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CoffeeFirst, coffee stales quickly; overall, you want beans that are roasted anywhere from one day to about a week and a half later—two weeks if unground and stored properly. Home roasting is an excellent option if you do not have access to freshly roasted beans. Second, green beans typically sell for quite a bit less than quality roasted beans. If you invest in a dedicated roasting device, the initial price can be up to $200, but amortizing that cost over the roaster's life and coupled with the lower bean price, you will at the very least break even. Third, under reasonably proper conditions, green beans can be stored up to at least a year without a loss of quality, allowing you to keep multiple varieties on hand. These can be mixed and matched to create custom blends, or simply sampled country-by-country. Since green beans can be held in stock for so long, some retailers offer a far larger variety of beans than those selling roasted beans, even a few dozen or more countries and multiple varieties from each nation. Lastly, even with basic experience, you can get better quality coffee than the stale beans you've grown used to; many new home roasters are amazed at the quality of their coffee even after one or two roasts. More importantly, you can learn to roast your coffee exactly how you like it: to what degree and with what blends
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