Dean's Beans have arrived
Ordering green coffee beans from an employee-owned company
I got inspired by my own post, Roast Your Own Coffee, Dammit, and took action.
That’s the most I could possibly hope for: that a reader gets inspired and takes action.
In this case, I was intrigued to learn more about Dean’s Beans. I’d ordered green beans from the outfit year before, when Dean himself was in charge.
Going with a small company
I discovered when writing the coffee post that Dean’s Beans is now employee-owned. Sounds like something Dean would do. He would refuse to sell out to a corporate whale and instead keep the operations local.
He was quite a character. Read more about founder Dean Cycon here.
Organic green coffee beans from Sumatra, Peru and India. Until roasted, these beans will not spoil or go bad with time.
So I got online and ordered three different kinds of green beans: Peruvian, Robusto from India, and Sumatran.
Roasting coffee in a vegetable steamer
I just roasted a batch of Robusto. Caught an assertive smell of coffee in the air. Again, no complaints from the neighbors.
There wasn’t much chaff in the cooling phase of puring the roasted beans from one metal colander to another in the open air.
The shipment was nicely-packed, and with such cute (if I can call them that) coffee bags, these might be a nice gift for a coffee lover you know. If those coffee fans don’t roast their own already, why not include two metal colanders and a vegetable steamer? They’ll have to try it.
(NOTE: Green beans can be roasted in a cast iron pan, but that would fill the kitchen - and maybe the entire house - with coffee smoke. I prefer to roast outdoors.)
Cost savings for home-roasted coffee
A final note on cost. I got 9 pounds for around $60, including shipping. Each pound bag produces two batches. Each batch makes approximately four pots of coffee of four cups each.
The roasted beans, some at shiny city roast quality, some mahagony in color, giving home-roasted coffee more depth in my opinion.
Calling all math people: check my numbers
So if my math is correct, the analysis would be $60 divided by 18 batches divided by four coffee pots producing four cups each:
Readers can correct me, but I get $3.33 per batch and about 21 cents per cup.
Are you paying less at your coffee shop?