Bean there, done that

cooling
Originally uploaded by mcmrbt.

Roast pork, so the story goes, was "discovered" when someone's pagoda burned down with a pig inside it. Mmmm...

I was thinking about that story as I made my first stab at roasting my own coffee beans. How, I wondered, did we go from the red berries of the coffee plant, to the roast-and-ground beans used to make your modern cup of coffee?

The creation myth of coffee holds that an Ethiopian goat-herd noticed that his older goats acted more like kids when they'd been eating the berries and leaves of a certain plant. He thought he'd try it himself.

That story has an elegant simplicity. It involves goats, so it must be true. Even so, there is no burning bush in the story telling the goat-herd to try roasting the beans and making a drink.

The myth continues, saying that the shepherd told some monks (in ethopia?) about the beans, and they threw them into a fire, declaring them to be the work of the devil. Then, when the aroma began to escape from the fire, they quickly changed their minds.

I love the image of monks scrabbling around in hot ashes in order to rescue the first roasted coffee beans. By golly, this could be as big as Champagne!

I finally got the opportunity yesterday to use my

popcorn maker to roast some green beans, supplied by Whittard.

It really is a remarkably easy (if smelly and smoky) process. You essentially just have to throw a handful of beans in the popcorn maker, run it, and wait for them to turn the right shade of brown.



First of all, you get an aroma which is like nothing else so much as a delicious chocolate cake cooking in the oven. Not a coffee smell at all, but rich, melting, chocolate.

They begin to crackle, throwing off husky, flaky material, and quite quickly turn brown. The popcorn maker gets hot. When they're as dark as you want them to be, you stop the machine. There's a lot of smoke! I was lucky to be doing it in my conservatory, next to an open window, with the door wide open too.

I quickly emptied them into one of two sieves, and dashed outside to cool them as rapidly as possible, passing them between the two sieves.

Finally, when they were cool, I put them in an airtight container. Within an hour, the essential oils of the beans had started to come through, and the aroma of coffee was strong and good.

I left them overnight and ground some up for my breakfast brew. The result wasn't brilliant, because all I had to hand was an antique manual grinder, which didn't really get them fine enough for espresso. So I brought them into work for the bean-to-cup machine.

A qualified success. Certainly tastes good, though not quite the revelation we were promised. My first batch wasn't really dark enough, though, and even my second batch wasn't quite as dark as a true espresso roast. So I'll try again. The main thing is, there's nothing to fear: it's very easy, and all adds to the fun.