Is it possible to become a coffee snob? LOL If these taste as good as they smell I will have to increase my pantry alotment for coffee.

Well my coffee beans arrived. They sure looked different. They are a green color. Dh said they reminded him of baby diapers I told him to be quiet and leave me be, so I could create. I sat looking at my 5 bags. Trying to decide what I was going to try first...... this is what it looks like

Coffee is a seed. The berries are called cherries and in each cherry is two coffee beans. There are many choices in coffee. We choose shade grown, organic and free trade. I can have my coffee; the birds can have their habitat; the farmers can have a livable wage and I don't have to ingest all the pesticides. It is a win win for us all.

When the berries are harvested there are two ways of dealing with them the most common is a water bath to wash the cherry off.  The green beans are then air dried and then packaged into burlap bags that breathe for shipment to the roaster.

So I get my beans and they all look good except the Sumatra. That one has lots of parchment floating in the bag and it looks like the beans have been run over. :) No problem I will just go with one of the other choices. The Kenyan or the Costa Ricans look nice. I was told to always roast small batches so I decide to do enough for three pots. Now the roaster was the next issue. DH had not gotten my pan made so I used my stainless fry pan. I throw the beans in and start roasting. I was not doing to bad. Ok so I needed to stir more as it was a teeny bit burnt to start. I lower the heat and stir, stir, stir. Not to bad a little smoky but not near what the descriptions had me thinking it was going to be like. The first crack of the beans scared me a little. I thought it was going to be like popcorn with the beans flying out of the pan but it wasn't bad just noisy. The beans turned a yellowy color then a brown. I had a hard time deciding when to stop. Some were trying to burn others were not quite done. I kept adding heat and removing from heat. I am going to hav eto push harder for the completion of my pan I think a wok style heat difuser with a flat bottom should be perfect.

They smell wonderful but I am not sure if I got it right and I have not been able to try them yet. You have to le the beans de-gas before you can grind and brew them. De-gassing can take 4 hours for some beans like the Costa Rican ( I knew I should have gone with that one) or 2 days for the African ones like the  Kenyan that I went with.  I also heard the best time to drink it is within 4 days of roasting.