"now we're at a critical juncture"

R thanks to his siblings has always appreciated good coffee. In fact he had a .pdf explaining step by step instructions for using a french press. When we lived in Asia, R was first introduced to coffee roasting by a good friend who with the absence of decent fresh coffee took it upon himself to provide for himself and his family.

While on the employment search in the fall R embarked on this new hobby and our household has been ever so blessed by it- not to mention those who engage in gift exchanges or do us favors (we tend to bring mason jars of coffee beans as gifts now).

This weekend R's brother J is in town for Easter and yesterday I got some great pictures of them roasting. J has also started roasting in his college dorm.

green coffee beans before being roasted

J measuring out green beans to take back to school

He buys green beans from a website called Sweet Maria's- they go all over the world building relationships with coffee bean farmers, purchase their crop and then ship them to home roasters who order from their website. www.sweetmarias.com is a great resource for the "how-to's" in coffee roasting.

He uses a stovetop popcorn popper with a thermometer inserted in the top of it to roast the beans. It gets a little smokey in the house and it's definitely loud as you hear the coffee beans "cracking". The timing in the roasting is everything and that's where the title for this post comes from- R gets a little intense about the timing and said "now we're at a critical juncture...".

After all the cracks and once the beans are at a certain roast (I'm not very good with the technical aspects of the process :)), the beans get taken outside to cool the beans and remove the chaff.

In the end you end up with FRESHLY roasted coffee! R roasts a pound or so about once a week and we drink AMAZING coffee every day. Last week I was planning to meet a friend at a local coffee shop, and when I realized how beautiful the weather was, the comfort of our front porch and our incredible coffee I invited her over instead.

Now J is making some incredible cinnamon rolls so I'd better go- it is a feast weekend indeed!