by Ray Fauteux

Created on: February 07, 2009   Last Updated: February 11, 2009

Green coffee beans are roasted in order to alter their physical properties into a product that is delicious and aromatic. Normally a green coffee bean will expand to twice its size during the roasting process. As it absorbs the heat, the bean will begin to change colors. The green color will shift from yellow, to a light brown shade, and finally it will take on a dark, oily color.

Oils will appear on the surface of the bean and the darkening will continue as long as the bean is exposed to the heat. This is where the terms "light roast" and "dark roast" come from. If a coffee bean is lightly roasted, it will maintain much more of its original flavor. These are the flavors and characteristics a bean takes on according to it's growing location.

Beans that take on a dark brown color have been roasted so long that the roast flavor becomes dominant and overwhelms the original flavor. When that happens, it's hard to really tell what the origin of the coffee is. For instance, Kona, Java, Kenya and Blue Mountain Coffee of Jamaica have distinctive flavors and aromas, but over-roasting will dominate these original flavors. Ideally, a medium roast is the best of both worlds. The "Full City Roast" is considered an ideal choice because it's not too dark and not too light.

When professionals roast coffee, it normally involves a process of cleaning, roasting, grinding, and ultimately, packaging of the final product. The green beans are dumped into a hopper and all debris is removed. The beans are conveyed to a roaster that typically operates at temperatures between 350 and 540 degrees F. The roasting time is not all that long. The beans might be roasted for a few minutes or up to half an hour. Usually the roaster is a rotating drum that tumbles the green coffee beans to ensure they are roasted evenly.

Once the roasting is finished, the beans are sprayed with water, dried, and run through a piece of equipment called a "destoner." If any debris was missed in the initial screening, the destoner will remove it. From there the beans are dried and either ground or packaged as whole beans.

If a bean is left in it's original "whole" state, it can retain it's freshness for up to one month. Once it's ground, it's considered to be "fresh" for about 24 hours. Think about that for a minute. That means if you buy a one-pound bag ground coffee that lasts you about a week, it's not really all that fresh for the last 6 days. Now that's food for thought and is one very good reason for buying fresh

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