Coffee roasting class at the Domestic Institute of Technology

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

If you want to start roasting your own coffee beans at home -- or are at all interested in how beans are roasted -- check the website of the Institute of Domestic Technology for upcoming classes. The first coffee roasting class took place in October, taught by LA Mill coffee roaster Ian Riley. Another is scheduled for Jan. 22, says Joseph Shuldiner, founder of the Institute of Domestic Technology, which offers a variety of workshops about food crafting at the Zane Grey estate in Altadena.

Students use stove-top, hand-cranked Whirley-Pop popcorn poppers to roast green coffee beans. ‘I think it’s a surprisingly sort of accurate representation of commercial roasters,’ Riley says, ‘in that there’s an adjustable heating element and a mechanism for agitating the beans so they roast evenly, and a de facto air flow.... It’s accessible, cheap and uses very simple technology. It provides a really great path to understanding this thing that’s normally shrouded in mystery.’

ALSO:

Put this tomato paste on your gift list

A Craftsman beer dinner at Spice Table downtown

Happy hour at Komida, purveyor of Japanese tacos