop Coffee Roaster, which resembles Buster Crabb’s Sky City Rocketship, also received good reviews, except for the expense and hassle of periodically purchasing/replacing its rear filter.  Break-even point: four years, plus filters.

Or I could purchase a low-end commercial drum roaster and break-even in 2039—during the hundredth anniversary of Hitler’s Invasion of Poland.  A downside to consider: the neighbors might complain about the smoke occasionally wafting out of my two car garage…Or they might call the fire department!

Driven by an inner imperative for the simple/unencumbered life, while slowly roasting coffee as a 19^th century

gentleman (or maybe Bridget the Irish maid had those duties), I declared Clean Gene and the Coffee Beans of Death the winner.  I banged my credit card information into the laptop, shot it into cyberspace and patiently waited for the arrival of my new toy roaster.

Let me, with all due alacrity, put my personal transformation into some kind of rough chronology:  About a year ago a new Starbucks, with a drive-through, opened about a quarter mile away.  In other words: “it was within walking distance”. Initially I was all gung-ho about entering this sophisticated bohemian coffee lovers playground.  Maybe I’ll get to see Truman Capote having a caramel macchiato with the mayor while discussing Trickle-Down Economics!  

During my initial visit I purchased a pound of coffee beans (of unknown origin that didn’t display its roasting date on the packaging) for ten bucks.  I had a $25 gift card that was quickly rejected because, she explained, they were not a Starbucks owned and operated outlet.  In other words they were and were not Starbucks.  (?)  But the counterperson, in order to cheer-up her new customer, brightly informed me that with every purchase I made, I’d receive a free small cup of coffee—which had a mediocre taste—but what to you want for free?  I inquired about free WiFi.  Again brightly, “It’s in the works, sir!”

After a few more weekly bean purchasing visits, I was informed by the now distracted counterperson (wearing a dirty/stained green apron), “No more free coffee.”  WiFi?  “It’s coming and you’ll have to pay for that too.”  Hmmm, methinks the bloom is off the rose…

I trotted home with my final bag of beans, did a little math and came to the conclusion that after twelve weeks of home roasting on a new hot air Fresh Roast Plus 8 coffee bean roaster (factoring-in the gratis beans used as packing material) I’d hit the break-even point on week thirteen.

I took the gamble and consequently Starbucks lost yet another stalwart customer. 

Flash forward: When this coffee shop takes its financial lumps and the contractors are in the process of prying its logo off the side of the building, will I join the “Save Our Starbucks” neighborhood picket line in hopes of saving that poor misunderstood mermaid that was forced to tighten her belt due to tough economic times?  Guess…     

Have no fear my fellow mini-artesian roasters; the CIQ mystery shoppers are on the case! 

And just who or what is the CIQ? The Coffee Quality Institute is a nonprofit organization on the case, cupping that coffee day and night, policing coffee wholesalers and retailers—busting bogus coffee bean processing mills—forever on the look-out for imposter beans with questionable tracking numbers.  “Hold it right there rastaman!  Drop your bean bag and come out with your hands up!”

Now True Jamaica Blue Coffee is only supposed to hail from the Blue Mountains, which is located on the eastern coast of the island.  The coffee in question, to be double-dog authentic, has to grow between 3,000 to 5,000 feet up those slippery blue slopes.  If it’s poor Caribbean cousin happens to be grown at 2,500 feet, then it’s substandard and worth about $4.75 a pound.

So why are so many coffee snobs out there claiming that this, not Kona or Kopi Luwak, is the finest coffee on the planet?  Well, Mr. Cupper will look at you and then dreamily pronounce that, “The Blue is so perfectly balanced that it rocks on its fulcrum.  Low, low acidity.  A slightly, ever so slightly, sweet taste and an incomparably pleasant finish.”  But does it have a sassafras finish?  No?  Then never mind CIQ.  Thanks for your help!  I’m sticking with my Carioca Favela Yellow Bourbon!  Viva Brazil!

I agree with you Morgan, Lopi Luwak (at almost two hundred bucks a pound and $65 a cup) is very abnormal coffee.  First of all, “Kopi” is the Indonesian word for coffee and a “Luwak” is a mongoose’s distant cousin, also known as a palm civit cat.  Mongoose Coffee?  Sounds like a trendy Sumptown coffee house that closed soon after our ongoing stock market crash.

For sake of my delicate constitution, I better cut to the chase, because the ultimate odyssey of this particular coffee bean is pretty sickening.  This ten pound marsupial prowls around various Indonesian coffee plantations at night; once discovering a desirable plant it proceeds to eat the ripest of its fruit.  Traveling through it digestive system the bean picks-up all sorts of wondrous enzymes—and eventually it’s out of the poop shoot and onto the dusty trail.

Morning breaks and luwak feces are lovingly collected by underpaid plantation workers, cleaned by them in the shed and the resulting green (?) beans are nestled into burlap bags—awaiting the arrival of those overpaid foreign coffee brokers.  Only 500 pounds are shipped out of the Indonesian Archipelago every year.  Attn. Home Roasters: These beans are to be immediately cooled after the first crack or that ol’ marsupial magic is gone with the wind!

A Thought for the Day: If the wealthy Japanese eat toxic fugu fish, then why can’t we rich westerners enjoy a steaming cup of kopi during a languid weekend at Bernie Madoff’s place out in the Hamptons?

Now what I had easily done with my high-tech popcorn popper and inexpensive green beans was a quantum leap beyond that nasty aforementioned Frankenstein coffee.  But I was still irritated…Maybe my problem was with not letting my beans degass within the proper parameters.  How, I ask you, can I become a successful roastmaster of the first water if I don’t degass my beans to the proper consistency?

It’s my understanding that the slowly seeping carbon dioxide gas within the roasted bean protects the newly formed favor oils from immediate oxygen damage.  So at what point is the peak of coffee favor attained (with the help of this gas) before degradation begins to kick-in?  How long should the beans be aged before grinding and immediate brewing?  Two days?  Five days?  Twenty four hours at room temperature and then drop them to a temperature of −35° for nine days; while squirting those frostbitten beans with a saturated calcium carbonite solution?  Should I purchase a carbon dioxide gas volume sensory chamber?  How about a remanufactured one from Nippon Denshoku Industries?  Naw, that might be a bit pricey for a tyro roastmaster!  I guess I would need to experiment a bit.    

Dog my cats, was I in for a surprise when I drank my first mug!  Where was that almond, anise and sassafras taste that my Northern California coffee distributer promised me?  Instead, the coffee tasted like nothing I had ever drunk (or as the caffeine aficionados say, “cupped”) before.  It tasted like the freshest, most clean tasting coffee I’ve ever encountered in my life.  Be still my heart!  I guess the word would be: “bright.”  Not bad for my first micro-roasted batch.  Ahem, Seattle Starbucks, eat your heart out!    Maybe during my next four minute roast, I’ll be able to bring out all of those subtle nuances…Especially that sassafras root.  Never had coffee with a root beer finish!      

The FRP8 began to moan softly; then the beans became airborne—not unlike the m.o. of an air popcorn popper.  Wonder of wonders: The gray-green beans began turning a kaki-ish color right before my very eyes.  Then I heard the beginnings of the first crack (that’s when the internal sugars begin to caramelize and the coffee oils are starting to stur).

There’s an auditory lull as the beans continued to dance higher and higher.  Suddenly the flying saucer began to belch smoke as the second quieter crack was heard: somewhat analogous to distant popcorn.  “Captain, I don’t know what’s holding her together!”  By now the beans were very dark brown in color and some of the oils had made it to the surface.  I immediately turned the timer into its “cool” (down) sector and cooler air began blowing.

After a minute or so, my first roast was done.  I took the chaff collector apart, dumping the chaff into the garbage disposal.  Then I slipped the mothership into the dishwasher.  Next I dumped the beans into my coffeemaker’s grinding chamber; turning the roasting chamber upside-down and stuck it into the dishwasher.  Then I took the base and put it into the dishwasher.  Hell no!  I put it up into the cupboard…

Will our helpless coffee beans escape “The Devil’s Grinder?”  Stay-tuned for the next exciting episode!

The greenies are half the size of the coffee beans we’re familiar with (and a little heavier due to their water weight).  Furthermore, they smell distinctly like a vegetable—180◦ away from that coffee smell we’re so familiar with.  (Now there’re coffee experts that claim freshly brewed coffee is made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands of distinct smells—and if you or your parents hail from the planet Solyaris or Altura IV you’ll be able to smell them all!)  The green beans keep their freshness for over a year, but when they’re roasted their flavor/aromatic quotient begins its long downhill assent after just a few days.  Gind it and you better brew it immediately!  And that’s why supermarket and most coffee house coffee containers are never roasting date stamped.  (Wouldn’t it be nice if your coffee retailer treated it like its other bakery products?  One can only dream…)

So when you brew your Maxell House it, of course, tastes nothing like craft roasted coffee.  You want that bright infused flavor of a Stella Artois, but you’re winding-up with that dingy/sour taste analogous to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.  And I was getting tired of PBR coffee; ready to take the leap!    

I blame this strange looking contraption for hooking me into the home roasting coffee craze, about a year ago.  In those halcyon days, you could purchase a Fresh Roast Plus 8 over the internet, for about $79 and the retailer would toss-in eight pounds of green coffee beans as a kicker.  (The price has since jumped about $30, for reasons unknown…)  FRP8 was pretty simple to operate:  Fill the glass chamber with enough hard little green beans (64 grams) to make one pot of coffee—place the flying saucer chaff catcher on top and crank the timer to the four minute mark.  When it began popping and smoking; you were done.  Nuttin’ to it!  Any tyro roaster would find its operation to be incredibly simple—except I kept spilling roasted and unroasted beans all over my kitchen floor.  My high-tech solution was to hack-off the top of a plastic V8 Fusion bottle sitting in the kitchen trashcan.  At last, the missing item the manufacturer forgot to include: a custom see-through coffee bean funnel perfect for small scale roasting!