Happy Home Coffee – Roasting My Own Coffee Beans

Have you ever cooked your own coffee beans, ground them up and then made coffee before?

As you all know if you’ve read the blog for awhile I’m an unabashed coffee addict.  I love coffee.  Give me a good strong cup of black Joe and I’m a happy camper.

Well, what do you think will happen to coffee when TSHTF?  You won’t be able to run down to the local Walmart to pick up a few cans especially if it turns into a long term event.  Eventually all those cans you have stored in your cellar will be used up and then what?  No coffee?  I might as well be dead.

Then I talked with Asher Angell at Happy Home Coffee and he told me a better way to do it.  If I were to buy the coffee beans and roast them myself I might be able to hold onto the coffee for a lot longer.  Imagine that!  I’ve never roasted my own coffee beans before, but I’m willing to try anything.  He sent me a can of his coffee beans and I set them aside for a few months just to see how it would affect the flavor.

This weekend I dug the can out of my basement and brought it into the light.  There were instructions printed on the side of the can explaining how to roast your own coffee beans.  Brilliant!

I dug out my cast iron skillet, turned on my stove, and started roasting beans in the kitchen.  Allow me to help you if you’ve never done this before.  I like my coffee good and dark and when I cooked the first batch of beans I barely had them dark enough to tell they’d been cooked.  Fail!

So the next day I got out the rest of the beans and took them outside to cook on my grill.  I have a propane grill that has one of those burners on the side for heating corn or whatever, so I set the skillet on that and tried to roast them that way.

Ever had one of those days when nothing was in your favor?  The reason I’d gone outside was because of the strong smell these beans emit when cooked.  Mrs. Jarhead wasn’t all that impressed with yesterday’s trial and directed me to take my project outdoors.  Well, it probably would have worked well if the wind hadn’t been blowing about 25 mph.  It kept blowing the flame out on that little burner and even though the beans weren’t cooking all that good I personally was reaching a slow boil.  It was one of the these days where I tried to throw the spatula on the table and it bounced off and fell through the one crack on the deck big enough to allow it to pass through.  I tried to move the plate and knocked the chicken seasoning all over the deck.  I tried to make a wind break out of deck chairs and tarp and it kept blowing around with zero effectiveness for keeping the wind off the burner.  Anyway, you get the picture.  Imagine something going wrong and it probably happened to me that day.

Eventually I got sick and tired of that pathetic little grill burner and ran downstairs and grabbed my Coleman propane two burner stove.  Hell yeah, that did the trick!  I fired it up, put the skillet full of beans on it and within minutes the beans were cracking nice as could be.  This time I didn’t get scared and I let them darken right up.  I let them sit outside for a couple of hours and then made some coffee for some family we had coming over.

So how was the coffee after all that trouble?  It was delicious!  It seems strange to say it, but you could actually taste the freshness of the coffee.  I ground the beans up very fine and that’s when I really started getting an idea of how good it was going to be.  It smelled so good and fresh.  These were Arabica beans and I probably drank four cups of it that afternoon.

Hard to believe it came out of a can that had been sitting in my basement for months!  He packs the beans in such a way that no air gets to them keeping them fresh and ready to roast.

If you’re like me and love a cup of coffee you need to check out Asher’s web site and get yourself some of his coffee.

Questions?  Comments?

Sound off below!

-Jarhead Survivor