How I Started Roasting Coffee (and nearly burned my apartment to the ground)

I love telling this story. Mainly because it is so outrageous. It's important that I be completely clear here when I say that I did not know what I was doing when I decided to start roasting coffee in my apartment one day on a whim. I had finally been able to source a couple of pounds of green coffee from a local supplier and they had this whole PDF printout claiming “YES YOU CAN ROAST COFFEE IN YOUR OVEN!”. Disclaimer: NO, YOU CANNOT ROAST COFFEE IN YOUR OVEN. Do not try this at home. Save yourself a 911 call and read this instead.

I was so excited to try this out. The pandemic was coming up on a year and anyone who lived in Toronto between 2020 and 2022 will know how bad it was for us with the cycle of lockdowns. I needed something to do other than work. Coffee roasting sounded easy enough (it's really not that easy) and I was excited to drink freshly roasted coffee and have my apartment smell like a warm hug.

I wish I had questioned the validity of this whole thing when I read the first instruction provided: preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Pardon me? 500 degrees F? I should have known then that I’d be burning this coffee to its very core. Now that I have a proper coffee roaster I would never preheat it to 500 degrees F. That temperature is a bit high for my roasting philosophy.

It was downhill from there. I spread the coffee out onto a baking sheet as directed and then shoved it into the very hot oven. Every so often I was told to open the door and move the beans around to ensure "even browning". However it was nearly impossible to do this because every time I opened the door a huge gust of hot air would blow into my face and I could not breathe.

A few minutes later that hot air had turned into thick, grey smoke and it had engulfed my entire apartment. It took me a moment to realize what was happening but by that point my smoke alarm had started going off. It clearly clued in before my brain had. If I didn’t get those beans out of the oven immediately they were going to catch fire.

After turning the oven off and getting the beans out I finally opened all the windows to let fresh air into my apartment and get my alarm to stop blaring. It took hours for all the smoke to clear out. I was never ever going to do this again. And I haven’t. I took a roasting course a few months later in Vancouver and it really honed in on safety and the risk of fires when roasting, whether it be in a home or commercial setting. It is no joke.

Fast forward to today and the trauma from the first time I roasted coffee has not left me. I learned so many lessons that day. In case you’re wondering, I do not roast coffee in the oven today! I use a proper roaster, every piece of equipment I own is CSA certified, and all my electrical is permitted. I also have a working fire extinguisher close by at all times just in case. I'm sharing this story with you so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did (i.e. please don't try roasting coffee in your home oven!).

Curious about how the oven-roasted coffee beans turned out? They smelled and looked like burned wood chips when I took them out of the oven so I tossed them into the trash where they rightfully belonged.

If you’re curious about roasting coffee at home, feel free to reach out to me directly. I’d be happy to point you in the right direction and supply you with green coffee in small sizes if you’re interested. Alternatively, leave roasting up to the professionals and check out my line of freshly roasted coffees here!