Snow-Child Give-Away / Roast Your Own Coffee

I know that what happens sometimes is this: you’re following along gamely, trusting me, opening your mind to tofu and English muffin rings, meatless Mondays, boys wearing pink, whatever, and then suddenly I’m like, “Our composting toilet. . .” or “. . . the fact that our house is made out of spelt husks,” and you realize that I’m actually completely insane. (NB: we have neither a composting toilet nor a spelt-husk house.)

And I mention my fringy freakyness now because I’m about to suggest that you start roasting your own coffee.

If you don’t love coffee and/or money is no object in your household, then go ahead and skip to the end of this post and enter the Snow-Child give-away (Unless money is no object, and then you should buy it! And buy me a copy too, please, since I had to return mine the library. Thanks.) But if you love coffee and/or are pinching your hard-won pennies, then consider this: if you buy your green coffee in 5-pound bags from Sweet Maria’s, you end up with the very best, freshest, fair-trade coffee you ever had in your life, for around 6 or 7 dollars a pound (unless you need to buy the Kona, which is $19.10 a pound. . . but then again, you could buy the “Panama Dry Process Experiment Gone Awry” for $2.80 a pound!). You don’t need me to tell you that, with savings like that, you’ll be a millionaire in 5 years. Plus, there’s the Little-House-on-the-Prairie thrill of roasting your own. Even though they doubtless had a hard time finding anywhere to plug in their hot-air poppers.

Yes, a designated coffee-only hot-air popcorn-popper is all you need! Like this one. Or a thrifted one, or one you already have and aren't using would be perfect, of course! That's all you need--that and the green coffee itself, which you should buy from the fantastic Sweet Maria’s, who have no coupon code to offer us, and with whom I have no business arrangement, but who are eponymously sweet, and thrilled that you might be buying coffee from them. Their site has all the information you need on roasting coffee (definitely start here) but I’ll just recap the basics so that you see how easy it is. Also, you should know before you start that the roasting smell will penetrate somewhat such that everywhere you go on roasting days, people will sniff the air curiously and say, “Do you smell that? Like burning toast?” and you will have to say, “I’m sorry. It’s actually my hair.”

First you'll get your beans, which will be small and greyish-green and smell like old dirt. I am not so much of a coffee snob that I have the faintest idea about what beans I would choose or why, and so I kind of pick them randomly from the cheaper side. I have liked everything. A sampler is a fun and inexpensive way to start.

Next you will measure 1/2 cup of beans (or whatever maximum your popper identifies) into the popper and you'll turn it on. You should have a large metal colander or bowl ready. And you should do this outside, if you've got an outlet (I roast outside, in the snow even, crouched in my coat over the popper). Otherwise, do it near your stove and turn the fan on high. It will make a lot of smoke and roasty odor, which dissipates in about a day or so. Tip the popper backwards by wedging a folded-up dish towel under its front side: this will keep the coffee beans from flying out before they're roasted.

Now you should consult that Sweet Maria's link above on what exactly you're looking and listening for. But I'll tell you this: first some beans will fly out, and you'll readjust the dish towel. Next nothing will happen for a minute or so. Then the husks will start flying out. (You can catch them in the colander but, honestly, whenever I do that I end up panicking when I need to dump the beans in, and then I end up dumping the husks out of the colander onto the floor, so it's kind of pointless. Just commit to cleaning them up later, which is easy.) After around 3 minutes, the coffee will hit the stage called "first crack," which means you hear them popping, like popcorn. This is when you need to pay close attention. First crack will taper off and then, around a minute later, "second crack" will start, which is a series of very-close-together cracking sounds + smoke. I usually let it go into second crack for about 15 to 30 seconds, and then I panic and dump the beans into the colander and they're usually perfectly roasted. Sweet Maria's has advice on what to look, listen, and smell for, and they have very exact timings for different roasts, but I can never see anything, and have to go on sound and adrenaline alone. 

Once the beans are in the colander, you shake them around to cool them off and then, if you're me, you roast another batch right away. 1 cup of green beans makes 2 cups roasted, which fills my mason jar without overheating my popper.

Now clean up your mess.

Once the beans are cool in the colander, put them in a jar, cap them, and leave them to cure overnight. In the morning, they will smell not like old dirt anymore, but like the most amazing coffee ever.

And then you can make coffee. If it's 80 degrees in March, you can even make iced coffee!

(That's from this post.)

But are you here for the give-away? Little, Brown, the wonderful publishers of The Snow Child, are going to give away three copies of it! Right here, on this blog. Just enter a comment here, along with your desire to win, and you will be automatically entered. I'll end the contest on Monday at midnight and announce the winners on Tuesday. Good luck! (And don't be shy to write in about the coffee instead--I won't enter you unless you ask to be entered.)