We celebrated our 6 month anniversary on June 29th, and, true to form, Mark presented me with a very thoughtful gift: a hot-air popcorn popper! This little popper however was destined for bigger and better things than corn; for we would soon christen it with the shiny green beans of the coffee plant.


















That is, if we could find them. In a fun-filled, adventure-packed day, Mark and I set out to find all the tools we needed to turn our ho-hum popper into a home coffee-roaster extraordinaire (courtesy of instructions on coffeegeek) Our travels took us to kitchen supply stores from Osborne to Ferry to Polo Park, searching in vain for a small, cheap candy thermometer that went higher than 450. The next day (oh yes, the search was epic), we found one at Russel Kitchen Supply on Ellice for 6$. A few hours later and with only one drill bit injured in the process, we had our roaster ready to go!

Finding green coffee beans to roast also proved difficult. So far, we've found only two places in Winnipeg that carry them: Black Pearl Coffee on Dufferin (but you'll have to get through the owner first, he's protective of his beans!), and the Cannery on Osborne. At not much cheaper than the final roasted beans, I think we'll try to find a better deal on the internet.

Lastly, we needed a large colander to quickly cool the hot, roasted beans. This we ended up scoring for 10 bucks at Superstore.

It took us one batch to discover that we LOVE roasting coffee. (Jen: "This is SO FUN! I LOVE this!" Mark: all smiles, laughing at my enthusiasm.) You become part of the whole process: watching the beans begin to heat up and turn tan, smelling the sweetness of barley and "burning organics," listening for first and second "crack," and timing out the different stages and temperatures. So, the moral of the story is, be nice to us and you might be eligible for a pound of the freshest roasted coffee around! (Even fresher than Starbucks...it's true.)