By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/6868049/The-ultimate-coffee-gadget-A-roasting-machine.html

The electric coffee bean roaster from Lakeland allows aficianados to take the home coffee-making experience to new levels of sophistication

For those who find freshly home-ground Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans not rarefied enough, consumers can now decide exactly how those beans should be roasted thanks to these machines.

Specialist kitchenware shops say the machines, which cost between £150 and £325, are proving popular as Britain embraces coffee culture like never before.

Lakeland, the Cumbrian-based retailer, said it started stocking its £150 model after coffee fans started requesting ever rarefied equipment to create their perfect cup of coffee.

Martin Rayner, one of the company’s directors, said: “People are becoming really interested in coffee and they don’t just want to buy pre-roasted, ground coffee. They want to get involved in the whole process. Yes, it is a little bit geeky, but it is fun being at the cutting edge.”

The machines allow consumers to buy unroasted coffee beans – called “green beans” – from specialist retailers. These only lose their flavour once roasted, meaning the machines guarantee the freshest possible cup of coffee.

The machines heat up the beans, while also turning them in a metal drum, allowing them to roast evenly. The longer the beans are left in the machine, the darker and stronger tasting they become.

The machines have taken off as figures from Starbucks suggest that consumers are drinking ever stronger cups of coffee, with an increase of in the number of extra shots of espresso ordered over the last year.

The company said the number of extra shots asked for by British customers has risen by almost 25 per cent over the last year. They now add 125,000 shots each week, up from 105,000 each week a year ago.

Coffee roasting is one of the most important factors for making good espresso; it effects not only the taste, but the color, smell, and level of caffeine.

There are several kinds of coffee roasting:

“Cinnamon”
Light with a brown shade, this kind of roasting isn’t used very often because it’s very light and therefore doesn’t have a high amount of caffeine. It does have an excellent smell, however (like fresh braked bread)!

“Light”
Beans used here have a light brown color, and have a slick, rather than an oily, surface. This kind of roasting is also known as “continental”.

“Medium”
The beans used for Medium roasting have a brown color similar to chestnuts. The surface for the Medium beans have almost no oil whatsoever; at most you’ll see a few single oily dots on them.

“City of Viennas”
This kind of bean has a small amount of oil on the surface.

“Full city or Seattles”
Beans used for this kind of roasting have a dark brown color (sometimes with a reddish shade), with only a moderate amount of oil.

“Dark”
Almost completely black, and very oily.

“Italian”
Very oily and black. This type of roasting is especially popular in Northern Italy.

“French”
Very dark with a reddish color and a lot of oil. It’s one of the darkest beans used for roasting.

Oily or burnt beans.

People think that darker beans have more caffeine, but in reality it’s the opposite. The darker the beans are roasted, the less caffeine they have.

Also, a lot of people think that the amount of oil depends on the grade of roasting, but this isn’t true. After roasting, coffee has to be cooled down. If this step is skipped, the beans will simply burn.
Sometimes you can make Italian beans slightly burnt. This is done by making the cooling last slightly longer after roasting (this is how it’s usually done in Southern Italy).

The amount of oil depends on how fast the beans are cooled; this controls how much oil accumalates on the surface of the beans. In order to get oil the cooling has to be done fast. Usually nobody cools down beans *too* fast because the oil and aroma can be near completely lost.