Coffee is better with fresh roasted beans. FreshRoast SR500

Home roasted coffee is superior to store-bought because it is so fresh. Coffee loses flavor after being roasted, no matter how carefully it is packaged. Plus, you can control how dark you want the roast with a home roaster. This is important. The darker the roast, the more you taste the roast. The lighter the roast, the more you taste the bean. This distinction is mostly lost on Starbucks, who generally almost burns their beans. Also, lighter roasts have more caffeine!

We were living in an apartment with a tiny interior deck for two years and roasting wasn’t possible there. The roaster is somewhat noisy and the aroma of roasting coffee would pervade the interior deck area. Happily, we are back in a house now and roasting has re-commenced. Roasting should be done outdoors to prevent the possibility of smoke detectors going off.

Sweet Maria’s sells a multitude of carefully graded green coffee beans for $6-7 a pound. I just bought the Nesco FreshRoast SR500 from them for $169. Do the math. Coffee shops generally sell coffee for about $15 a pound, so a home roaster pays for itself quickly. Plus, as mentioned, the coffee tastes way better too.

I’ve owned previous Nesco roasters. The SR500 features several improvements and is dead easy to use. Put 43 grams of green beans in the hopper and set the timer to 5.9 minutes. Push the roast button. It’ll roast the beans using air, similar to how a popcorn popper works. Fan speed, temperature, and timer can be adjusted, so you can do custom roasts. At the end, it does a cool down for a couple of minutes. Wait for everything to cool down before transferring the coffee to a container.

I’m enjoying my first cup of home roasted in two years, a fine Sumatra Peaberry. If you are a coffee aficionado, check out home roasting!