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In principle, roasting your own coffee is very easy. However, it is difficult to achieve a good roasting result at home without a coffee roaster.

You need this to roast coffee

In the food industry, coffee is dry-roasted at temperatures between 250 and 450 degrees Celsius. Special drum or fluid bed roasters are used for this, which guarantee a particularly even roasting result. A simple frying pan will also do at home, but there is a risk that the coffee beans will be roasted very unevenly.

If you would like to roast coffee regularly at home, we recommend purchasing a drum roaster for home use. Coffee roasters are not cheap. However, you avoid the coffee beans burning on the bottom of the pan. A drum roaster works on a similar principle to an air fryer. However, the drum in the drum roaster rotates continuously so that there are no “hotspots” where it is particularly hot or cold. Even in an air fryer, the heat distribution is too uneven to achieve a good roasting result.

How to roast coffee beans at home

How to roast your coffee beans using a coffee roaster or air fryer:

Preheat your coffee roaster or hot air fryer to 250 degrees Celsius.
Place the coffee beans in the roasting chamber and let the beans roast to your desired roast level. This typically takes between five and ten minutes. If you use an air fryer, stir the coffee beans regularly.
Cool the roasted coffee beans in a cool place as quickly as possible. In industry, the beans are cooled with cold air. The aromatic substances in coffee are highly volatile and therefore evaporate at high temperatures.
Store the roasted coffee beans in a gas-permeable and light-proof bag. Roasting gases form during coffee roasting, which escape during storage.

How do you know how roasted your coffee is?

Connoisseurs distinguish between more than a dozen different degrees of roasting of coffee. The degree of roasting can be easily recognized by the color of the coffee beans. The beans change color from greenish-grey to black as they roast. Roasting can be roughly divided into three phases:

The first crack (first crack), where the beans break open on the surface for the first time, which you can tell by the crackling. The beans are still light brown here. The coffee aroma is particularly acidic.
The second crack (Second Crack), whereby the beans break open for the second time. The beans are already dark brown here. This corresponds to a medium degree of roasting, as can be found in many commercial products.
Oil migrates to the surface. The beans here are very dark brown to black with small drops of oil on the surface. The chlorogenic acid in the coffee is almost completely broken down here, making the coffee very digestible. The aroma is particularly full-bodied and intense. This level of roasting is particularly popular in Spain, France and Italy.

Why dark roasted coffee is more digestible

Basically, dark roasted coffee is more digestible, sweeter and richer in vitamins than light roasted coffee. This is because acids and irritants are broken down during roasting and vitamin B3 is formed from trigonelline.

How dark you roast your coffee is entirely up to your personal preferences. Especially the dark roast degrees are difficult to implement at home if you don’t have a coffee roaster. In an air fryer, the heat distribution is quite uneven, so there is a high risk of burning some coffee beans.

Roasting coffee at home is only for real coffee nerds. Good roasting results can hardly be achieved at home without a coffee roaster. It is best to use ready-roasted beans from fair trade cultivation with an organic seal. So you can enjoy good coffee without much effort.