Green Fair Trade Organic Coffee for home roasting: Homeland Organic Baltimore

Why Roast Coffee at Home anyway?

Most of us grew up with a tin can of coffee somewhere in the kitchen.  I remember in our Baltimore home, in my younger days that tin can was in the cupboard.  And some time later it moved to the freezer.  This was supposed to preserve freshness.  I have learned since roasting coffee in my own kitchen, that coffee is best right after it cools, I put it in my grinder, is ground and brewed while the aromatic smell of warm coffee beans linger in the air.  Fresh roasted Homeland Organic coffee beans will keep longer in  a dark, cool place in an air tight container if they are not opened too many times.  In an ideal world it would be best to roast your beans every morning. "But who has time for that?" you ask.  All I can say to that is, "We make time for things important to us."  I have chosen to buy organic Fair Trade coffee beans and roast them on Saturday morning.  It is only necessary to roast about a half a pound at a time. If family or friends are coming over, you may want to roast a little more. On more productive roasting days I will package my roasted beans in individual brewing quantities which allows me to keep the fresh roasted beans in the freezer until I need them and I will only have to open the sealed bag once. There are probably other solutions, but this is mine.

So, “Why roast coffee beans at home?”

There are several reasons.  First, there is the money-saving factor.  There is also the self-satisfaction of “doing it yourself.”  There is the right to brag about roasting your own Homeland Organic coffee beans to your specific preference or blending your own special combination of beans.  You have the satisfaction of knowing you are helping organic coffee farming families by paying fair trade prices.

Green coffee beans cost about half as much as roasted coffee beans.  This is because the green coffee bean market and the green organic coffee bean market are smaller markets than the roasted coffee bean market. Proof in this is in the nearly universal visibility of that one national coffee chain which caters to good quality and instant satisfaction.  They even have stores with drive-through windows now. Convenience costs money.  

One pound of green organic fair trade coffee costs the same as a specialty drink from that particular chain store…. Well, you get the point. So, if 80 cups of coffee comes from one kilo of coffee this converts to about 39 cups per pound.  The simple explanation is you can get 39 cups of fresh roasted, freshly ground and freshly brewed cups of coffee, made to your particular standards for one specialty drink at a chain coffee store. And all of this comes with the satisfaction that a lesser affluent coffee farmer is getting a somewhat larger income for his or her work.