Roast your own coffee with nothing but a pan!

You want the freshest, tastiest coffee with the finest aroma? Then nothing beats roasting your own beans. It only takes twenty mins!

I love coffee and have always been fascinated with its production. It wasn't till recently though that I found out you could do this at home with no specialist kit!

All you need is a heavy bottomed pan and some raw green coffee beans!

One of my favorites and most reasonably priced ones is Old Brown Java, above

You can order raw green beans online really easily and you can get some great varieties that you might not be able to buy pre-ground at the local shop.

So, to work!

Measure out enough beans to generously cover the bottom of your pan or skillet. I find a cupful is enough

Heat your pan/skillet over a medium/high heat and when hot pop on your beans

Now the most important thing is to keep the beans moving in the pan to prevent any of them catching and potentially burning.

So stir a lot!

As you do you will notice little pieces coming off the beans. This is fine and only the beans husk like, papery skin. We will get rid of this later.

Keep stirring, you will see the beans start to darken

After about 8 - 10 minutes you will hear a succession of cracks, like popcorn popping. This is known as the first crack and the beans at this point are known as a 'city roast'. You can find out more about the 'cracks' on the web if interested.

If pan roasting I would recommend going past this as some beans will be darker than others and the cracks happen at separate times.

After about ten to fifteen minutes you can stop roasting when you think it is dark enough. I would err on the lighter side of a roast as the darker you let the beans become the stronger and potentially more bitter they will become

I stopped here, after about fifteen minutes.