Buying Unroasted Beans

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I'm fairly new to home roasting myself. So far I have ordered from Sweet Maria's--I love their web site and have spent hours reading the detailed reports and ratings of their offerings. I would highly recommend that you order one of their samplers so you can try an array of styles & flavors from around the world. I've also ordered from Dean's Beans because I like their philosophy of buying only organic fair trade beans. They're also cheaper but they give little or no advice on the best roast for each variety. Wherever you get your beans, you'll love the difference home roasting makes. It's a major motivating factor to get me out of bed each morning!

Thanks for the advice guys. I hadn't seen the variety packs at Sweet Marias when I last looking to buy coffee. 8 half pounds of coffee for $17 is a pretty good deal. I can't really determine whether I like the Ethopian/Kenya, Guatemalean, or Indonesian coffees the best, hopefully this will help me make up my mind :)

Todd

Here's a couple other sites o peruse.

We bought a variety pack when we first started. Even with semi-scientific method of controlling roast times, grading based on smell and taste, it was still a horse a piece when we reordered. Still subjective. My wife and I had some interesting disagreements on length of roast, so we found one we both liked and then changed beans. They all tasted good ( mebbe we're just too indecisive). What we found was we liked all of them because of the smoothness, and no bitter bite like canned stuff. We did settle on Kenyan AA+ at about 9 minutes roasting in a 1200 w hot air popper. Then letting the beans set for about 3 days to develop themselves. It really made a difference, as we tried some the morning after a roast, and was still a bit "dark" tasting which mellowed over the 3 days.

What we've found to paraphrase a guy that help us get started; "Every roast and grind is a new adventure" PRETTY TRUE!!

But that's just us.

Mark

Try

Mike