Although there are advanced home coffee roasters that cost a hundred to several hundred dollars and give you great control over the coffee roasting process, if you just want to give it a try, a popcorn popper is the classic coffee enthusiast DIY coffee roasting tool.


Why Home Roasting?

Home-roasted coffee provides vastly better flavor than your average store-bought beans and cheaper than specialty roasted beans. Home roasting is relatively easy, too, and can be a fun hobby that'll let you choose different coffee varietals to drink as you please.


I've been home roasting with a popcorn popper for a while now and really enjoy it. My beans are fresh and inexpensive, and I've been very happy with the results. Depending on your base level for beans, your home-roasted results could be significantly better or not quite up to par. Either way, a little trial and error is your best bet.

The Hot Air Popcorn Popper

Not all air popcorn poppers are recommended for this. Hot air is supposed to come into the chamber through the sides, not the bottom. Sweet Maria's has a list of popcorn popper models that have been said to work well. I've used the West Bend Poppery II and am currently using the Nostalgia Popcorn Popper (shown in the YouTube video above), which is currently $29 on Amazon. Bed, Bath, and Beyond often carries these too.

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Before we get started, I must warn you that popcorn poppers are not designed to roast coffee. They'll get very, very hot during the roasting process, they're very cheaply made, and these two things together usually means that Bad Things can happen, so take the usual precautions like not leaving the popper unattended. Not scared off? Okay, let's get started.


How to Roast Coffee in a Popcorn Popper

What You'll Need

Besides the popcorn popper, you'll need:

Green, unroasted coffee beans. You can find these at many online retailers; I highly recommend Sweet Maria's sampler packs

A bowl to collect the chaff, which is the outer covering of the coffee beans that comes off during roasting.

A colander or tray or something to put the beans on to cool down after the roast.

Oven mitts

A timer and pen and paper to keep a log of your roasting times (optional)

How to Roast Coffee in a Popcorn Popper

Because a lot of smoke is generated during the roasting, place the popper under a kitchen stove vent if you can, or do the roasting outside or in your garage or other place where the smoke won't be a problem. Place the bowl to collect the chaff under the chute opening. Measure the same amount of green beans that is recommended for your popcorn maker. For the Nostalgia, it's 1/3 of a cup. Pour the beans in the popper and plug it in. Warning: This gets loud! Between one and three minutes, you should hear the beans start to pop (it even smells like popcorn in a way). This is known as "the first crack." After about two more minutes you should hear a softer but more quicker popping, the "second crack," at which point you would stop the roast by unplugging the popper.* Carefully dump the beans out onto your colander and stir or toss to help them cool down. (You could also set outside or in the fridge to get them to quickly cool.)


The beans will likely be medium to dark and oily, but this will vary and times will vary depending on the coffee type. (The person who made the video above has a 9-minute roast with his Kenya AA beans, but roasting some Mexican coffee to a medium dark roast the other day took about 4 minutes for me.)

*For subsequent roasts, you'll probably want to stop the roasting some time between the first and second crack, actually, but knowing when the second crack happens can help you get the timing right for your roast.


You'll want to experiment with the times and the roast levels based on the beans you use and your coffee preferences. This is part of all the joy of home coffee roasting! Enjoy! For further reading, I highly recommend Kenneth Davids' book Home Coffee Roasting.


Are you a home roaster or interested in trying it? Let's discuss in the comments.

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