# I'm new member about to start roasting and grinding my own coffee. Recommend me some beans please!



## jmacdo (Aug 5, 2021)

Hi everyone and thanks for taking the time to read this. This is my first post and I'm about to make the change from instant coffee to roasting, grinding and brewing my own beans at home. I have a perculator and a french press as well as a hand held grinder but no beans yet. That leads me to my first question. What beans should I buy? I'm looking at ethiopian and south american beans (brazilian/peruvian/columian) which you can buy on ebay by the kilo for about £10. I want the best for my money but really don't know that much about coffee, except I know a good one when I drink & smell it. Any recomendations? I think I want aribaca not robusta but don't know, also I wont be drinking anything that has passed through another animals digestive track. Just a good solid coffee to start my journey with, to impress the guests and something I won't get bored with. In the meantime I'm going to have a browse through the forum. Thanks again for reading and hope to hear from you 🙂


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## El carajillo (Mar 16, 2013)

Look through the forum and at the roasters who advertise here, they roast and sell a variety of beans. If you want good coffee you need good freshly roasted beans not stale undated beans.

What is your budget for your equipment ?


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## jmacdo (Aug 5, 2021)

Ok Cheers El carajilli. I will look through the forums thank you. I don't want bad beans, I have no experience of buying coffee on ebay but buy a lot of other goods as the seller status and customer feedback is very helpful in determining quality of goods and the honesty of seller. If your saying its a bad place to buy beans then thanks for the heads up! As for my setup it's just a simple analog one. A 2 cup perculator on a gas stove. I think the other perculator is 4 cup, a 12 cups cafetiere (french press), a manual coffee mill and a small electric one which I may or may not use. I've tried a few different ground coffee but they've been either just ok or awful. I'll buy roasted beans from a reputable seller, but I'd like to try roasting in a skillet at least once. I won't be buying any sort of machine to make my coffee. I'm looking for a quality roast to start my journey, one that everyone will enjoy and notice the difference. I'm gonna check these advertisers now.


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

jmacdo said:


> Ok Cheers El carajilli. I will look through the forums thank you. I don't want bad beans, I have no experience of buying coffee on ebay but buy a lot of other goods as the seller status and customer feedback is very helpful in determining quality of goods and the honesty of seller. If your saying its a bad place to buy beans then thanks for the heads up! As for my setup it's just a simple analog one. A 2 cup perculator on a gas stove. I think the other perculator is 4 cup, a 12 cups cafetiere (french press), a manual coffee mill and a small electric one which I may or may not use. I've tried a few different ground coffee but they've been either just ok or awful. I'll buy roasted beans from a reputable seller, but I'd like to try roasting in a skillet at least once. I won't be buying any sort of machine to make my coffee. I'm looking for a quality roast to start my journey, one that everyone will enjoy and notice the difference. I'm gonna check these advertisers now.


 Yes forum advertisers are a good place to start. I like Dark Arts, Extract, Cartwheel and some others I can't remember. I haven't bought any coffee in a while. A lot of roasters will sell the green coffee they use to you for much less than the cost of roasted too. I would not buy from ebay. You an also buy 5kg at a time from Falcon Micro. They are an importer and supply full sacks to roasters and have recently launched their 'micro' service selling 5kg boxes, and you don't need a business account with them. I've bought from a company called small batch roasting supplies who sell various quantities and grades of coffee so you need to be careful to make sure you're not buying some old crop or commodity stuff.


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## Evergreen88 (Jun 7, 2021)

How are you planning to roast your beans?

If you never roasted before I think it's way more important to get experienced with that rather than buying 'the best beans'.

Apart from that, have a look at the flavour profiles of the different origins and pick something accordingly with your taste.

I recently started roasting myself and I have used the site https://www.smallbatchroasting.co.uk/ that has a good selection, as well as ravecoffee.co.uk


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

Evergreen88 said:


> If you never roasted before I think it's way more important to get experienced with that rather than buying 'the best beans'.


 Nobody in their right mind would buy 'the best' having no experience roasting but you do need good coffee of a standard that you'd usually buy from roasters. You can't learn to roast with crap. Old beans don't roast the same and beans that are low grade, rancid, full of defects or whatever won't allow you to judge your roasts properly. Op is roasting in a skillet which is a pretty terrible for achieving an even roast but is traditional and might be okay for filter and immersion brews with practice.


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