I started home roasting to customize my decafs to my exact tastes and have a fun hobby.  In doing some home roasting research, I started to wonder if roasting at home would save me money as well.  

Does roasting coffee at home save money?  Green coffee costs less per pound then roasted coffee.  Adding in equipment costs, electricity and weight loss of the beans during roasting most serious coffee drinkers will save money.  Further savings comes from green beans longer shelf life which allows for purchasing in discounted bulk.

I really enjoy home roasting because the flexibility of being able to buy any type of bean and roast it to any level I want, then blend it however I want.   

Does it really save you money?

Yes, but it depends on your tastes and habits.  If you drink cheap supermarket coffee and that’s good enough, you are not going to save money home roasting.   But if you are regularly drinking Jamaican Blue then you most definitely will save money. That said practice on the cheap Columbian first 😉

Buying in bulk green coffee

The biggest cost savings will probably come from buying in bulk.  I checked prices on a few websites and I noticed about a 10-20% savings for buying bulk green beans.  So why not just buy roasted coffee in bulk?

Simply that it goes stale quickly. Most coffee snobs will say roasted coffee starts to noticeably stall in about a week.  Green coffee has a shelf life of about a year before any noticeable loss of flavor (according to what the experts say anyway)!

This means buying green coffee in bulk guarantees a fresh year supply at any time.  After a year there is some change to the coffee but some people actually prefer the changes as it mellows the coffee.  There are even coffee roasters that intentionally age coffee to experiment with its effect on coffees! Indian Monsoon is probably the most well known example of this type of coffee.  What started out much like IPAs in beer this coffee was subjected to the humid climate conditions in transport and the coffee developed a desirable flavor!

Another aspect of buying in bulk is getting your friends in on it.  I had a lot of friends who used to do this with beer brewing. They bought pretty expensive equipment, shared it, buying malt and hops in bulk to make a giant batch.  Same idea with coffee. You can try to convince your friends only real coffee drinkers drink freshly roasted. Buy a much larger machine and bean quantities and turn someones garage into the roasting room!  Most people drink coffee so its not hard to convince a few people to chip in to get some great coffee even if they don’t want to be bothered roasting. After some practice you might even become the local roaster for your friends!

As Kenneth David mentions in his book Home Coffee Roasting, the attractiveness of having a coffee library much like a wine collection is awesome!  I know I love opening my cabinet and browsing my selection of green beans for what I’m in the mood for. Recently I roasted a Brazilian mountain water processed coffee and did a small blend with a Sumatra coffee I roasted dark.  Will it be a winning blend? Maybe but it was fun and exciting to pick these coffees, roast them to my linking and them blend them together. That’s something you certainly can’t buy at the store or the local roaster for that matter!

How much do home roasters cost?

Ok, the beans are cheaper but how much does it cost to buy a home roaster?  Most range from about $150 to well over $2,000 USD! I think starting at the top end is a mistake.  You might find that you actually hate the effort required or the learning curve is really too much.  I have been frustrated with weak bodied coffee once or twice myself! But really if you have $2k to drop on a new roaster you are probably not really that interested in saving a couple of hundred dollars a year on coffee.  You maybe a coffee geek but not a penny pincher, unless you drink a Godzilla sized amount of coffee 😉

If you read my prior post on choosing a home coffee roaster you can get all the details and specs in an easy to read presentation!  

I recommend starting out with a “budget” manual roaster like the Fresh Roast SR500/SR540 due to its low cost and basic adjustment of temperature, fan and time settings.  This machine is less than $200 USD so it’s pretty affordable for the average penny pincher! At approximately 1600 watts this machine is a higher electricity user then some of the others but it’s not so high given you run it in about 10 minute intervals.  

What does this all mean per pound of roasted coffee?  Let’s break it down into separate costs then add it all at the end.

Machine costs

This is simply the cost of the machine spread out over one year. After one year these numbers will go to zero as you will have “paid” off the machine. You could always assume different numbers to get your own result but a year seemed reasonable for this example. This is really an indirect cost of roasting each time so if you decided to ignore this cost in each batch that reasonable as well.

Low usage estimate=$200 @ 2 batches per week = $1.92 per batch

High usage estimate=$200 @ 5 batches per week = $0.76 per batch

Bean Costs

Low Bean Usage = 90 grams per batch, at 6.95 per lbs, 15% weight loss=$1.58 USD/batch

High Bean Usage = 90 grams per batch, at 6.95 per lbs, 15% weight loss, 15% bulk savings =$1.38 USD/batch

Electricity Cost

Electricity = 12 minute batch, 1600W @$0.25 USD/KwHr = $0.16 per batch

Totals

Total low usage cost = $3.66 USD/batch or $11.05 USD/lbs

Total high usage cost = $2.30 USD/batch or $8.76 USD/lbs

To summarize these numbers, if you are buying roasted coffee above either number you will save that much.  Suppose you buy coffee that’s $11.99/lbs then at low usage you save about $0.95 USD per pound you buy. If you buy 50 pounds a year then you are saving about $47.50 USD.  If you are a high usage drinker then you are saving $3.23 USD/lbs and for those same 50 pounds per year are saving $161.50!

Does it really make sense to roast at home?  I would say yes. It’s a fun hobby and does save some money depending on your habits.  This doesn’t take into account store prepared coffee aka your twice daily latte fix, which adds up quickly.  Honestly once you roast at home you will probably find you prefer that to going out for coffee anyway. It won’t replace 100% of your coffee shop visits as you can’t always carry fresh ground coffee with you, though I have tried!  

Custom blends and money saving recipes!

Another technique to save money on coffee per pound is creating custom blends consisting of expensive and lower cost beans to achieve great tasting coffee and lower costs. For example suppose you really enjoy a flavorful Guatemalan coffee at 8.50 and blend it with a tasty but not overall flavorful Columbia at $6.50 in a ratio of half Guatemalan and half Colombian you effectively have taken the cost per pound form roughly $8.50 to 7.50 and saved $1.00 per pound.  I am more talking about those higher end coffees in the $15-20 plus range. I won’t quote specifics as the market changes frequently and sometimes prices swing depending on economics and general public opinion.

 This specific combination is an example and not really mentioned for a specific recipe but just to show the method and savings.   I know somewhere a professional barista spit his coffee against the monitor and immediately started writing an angry email about that example 😉

 One final note blending does mean you gain some aspects of a cheaper coffee mainly cost but also you may get some undesirable flavors as well.  Careful thought like many things in life can save you a lot of headaches. If your not sure about whether you will like a blend or if it will do what you want to consider the 90 gram sample first instead of the 5 pound batch.  Don’t say you weren’t warned!

Low tech alternative to save even more!

Not convinced that this can really save you money?  Ok fair enough after running the numbers I am not sure how much I would really save as I do happily drink supermarket coffee at work most of the time.  Why? Simply I found a good everyday drinker that tastes good enough at $6.99 USD/lbs. That said I am totally committed to the idea of fresh roasted and ground coffee daily and pressed on demand in my Aeropress.  Did you read my post on the best coffee maker for your cubicle? I intend to roast weekly and grind daily for use in my Aeropress at work.

 How can we make this more a slam dunk to save money?  Lets look at the example again this time using a simple $20 cast iron pan.  While not as controllable as a dedicated roaster or probably as consistent it works awesome!

My first few batches of home roasted coffee, I roasted in my inexpensive cast iron pan.  A word of caution, don’t try to use a stainless steel pan. Stainless lacks the heat retention of cast iron and didn’t do a great job for roasting my beans.  A lot of old time roasters were made out of steel and aluminum but in my opinion they were more for weight savings then efficiency. I found the the heat retention of cast iron so helpful to get an even roast that didn’t scorch from having to set the heat too high like in my stainless pan.

Also bean quantity in cast iron is critical.  If you want to do small batches a smaller pan is better.  The mass of the beans works to transfer the heat and retain more heat for even roasting.  A single layer of beans would be less desirable than a pan a half inch full.

Eliminating the cost of a roaster in favor of a simple pans will save 30% per batch (depending on usage) so that $8.76 coffee becomes $6.13 per pound!  Now you are starting to save some money! Even low cost supermarket coffee is struggling to be competitive at that price!

The awesomeness of a roasted coffee gift

Often the most appreciated gifts I have given people is homemade or home grown stuff.  I fresh roasted some Sumatra coffee for a friends party. While he didn’t give me rave reviews on my roasting just yet, he was blown away by the freshness of the coffee and how different it was from even good quality store bought coffee.  The best part just giving a quarter pound of coffee was super low cost and so much more appreciated than a more expensive gift I purchased. So while you probably won’t save much money giving coffee as gifts it can definitely help. At the least it might help avoid going out to coffee shops with friends as much!

Start small and learn

Let’s be honest everybody likes to dream big.  I know I have a secret dream of expanding into online coffee sales of my own roasting.  Who wouldn’t it’s a great market with a worldwide base of customers and coffee drinking is only getting more popular and profitable with more expensive specialty coffees making their way into people’s kitchens.  

That said you have to start small.  That’s why I started with a Fresh Roast SR500 so I could practice roasting on a low cost machine, have some fun and see if this is the right hobby for me.  Hows does this save me money? Many people I know often jump into hobbies buying the best equipment before they even tried the hobby.

Coffee roasting is no different even if you intent to stay small.  Maybe you roast for a while and decide the time and effort isn’t worth the savings you get over locally roasted coffee.  Or maybe you decide that it’s worth it to create custom blends that are unobtainable otherwise. Point being starting small can avoid the costs of getting to fancy to quick.  As well you might decide that $12 per pound coffee isn’t so expensive for the quality and consistency you get.

Summary

Does roasting your own coffee really save you money?  Maybe. If you drink more expensive coffees then it can definitely save you a decent amount of money a year.  If you are happy drinking the everyday supermarket coffee then it wont. The biggest savings you will likely get is from the ability to buy bulk green coffee and save 10-20% on the per pound cost.  As well have coffee that you can store for long periods with no loss of flavor. And just in case that zombie Apocalypse happens you’ll be all set with long last green coffee to roast the Apocalypse away!