Most people who love good coffee prefer not to dip into the kids’ college fund to satisfy the craving. Time to get creative! Here’s how you can repurpose your popcorn popper to roast your own coffee.

What you need:

• Hot Air Popcorn Popper
• Mesh colander
• Large Bowl
• Oven Mitts
• Green Coffee

What you need to know:

• Doing this will void your popcorn popper’s warranty
• You could start a fire if you’re not careful
• Most poppers will burn out after 4–6 months of roasting coffee because of the stress is puts on the machine
• You must never leave the popper while coffee is roasting
• Roasting coffee will take 5–7 minutes for a light roast, 7–8 for a dark roast
• Most poppers roast about 75–85 grams of green coffee per batch—enough for a 10-cup pot
  Coffee loses up to 20 percent of its weight during roasting; so 85 grams can deliver as little as 70 or less grams roasted
• Coffee needs to rest 2–5 days after roasting as it degases

Now the directions:

• Let the popper warm up for 30 seconds, then quickly pour in about a half-cup of green coffee beans
• Stir the coffee with a wooden spoon right away
• Once the beans start rotating more, put the lid on
• Once you start seeing chaff—the coffee’s silverskin—coming out of the chute, things are starting to happen! This should occur in about 2.5 minutes
• You can stop the popper at any time after the first crack, which happens about 4 minutes in; coffee will be light-roast
• About 5–6 minutes in the second crack occurs; coffee will be at medium roast
• When the coffee is where you want it, unplug the popper and quickly dump the coffee into your colander
• Sift the coffee to serate it and rub off the additional chaff; if you have two colanders, quickly pour the coffee back and forth between the two of them

For much more detailed guidelines, including pictures, visit CoffeeGeek.com.