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Coffee, to Roast
To roast coffee properly, a suitable apparatus, which is made for the purpose, should be purchased. There are two or three different kinds, and the price varies, the cheapest being about 8s. Many persons, however, who have a prejudice in favour of roasting their own coffee, and do not possess a "drum," use an iron saucepan with a closely-fitting lid. If this is done, great care will be required, or the coffee will either be burnt, in which case the aroma will be destroyed, or not sufficiently roasted, and then the flavour will not be fully developed. It is a good plan to wash the berries before roasting them; it not only cleanses them, but tests their quality. Those which float on the top of the water are not good. The berries must afterwards be carefully dried, both in a cloth and in the tin. To roast them, put a little piece of perfectly fresh sweet butter about the size of a walnut into the pan with three pounds of berries. Place the lid on, and shake the saucepan about continually, until a slight smoke arises. Then draw the saucepan back, and stir the berries about with a wooden spoon till they are lightly and equally browned to the colour of cinnamon. Spread them on a flat dish, and throw a thick cloth over them. When quite cold put the berries into dry bottles, and cork them closely. It is a good plan to buy a large quantity of raw berries, and roast two or three pounds as required. The coffee berry ought not to be roasted until it is three years old, and it improves with keeping. The fire should be clear and bright, but not fierce, or half a minute will burn it.
A pan-roasting method from the era when coffee was bought green and roasted at home in small batches. The technique still works, but three of its instructions have been overturned by what we now understand about roast chemistry and degassing.
- Batch sizeThree pounds in a saucepan is far more than a domestic burner can heat evenly; the beans on the bottom scorch before the top layer colours. Work with 8-12 oz at a time in a heavy pan, or use a dedicated air or drum roaster.
- The butterOmit it. Butter's milk solids burn well below the 380-450F the beans must reach, and the smoke and bitterness that follow are exactly the burnt aroma the recipe warns against. Coffee is roasted dry; the oils that appear on darker roasts come from the bean itself.
- "Until a slight smoke arises"The first wisp of smoke coincides roughly with first crack, an audible popping as steam ruptures the bean around 196C/385F. Listen for it rather than watch for smoke; from that point the roast moves in seconds.
- "The colour of cinnamon"This is a light roast, stopped shortly after first crack, brighter and more acidic than most modern palates expect. For a medium roast, carry on to the beginning of second crack.
- CoolingDo not throw a cloth over hot beans. Residual heat continues the roast; spread them in a single layer on a sheet pan or colander and move air over them so they reach room temperature within four or five minutes.
- Do not cork them at onceFreshly roasted coffee off-gasses carbon dioxide for a day or more. Sealing beans into corked bottles while they are still degassing builds pressure and, at best, wastes the aromatics; rest them loosely covered for 12-24 hours first.
- Washing and the float testBeans that float are generally low-density defects, immature or insect-damaged, and are worth discarding, but wetting green coffee makes it much harder to dry thoroughly and it moulds readily. Sort by eye instead, and if you do rinse, dry completely before roasting.
- "Not until it is three years old"Modern practice runs the other way: green coffee is generally held to be at its best within about a year of harvest, and past-crop beans tend to flatten out and take on a woody, papery character. Prefer current-crop green coffee and roast it within months.
- VentilationRoasting a modest batch produces a surprising volume of smoke and papery chaff. Open a window, run the extractor, and expect to sweep up.
Coffee was widely sold green through much of the nineteenth century, since roasted beans went stale quickly and the grocer's turnover could not be relied on. Home roasting in a drum over a range, or in a covered pan as here, was one common domestic arrangement. Coffee was among the more heavily adulterated goods on the British market, cut with chicory, roasted grain or worse, and buying whole green berries was one defence against that. Packaged pre-roasted coffee spread commercially in the second half of the century and gradually made the household roasting pan less necessary; the reference to "persons who have a prejudice in favour of roasting their own" suggests the skill was already becoming a matter of preference rather than necessity.