[catch23]

The author of the article is misled here. The key difference is the home roasted coffee. You can get a popcorn machine and roast your own green coffee and use a normal drip coffee machine to brew. The taste is actually pretty significant, and doesn't require expensive equipment.

I have a normal el-cheapo blade-spinning coffee grinder and a drip coffee machine from walgreens. They still make wonderful coffee with green beans bought from sweetmarias.com, roasted using a popcorn machine as a roaster I bought from walgreens for $9. It takes about 5 minutes to roast a small batch of coffee and will leave your home smelling like coffee for the next few hours.

[Avshalom]

I don't think I'd say misled, I've never home roasted but the difference between french press and drip brew is night and day even if using (Bog forbid) Folgers in both. I'm sure home roasting make a hell of a difference too, but it isn't a sole key.

That said, assuming you're not just a sweetmarias pitch man, anything in particular you recommend?

[jamesbritt]

"roasted using a popcorn machine as a roaster "

Seriously? I have a cheapie air popper thing that works great for popcorn.

For coffee beans, how does it work? For example, how do you know when they're roasted?

[kwantam]

A couple references:

http://www.sweetmarias.com/airpop/airpopmethod.php

http://coffeegeek.com/guides/popperroasting

I'm thinking of trying this out; it sounds really easy.

[datasink]

From the first link: "For legal reasons I can't talk about air popper roasting too much."

And the author doesn't elaborate. Weird?

[jamesbritt]

The second link mentions the possibility of injury or severe property damage do to fire, rising from the (mis)use of a popper for "off-label" purposes.

Maybe this guy is afraid of being sued by someone who'll blame him for providing information on a potentially lethal activity.