Steve Caravelli shares expert tips for roasting coffee beans at home

For as long as he’s been a chef, Steve Caravelli has been a hobbyist maker, experimenting with everything from making his own wine and brewing his own beer to making bread. None of those experiences clicked with him, however, in the same way as his current project of roasting coffee. For the past year and a half, Caravelli has been experimenting with roasting his own beans, first as a fun project at home, then as a burgeoning coffee brand, Kid Marinara, which he’s been sharing with friends and customers at Parker’s Table.  Caravelli shared how this passion evolved and what’s in store for Kid Marinara, as well as advice on how to roast your own beans at home. (His advice: Find a good source for beans that also has good resources for roasting, and add a bit of “YouTube university.”)

Where did your passion for roasting coffee begin? I’ve had a lot of great coffee experiences in my  life; I remember having coffee in a villa in Umbria and learning about French press and pourovers. I’ve just always been one of those people who has every way to make coffee at home, from an aeropress to a pourover, and with my love of food and all things eating and drinking in general, I’ve gone through a lot of phases in life. I’ve made bread and wine and brewed beer, but none of them turned into viable careers outside of my culinary career. They were all fun learning experiences, but they became abandoned projects. But, the coffee thing really did click.

How did you begin roasting your own beans at home? Just about a year-and-half ago I starting figuring out how one would roast coffee at home and was inspired by a few local people, like Peter [Cohen] from Stringbean Coffee and Jeremy and Casey [Miller] of The Mudhouse fame. I really picked the brains of friends and did a lot of research on green coffee. During that process, I realized that, just like beer and wine, there are a lot of good avenues for a home coffee roaster. There are a lot of places you can buy online that also have resources for how to learn about roasting.

You say that you had originally started this as an at-home project, but it took on a life of its own. How did that happen? I started spitballing and talking with my co-workers about roasting, and then Phil [Billingsley] our cheese guy started buying some. Then Clara [Parker] and Taylor [Streiff] from our sandwich counter started buying it from me, andI was suddenly up to roasting 12 bags per month. From there, I figured out what I needed to roast to get it on our shelves. My wife  is a designer; she worked for a decade in the Post-Dispatch’s infographics and design department, so she came up with a design and a label and we started putting it out there. 

Tell us about the name Kid Marinara. Kid Marinara was my high school nickname. I had a goofy friend I used to play music with in his basement. We had a couple of other friends who were more serious about music, and we used to make up songs together. One day, my goofy friend started singing a song called Kid Marina. It came out of nowhere. He was poking fun at me because everyone likes to poke fun at the Italian kid for some reason. Somehow, it became a thing.

Describe your coffee style. What can people expect from your coffee, and what was your inspiration? For me, Kid Marinara is about the foundation of Italian foods and drinks rooted in Italy but made American in the sense that they are local, interesting and different. I grew up drinking a lot of Lavazza and Illy, but I found that they can be unreliable. One bag will produce a cup with no crema and another will be the best coffee you’ve ever tasted. What I came to understand is that fresh coffee is best, and if I bought local it was more reliable. My inspiration was how to replicate the taste of something like the Illy blend but with more guaranteed freshness and crema. I find that a lot of Italian espressos are too dark and one-dimensional, so I wanted it to be a shade lighter. Then, I went a little further and came up with four different origins and played around with different levels to create a blend until I found what I wanted. 

What are your plans for Kid Marinara? I just got a new roaster and am starting to get into single origin coffees. I started with blends for economical reasons; I wanted to get them all in and play around and combine to see how they worked. I’m currently offering an espresso blend, and then I also did a seasonal blend called Winterwonderland, but I just did my first single origin, a coffee from Columbia that uses regenerative agriculture and is organic and fair-trade. It has a nice brightness and chocolatiness to it. Then, I’m releasing an Ethiopian variety that makes an excellent good cold brew. The plan for this year is to do monthly tasting at Parker’s Table, where I will unveil a new single origin or blend every time. And I’d love to get into other shops as well. 

What advice or guidance do you have for those who want to roast their own coffee at home? I hate to use the term “YouTube University,” but that is a good first resource. Depending on whatever roaster you use at home, you have to think of economics and capacity. There are a couple of different air roasters out there, but you can even start with roasting green coffee in a pan or an air fryer, or you can put them onto a sheet pan in the oven. All of those ways will make them go from green, to dried-out, to the point where they crack, to roasted. Those methods won’t be as even as a drum or air roaster,  but if you shake them around it works and it’s fun to watch. It’s totally doable to produce enough coffee for your house.

There are several online  companies—Sweet Maria’s out of Oakland, California, Burman Coffee Traders out of Wisconsin, and Home Roasting Supplies out of Utah—that have a lot of online education for home roasters. They sell green coffee in as small as 1-pound bags, and they also have great literature on how to come up with your own blend. They are great resources for helping you understand the roasting process. I spent a lot of time last year doing research before I even began roasting.

When considering a roaster, you will get different characteristics from an air roaster versus a drum roaster. The air roaster blows off the chaff. I switched from an air roaster to a commercial drum roaster, and I haven’t noticed a real difference in flavor. You’d have to compare them really closely to see if there is one. I think air presents a little cleaner cup.

For developing your house roast,  it really involves a lot of research and playing around. For me, getting a coffee with a good crema has been the result of luck and a lot of research. The fact that I have a culinary background puts me in a unique position to taste for body and acidity, but you can develop that. It’s fun to play around with what happens if you change the temperature by a couple of degrees. It really comes down to what you are looking for, and you can achieve that through country of origin, how the coffee is processed, how you blend them and how you roast them. There are a lot of variables you can play around with, so it’s fun to see how they all come together.