I've started roasting coffee, and like my bacon, I'm willing to share some with my friends. First, a few details into what goes into making this stuff.
The Beans: Chiapas, organic, fair-trade. I purchase them from Coffee Bean Corral. Its bold, rich,and medium to full body. Flavors are buttery, chocolate, & floral. So, I’ve been told. My palate isn’t that developed. I call it damn good.
The Wood: I start my fire with some lump mesquite charcoal and add mesquite chunks.
The Roast: I picked up a couple stainless steel wire grilling baskets at some home store, then wired them together to form a closed basket. With the beans inside, I shake the shit out of it over the fire through the cracks & smoking until they're nice and glossy. Of course with hand roasting, no two batches will be the same. Heck, even the beans won't be a uniform color within a batch.
The Grind: Before I started roasting my own, I was already grinding whole beans. I initially purchased a $20 hand grinder. It worked okay, until the plastic setting nut cracked at 15 months. I wanted another manual grinder so I got the Precision Bean Coffee Grinder, the Warthog of grinders.
The Brew: One cup at a time, we're just 2 people, I don't need to make a pot. I started with just a straight pour over strategy, but switched to a 3 minute steep then filtered. It's time consuming at over 5 minutes per cup.
All that work got me a hell of a cup of coffee, one I actually enjoy.
A Batch: This is a small batch process, producing enough roasted beans for 15 cups of coffee at 15 grams/cup. The small batch works out to 2 cups a day and roasting just once a week. Unfortunately, small batch processing requires a lot of labor. While I might luv y'all, I need to cover cost, and support my coffee habit. I'm pricing it at $15/batch, basically $1/cup. That more than commercial roasted beans, but still cheaper than coffee shop prices.
If you're in SA, I'll bring some along on my usual bacon runs on Friday or Saturday. I think I can get a batch into a USPS Priority small box mailer, which mails for $6.95. Email your requests to greg@grege.me.