Here’s a follow-up to my backyard coffee roasting post. All around great makers Mikey Sklar and Wendy Jehanara Tremayne made this video showing how to roast coffee with an airpopper. It doesn’t get any easier than this! They used an unmodified West Bend Poppery II, which is a somewhat legendary machine in home roasting circles. With some luck you can pick one up for a few bucks at a yard sale, or get one on Ebay for around $30.

The Poppery II is 1000W and has its air holes in the sides of the cylinder, not the bottom, which improves circulation. This method is called “fluid bed air roasting”. Since the beans are all flying around in a vortex being heated from all sides they roast much more evenly than the stirred pot method I use.