Jeff Schooley pours roasted coffee beans into a bowl to cool.

J.D. Pooley | Sentinel-Tribune

There are a lot of different ways to take your coffee seriously and for Jeff Schooley that is with the roast of his beans, which he does in his garage.

There isn’t much of a recipe, but the directions are a bit unusual. The key is tools and timing. Schooley uses an old-school, but heavy-duty, hand cranking flour sifter as a roaster.

The heat source is a heat gun, applied directly to the sifter. He has both mounted in a simple wooden holder a buddy built with three short 2-inch by 8-inch boards.

“That is a heat gun like you might remove wallpaper with,” Schooley said. “The key is keeping the beans moving.”

He has about 20 different varieties of beans roasted and in-stock, at any one time.

“The fun is finding the different blends,” Schooley said.

He buys his beans from Dean’s Beans, which are organic fair trade direct beans. In the coffee world, direct means that they work directly with coffee bean grower cooperatives.

“It is a for-profit business, but it’s not a set of values that you find on Wall Street,” Schooley said.

He is the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Bowling Green and said that he takes his purchasing decisions very seriously.

His wife, Brianne, works for the Wood County Board of Developmental Disabilities. Schooleysaid that she feels she is serving a segment of the population that is often overlooked, and she has a passion for work with a cause.

“That was my real motivation. Bree and I wanted to drink fair trade, but fair trade coffee is more expensive. Of course it is, but then there’s living with intention within financial realities and value commitments,” Schooley said.

When a buddy, also a Presbyterian pastor, started roasting his own beans, Schooley jumped on board. The current roasting set-up was sent to Schooley as a Christmas gift in 2019, which was right before the pandemic.

“We kind of had downtime at the house, to do different hobbies like this,” Schooley said. “Everybody became a breadmaster that year, but I was doughy enough already. I just needed caffeine.”

He started with green beans.

“That’s what they look like after coffee has been harvested. They aren’t really green, but more gray. It goes through a rinsing, washing process, that I don’t even fully understand myself, but it comes to me like this,” Schooley said, while showing off the gray-colored, green unroasted coffee beans.

The beans start off much smaller than what is typically found at the grocery store.

“There’s a first shell that cracks away, to get the first chaff. As I keep going, to get the beans to the darkness that I want them, we’re going get a second crack, because inside the bean is yet another shell, that will crack out. You can take the beans all the way up to the darkest, that is called French roast. After that, you are basically dealing with just burnt beans,” Schooley said.

He said that strength of taste is not necessarily related to strength of caffeine, with light roast being the most caffeinated, because the caffeine will partially burn off during the roasting process.

“Stay away from the chaff, because that stuff lives with you forever,” Schooley said.

As the beans heat, they expand and pop off the chaff — it flies in the air almost like popcorn. That’s why he does his roasting in the garage. He also typically chooses a cool fall day, because the roasting can be hot.

The garage also smells like roasted coffee beans for about 24 hours. Schooley roasted Colombian beans and then later did Mexican beans. He does that later in the day because they have the most naturally chocolaty smell.

He has also brewed Guatemalan, Salvadoran and several African varieties, including Congo and Ethiopian, which are among his favorites.

Schooley has fond memories of Ethiopia.

“They do coffee ceremonies there. If you go to someone’s home, they will roast the beans over a small fire, in the house, typically hand ground, then they get steeped in a jebena, a coffee urn, basically, and then they sugar it to high heaven, which is delightful,” Schooley said. “I went for work, but I enjoyed it for the coffee, and the people. The people are great.”

They serve it black, but sugared.

He gave Ethiopian beans, that he roasted, as gifts for his installation as a new pastor on Nov. 1.

“I wanted Ethiopia in there because it is part of my pastoral history, and maybe even part of my pastoral future. So it felt fitting,” Schooley said.

Schooley’s Garage Roasted Coffee Beans

Directions

1 pound bag of green coffee beans

It takes about 20 minutes to roast beans through two layers of chaff. They must keep rotating the entire time.

There isn’t a temperature setting. When they are hot enough, the chaff will pop off. Wait 40 minutes to cool in a large bowl before putting them in a container. Grind the beans the next day. Wait at least 24 hours to grind the beans, because oils unlocked through the heating process will still come out of the beans.

Grind to your preferred level of fineness, just prior to brewing a cup of coffee. Schooley prefers a blend of beans and keeps about 20 varieties on hand, but roasts only one variety at a time, blending after roasting and cooling are complete.

Schooley’s Garage Roasted Coffee Beans

Directions

1 pound bag of green coffee beans

It takes about 20 minutes to roast beans through two layers of chaff. They must keep rotating the entire time.

There isn’t a temperature setting. When they are hot enough, the chaff will pop off. Wait 40 minutes to cool in a large bowl before putting them in a container. Grind the beans the next day. Wait at least 24 hours to grind the beans, because oils unlocked through the heating process will still come out of the beans.

Grind to your preferred level of fineness, just prior to brewing a cup of coffee. Schooley prefers a blend of beans and keeps about 20 varieties on hand, but roasts only one variety at a time, blending after roasting and cooling are complete.