It doesn't require a lot of time, money, or equipment to roast coffee beans at home -- less than 10 minutes in an air popcorn popper does the trick -- but enthusiasts devote plenty of each to the craft.
Home roasters congregate at websites such as coffeegeek.com, where they exchange techniques; they get together in person to sample, or "cup," each other's beans; and many maintain log books, where they record details such as the amount of time and heat applied to each batch they roast.
"Some guys are over the top," said Dave Borton of Monroe, Wis., who has been roasting at home since January, belongs to an Internet-based bean buyers club, and gives away about two pounds of freshly roasted beans every week to friends. "My wife would tell you I am over the top."
To cater to this tiny-but-growing market, a cottage industry that exists mostly online has blossomed over the past decade, selling countertop electric roasters that cost anywhere from $75 to $500 and green coffee beans from the world's best growing regions priced at around $5 a pound.
Perhaps the most popular purveyor of green coffee beans is Oakland, Calif.-based sweetmarias.com, which sells around 400,000 pounds a year, according Maria Troy, who has run the business for nine years with her husband, Thompson Owen, the founder and something of a folk hero in the home-roasting community.
Sweet Maria's offers customers more than 60 varieties of beans from Central America, Africa, and Asia. Prices range from $4.45 to $29.90 a pound.
There are also plenty of smaller distributors of green beans.
Dean's Beans, a 12-year-old Orange, Mass.-based seller of organic roasted beans began selling green beans about 18 months ago after customers requested them. Without any advertising, the company now sells a couple hundred pounds a week, and owner Dean Cycon said "if we put the pedal to the metal on green beans, we could actually support an entirely separate company."
