About eight or nine years ago, while watching the news I heard the headline, "If you want the best tasting coffee you should roast it yourself." The story continued with an interview with a gentleman and a hot-air popcorn popper roasting coffee in his backyard. It looked easy and took about 7-8 minutes.

I thought to myself, I like coffee and of course I want the best tasting coffee. So, I scrounged up a hot air popper from a thrift store for around $5 and set out looking for coffee beans to roast. Back then finding the unroasted coffee was the hard part. Since many coffee shops do not roast their own coffee, no one had the beans in their unroasted state. Finally after some time I found a small shop and inquired about buying a pound of coffee beans, green (unroasted). They looked at me puzzled. Finally, after convincing them I was serious and negotiating a reasonable price I got my pound of beans.

The next step was to roast them. The first roast was a true experience, the beans cracked and popped and this brown papery material was blowing all over the place. After a little longer smoke appeared and the beans were dark and oily, just like I see in the coffee shops and grocery stores. I thought perfect Turn off the machine and dump them into a bowl to cool. After cleaning up the mess and the beans had cooled, it was straight to the grinder and then to the coffee brewer. The first cup was heaven. Better than any coffee I had before.

I tried to understand what made this coffee so good. Was it that on my first attempt I was able to achieve results better than the professionally roasted coffees that I was used to buying? Not likely. Could it have been the beans? Maybe, but since I purchased them from a coffee shop then I should have just been enjoying this coffee all along. After several more roasts and some research I realized that it was because they were freshly roasted. I found that the best flavor coffee has to offer is only available during the first seven days after roasting, after that the beans are stale.

In fact even the roasts that went astray, were better than most of the coffees I could remember from my past. In general, the coffee exhibited an exceptionally smooth and balanced flavor that was anything from the traditional bitter and sour flavors I would mask with cream and sugar.

Shortly after that first roast, I upgraded to a home coffee roasting unit to help control the mess and improve consistency. Through time and experience I have continued to improve my roasting abilities and am enjoying every cup of coffee. As for the scarcity of green (unroasted) coffee beans, I solved that problem by opening Fresh Coffee Beans Company, an online retail store specializing in home coffee roasting supplies and green coffee beans. The website is www.FreshCoffeeBeans.com