Where do I start? This little venture of ours has been a dream for a long time. The beginning of the dream was in 2017. A friend, whose brother had started roasting coffee, introduced me to “good” coffee. My eyes were opened to what coffee could be if sourced and roasted carefully.
After researching small home roasters I could get my hands on, I settled on the Fresh Roast SR700. I thought I had it made with that little beast! I could roast a whopping 4oz of green beans in 9 minutes. The best part of that machine was the fact that it could plug into my computer via USB and I could change and save different roast profiles. I wish that machine was still in production, because, in my humble opinion, it is by far the best beginner roaster on the market. The ability to have that much control over your roast on such a little machine is awesome. Fresh Roast still makes other coffee roasters and they are very easy to use but they are quite manual and don’t have the capability to be controlled by a computer and to log and save profiles. I highly recommend any of their roasters for someone wanting to try their hand at saving some money and roasting their own coffee.
I began to feel pretty confident in the coffee that I was turning out, and after receiving a few compliments from friends and family, I began to roast a pound here and there to sell to whomever was interested. Looking back, I can’t imagine what some of that coffee tasted like. But I was having fun and it felt good to be attempting to make some money. After a few months, the selling part of the business petered out and I was just roasting for myself. I figured, oh well, at least I tried! Maybe someday in the future I could pursue this passion of chasing glorious fruity and floral notes from a multitude of coffees.
8 years later, that someday is now. I am chasing my dream of running my own business and roasting coffee. I am just as passionate as ever and am learning every single day. Thanks for taking an interest and before you go, don’t forget to grab a bag of delightful Good Life Coffee.