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HILTON HEAD, S.C. — For most java lovers, making a morning cup of joe simply requires a coffee pot.
Tim Judge, however, requires a propane-fueled barbecue pit.
When you roast your own coffee beans, you apparently need some additional equipment to get your daily jolt of caffeine. And if you’re like Judge, that may call for a Brinkmann Pro Series 7231 three-burner gas grill.
Judge, owner and sole roaster of Judge Java, a Hilton Head Island gourmet coffee roasting company, does what a growing number of coffee aficionados are doing: use their very own coffee roasters to fire personal batches of unscathed, pea green coffee seedlings, until the beans’ skins caramelize and crack, plumped and darkened into some preferred shade of brunette.
The best coffee is consumed within one to three days of roasting, said Judge, a java junkie who decided to start his wholesale coffee bean business on the island at the start of this year. Now that personal roasters are on the market for less than $100, more caffeine devotees are buying the machines so they can add roasting to their repertoire of coffee-consumption skills.
“People are starting to realize you can buy these little machines for $89 to $99, get green coffee, roast it and have it in the morning,” Judge said.
Of course, the Hilton Head coffee seller uses a slightly pricier contraption. Thanks to the Internet, Judge figured out how to implant a motorized, rotating, stainless steel cylinder into a propane gas grill — turning the meat griddle into a $1,200 coffee furnace. Along with smaller roasters, Judge peddles replicas of his transformer grill, which he uses to roast six varieties of green beans and concoct Judge Java’s Hilton Head Heritage Brew, a Sumatra bean blend. Most of his coffee is for wholesale, though he retails individual bags of beans for those who want to pick up an order from his warehouse.
Roasting green coffee, it seems, is serious business.
And perhaps an increasingly popular one, too. As of this week, the Web site Coffeegeek.com had nearly 31,000 posts to its online forum about home roasting, the second most popular discussion next to talk of espresso machines and grinders, which boasted 92,000 posts.
There is a distinguishable flavor difference between just-roasted beans and the store-bought grind, according to Judge, a self-taught roaster who said he harnessed his coffee prowess through Web sites about java.
“Once you start roasting, I don’t think you’ll ever go back to buying,” he said.
The businessman preaches his fresh-is-best gospel at an unsurprisingly caffeinated clip of speech. He lists his preferences for green beans at a fervent pace: They’re less processed, he insists. They’re cheaper, too, selling for a quarter to half the cost of roasted beans. And coffee, Judge suggested, can be good for you.
“Antioxidants!” Judge exclaimed, rationalizing that as long as a mug of the a.m.-haters’ nectar stays free of whipped cream and sugar, it can, in fact, offer health benefits. Never mind that Judge calls coffee a “legally addictive substance” and takes his with cream, sugar and Ovaltine, thank you very much.
“Coffee isn’t the worst ‘ism’ in the world,” he said.
It should come as no shock that a man who manages to roast coffee beans on a propane grill would wear a Hawaiian shirt while doing it. Behind Judge Java’s warehouse on Beach City Road last week, Judge shoveled a plastic cup into a bag of green Sumatra beans six times and tossed the seeds into his grill-roaster’s metal tube, with the glee of a kid at Christmastime.
Regardless of the hardware used, the coffee-roasting process is generally the same: Green beans are plopped into a 400- to 500-degree roasting machine. After the device rotates the sizzling beans for about five to eight minutes, they make the sound of bursting popcorn kernels. Another three to five minutes later, the beans erupt into a second round of applause. After a few more minutes, the seeds are ready to be dumped onto a tray, where the chaff from the pods can flutter off the toasted beans.
“Whee!” Judge cried out, as the 48-year-old poured five pounds of Heritage Brew onto a wire net and whirled his oven-mitted hands through the browned pebbles to separate and cool them.
Learning to roast green coffee beans may be an art best learned through practice. Judge said his first batch was under-cooked. But he’s slowly becoming a coffee bean-whisperer of sorts, learning to listen for the brew’s readiness after the second pop.
“You have to hear it,” Judge said. “It’s all about the cracks.”
“Once you start roasting, I don’t think you’ll ever go back to buying.”
Tim Judge
Owner, Judge Java