Sweet Maria's, shown in
@James_Dean 's post, is a good supplier of green beans... I've used them a few times, and there's some others too. Roasting your own beans need NOT require spending thousands of dollars on gear. I did my first roast using an old fireplace popcorn popper. The thing pictured below works GREAT... very even roasts, easy to see the beans as you go, and a good introduction, although you can only roast enough for two good sized mugs at a time. I use a hand crank heavy duty/heavy-walled popcorn "Whirlypop" kind of thing on an alcohol stove in the garage now, and I can do a pound at a time with that although usually I stick w/ 8 oz batches.
We've found that the coffee tastes best the second and third day after roasting; "fresh" is relative. After that, it does deteriorate, but it does get smoother, richer, and better "integrated" during the first 24-36 hours of resting after roasting.
Roasting green beans is a really fun way of exploring the almost infinite variety of flavors coffee has to offer. Between the wide variety of characteristics of beans from various parts of the world, to the huge differences in what can be brought out by roasting to different degrees or heat profiles, you could drink several cups every day for your whole life and never drink the same thing twice... we've made everything from coffee that has tasted more like an herbal Thai tea to coffee as winey as the most tannic Cabernet, to a good ol' creamy-as-chocolate cup'o'joe, and everything in between, including some badly burnt awful batches that were still better than the garbage Starbucks foists on the masses.
I haven't read the whole thread, so I'm assuming specific brewing techniques have already been discussed... that's another obsession which I'll avoid writing about for.... for now...
.. for fear of inadvertent repetition.
