Pursuing true coffee pleasure will undoubtedly lead you to heated debates, strong opinions, and passionate preferences. With the popularity of pricey gourmet coffee today, even neophytes to the world of Gourmet Coffee will pile on to any conversation about rare, outstanding beans that one can grind at home.  Should talk turn toward home roasting of coffee beans, you will be on a collision course with hordes of Starbucks fanatics.  Treading lightly is the best advice I can give you.

I became intrigued by gourmet coffee after having some home-roasted beans prepared by my older brother at his home during one recent holiday season.  He looked down his nose at me like some sniveling rag of perpetual neediness and said, “You might want to try some of this coffee I made from beans I roasted by hand.”  (Older brothers act like this all the time!)

Never one to eschew free handouts, I gladly tasted the beverage, not expecting much.  To my surprise, the flavors dancing on my palate were simultaneously pleasant and intriguing!  I had not tasted coffee like this before and made a mental note (I’m really good at making mental notes but I’ve yet to succeed with my filing system) to look more into this quaint little hobby of home roasting coffee beans.  If my brother could do this, it must be a piece of cake, right?

As with all research subjects worthy of serious investigation, I hit the Internet and starting looking around for gourmet coffee and green beans.  It became immediately apparent that there is much to be absorbed in this quest.  Like any product from the Good Earth, beans vary widely in quality and character.  Wading through the thousands of bean varieties to arrive at Coffee Nirvana is possible with the help of some outstanding coffee websites and the zealots that publish them. 

First, I had to research the home coffee roasters that were out there (they all have many plusses and minuses and quirks galore) and beg my better half for indulgence to purchase one.  Then I had to explore the many varieties of green coffee beans and the thousands of different ways each bean could be roasted to arrive at just the perfect stage of roastiness (yes, I know that’s not a word as such, but it just seemed to work here). 

Basically, you can roast coffee beans to a lighter style exemplified by a Dunkin’ Donuts cup of coffee, or you can burn the beans into submission and prepare a drink similar to what made Starbucks famous.  Or, if you’re feeling frisky and adventurous, there are literally hundreds of stops in between those two extremes that will accentuate or sublimate a variety of flavors possible within a single bean.  This is where it gets hazy and you inevitably acquire a strong bias for your preferred roast level, but experimentation is half the fun and what makes home roasting so rewarding.

I bought a few sample packs of different green beans to get myself started and then I roasted the beans to different levels in order to determine the effect of “roast profile” on each bean.  Then, much as gourmet wine drinkers and cigar aficionados do, I kept a logbook of tasting notes for my own future reference.  After months of experimentation, I arrived at my own rules concerning coffee beans and their flavor potential:

• Never buy Robusta green coffee beans.  Robusta beans dwell and lurk in the packages of many a mass-market coffee brand and will never produce a rich, nor gourmet quality coffee experience.  (Arabica beans are where it’s at.)
• Home roasters below the $500 price range all work pretty much the same, with small variations.  Buy a popular brand that is backed with a decent warranty.
• Burning beans to a black oily texture removes the bean’s “origin character” and while it can be tasty, it destroys the bean’s ability to take your palate to a higher plane of existence.

Beans that are heavily roasted (“French or Italian” roast levels) lose the complexity and textures that make them unique.  In fact, most home roasters start out trying to duplicate the Starbucks roast, only to discover they are shunned and frowned-upon in any quality crowd of coffee roasters.  Why?  Because dark roasting destroys the very nature of high-quality coffee beans and reduces them to charcoal.  While some beans do tend to tolerate darker roasting levels more than others, the black oily coffee bean equals sadness to most gourmet coffee addicts. 

You want the bean to offer up its secrets of sun, soil and satisfaction, and that combination is really only possible between what roasters call the first and second crack.  Anything past second crack is iffy and should be avoided at all cost.  The deeper you dive into roasting perfection, the more you appreciate the lighter roasts of very fine beans.  The very best roasters on the planet today have well-guarded secrets about how they can coax maximum flavor and aroma from beans without roasting much past the first crack.  In fact, the highest rated coffees in the world come from a roaster who specializes in lighter roasts and even recommends those for his espresso customers.

Even if you decide not to pursue home roasting of coffee beans, it is very easy to use the Internet to find outstanding world-class coffee from roasters who take fierce pride in their product.  Let me share two resources that I found to be invaluable in learning about gourmet coffee and where I could find it.

The first resource I found was a website called  Coffee Review.  It has been around for about ten years and is staffed by Kenneth Davids, who is respected industry-wide for his palate and knowledge.  Kenneth travels the world writing about the coffee industry and has become a noted author as well.
The second site I rely on for impartial, expert knowledge is Coffee Cuppers.  Run by Jim Schulman and Bob Yellin, this site is unique in that they insist on receiving the beans green, and then roasting them in-house before publishing their reviews.  I have found both Jim and Bob to be wonderful and willing resources, helping to extend my own knowledge of coffee.

As with wine tasters, once you understand the palate of the person testing, you can begin zeroing in on your preferred flavor profiles.  There is a huge world of coffee zealots out there that will fight to the death concerning the superiority of beans from various regions such as Ethiopia, Sumatra, Brazil, Jamaica, Hawaii, Mexico, or Indonesia.  There are coffees you will discover that even taste like blueberries, currants and other fruits.  The flavors are amazing and it is one of the reasons gourmet coffee is such a rewarding pursuit.

Whether you decide to go the home-roasting route, or find a roaster to purchase from directly, you can never return to mass-market coffee once you have tried the forbidden well-roasted bean.  Coffee can be one of the most intense, rewarding experiences you can treat yourself and your friends to.  I have had jaws drop in disbelief from friends who try my coffee.  I have converted numerous folks who didn’t even think they cared much for coffee into gourmet coffee fiends.  As with gourmet food, wines, cigars and beers, life is too short to indulge sub-par coffees.