Office coffee makes me cringe. For some reason, most office coffee smells like old, dirty tires to me. I'm not a gourmet, and I'm not a picky eater. But I hate office coffee. I have compromised with reality and while thumbing my nose at the free coffee that can be found in the break room, I pay for my own instant coffee. I don't even like the hot water that comes out of the coffee machine here, but I use it.
I'm not much of a fan of instant coffee. It's not the real thing. Instant coffee is like a memory of coffee; it's like a knock-off of brand name fashions. It's similar, but not quite as good as the authentic thing.
I know that if you're reading this that probably the best thing you can say about the coffee at your office is, "It's OK." Show me the person who raves about office coffee, and I'll show you someone who has spent so much time at a desk that he or she has lost touch with the real world of coffee trees and all the other things that exist but can't be experienced on a computer screen.
I'm done complaining. Now, here's some news that can deliver a caffeine-like boost to your time spent in the office -- You can have not just decent coffee at the office, but great, rich, dark and fragrant coffee. Better yet, it will cost you half of what you normally pay.
You can do what I did this week -- roast your own coffee beans at home and then bring in the richest, best-tasting coffee you've ever had and brew it at work. Today I had what tasted like a $4.00 cup of coffee at my desk. My cost? A few cents.
Roasting coffee is about as difficult a task as popping corn. In fact, some people roast their coffee in hot air popcorn makers. Others roast it in the iron popcorn skillets that have those handles that stir the popcorn as it heats. If you have a convection oven, you're in luck. That's probably the most efficient, error-proof way to roast it. Even a regular oven can work with a perforated pan.
You'll need green coffee beans. Green, in this case, doesn't refer to their effect on the environment. It means uncooked. I bought mine at a local coffee house. The bonus is that the green coffee costs about half as much as roasted coffee. For a deep, Ethiopian coffee that would cost about $10.00 per pound roasted -- I paid $5.00. Same for a pound of Guatemalan.
I won't go into details of how to do the actual roasting. Here are several links to websites that I used. What I will say -- is that my budget doesn't include $4.00 a cup for coffee. At least it didn't until I started roasting coffee myself. Now I can drink $4.00 cups of coffee all day, and I pay only pennies.
So long, office coffee -- Hello -- to world-class brews by the bucket!
