page_title: Home roasting coffee
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Home roasting coffee / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A hand-cranked wood stove top coffee roaster circa 1890-1910.
context_page_description: Home roasting is the process of roasting coffee from green coffee beans on a small scale for personal consumption. Home roasting of coffee has been practiced for centuries, using simple methods such as roasting in cast iron skillets over a wood fire and hand-turning small steel drums on a kitchen stovetop.
  Until the early 20th century it was more common to roast coffee at home than to buy pre-roasted coffee. Following World War I, commercial coffee roasting became prevalent and, combined with the distribution of instant coffee, home roasting decreased substantially.
  In recent years, there has been a revival in home roasting. What was originally a necessity has now become a hobby. The attractions are four-fold: enjoying fresh, flavorful coffee; experimenting with various beans and roasting methods; perfecting the roasting process, and saving money. Other factors that have contributed to the renewed interest in home roasting coffee include coffee suppliers selling green coffee in small quantities and manufacturers making counter-top roasters.
context_section_description: The first known implements specially made for roasting coffee beans for personal use were thin, circular, often perforated pans made from metal or porcelain, used in the 15th century in the Ottoman Empire and Greater Persia. This type of shallow, dished pan was equipped with a long handle so that it could be held over a brazier (a container of hot coals) until the coffee was roasted. The beans were stirred with a slender spoon. Only a small amount of beans could be heated at one time. The first cylinder roaster with a crank to keep the beans in motion appeared in Cairo around 1650. It was made of metal, most commonly tinned copper or cast iron, and was held over a brazier or open fire. French, Dutch and Italian variations of this design quickly appeared. These proved popular over the next century in Europe, England and the American colonies. English coffee merchant Humphrey Broadbent wrote in 1722 about his preference for this sort of cylindrical roaster. He emphasized that home roasting provided the capability of eliminating damaged berries from the batch before they are roasted, and also the security of knowing that duplicitous merchants were not adding poisonous lead powder to the roasted beans to increase their weight and thus their price. He wrote: "Most persons of distinction in Holland roast their own berries."
  In the 19th century, various patents were awarded in the U.S. and Europe for commercial roasters, to allow for large batches of coffee. Nevertheless, home roasting continued to be popular. A man working at a commercial roasting plant beginning in the 1850s in St. Louis, Missouri, said that "selling roasted coffee was up-hill work, as everyone roasted coffee in the kitchen oven." He said the arguments his company employed against home roasting included appeals to the economy of saving fuel and labor, the danger of burns and flaring tempers, and the possibility of ruined beans or bad-tasting beverage. Nevertheless, appliances catering to the home roaster were becoming popular; in 1849 a spherical coffee roaster was invented in Cincinnati, Ohio, for use on the top of a wood-fired kitchen stove, fitted into a burner opening. Inventor Jabez Burns, the nephew of Jabez Burns the religious scholar, noted that, with skill and experience, even the simplest implements such as a corn popper could be used in the home or camp to obtain evenly roasted coffee. He said in 1874 that "patent portable roasters are almost as numerous as rat traps or churns." Green beans were available at the local general store, or even through mail order; an early issue of the Sears catalog offered green coffee. For roasting, many people used such simple methods as a layer of beans on a metal sheet in the oven, or beans stirred in a cast iron skillet over a fire. Despite the wide popularity of home roasting, Burns felt that it would soon disappear because of the great strides made in commercial roasting in the 1860s and 1870s, including the benefits of the economies of scale. The commercial roaster inventions patented by Burns revolutionized the U.S. roasting industry, much like the innovations of inventors in Emmerich am Rhein greatly advanced commercial coffee roasting in Germany. As well, the 1864 marketing breakthrough of the Arbuckle Brothers in Philadelphia, introducing the convenient one-pound (0.45 kg) paper bag of roasted coffee, brought success and imitators. From that time commercially roasted coffee grew in popularity until it gradually overtook home roasting during the 1900s in America. In 1903 and 1906 the first electric roasters were patented in the U.S. and Germany, respectively; these commercial devices eliminated the problem of smoke or fuel vapor imparting a bad taste to the coffee. In France, the home roaster did not yield to the commercial roaster until after the 1920s, especially in rural areas. Coffee was roasted to a dark color in small batches at home and by shopkeepers, using a variety of appliances including ones with a rotating cylinder of glass, sheet iron or wire mesh, and ones driven by hand, clockwork or electri
caption: A hand-cranked wood stove top coffee roaster circa 1890–1910.
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