One reason some roasters may not offer their greens retail is that they don't realize that there is a demand for it. As a home-roaster, one of the first questions I asked when I came to work at PT's was why we didn't sell greens online. The answer was simply that no one had thought there would be much of a response. Now that we have had greens on our website for a couple months, we have received a great response, even though we have not done much to promote it. Granted, the profit margin on greens is minimal, but it seems to me that there are only positives for both the sellers and the buyers. As Bernie expressed, we love to talk coffee and share our passion with people. Selling greens is a great way to develop relationships with people who love and appreciate good coffee. So if you are looking for a specific coffee from a roaster and they do not offer it online, just call them up and ask about it. I cannot imagine that many specialty roasters would not be more than happy to open up their supplies.

Bryan Miller

If a roaster ever asks me, I will probably suggest they sell their green blends under different names from their roasted coffees, since the home roasting results are likely to be quite different.

Ken Fox wrote:Some commercial blends are pre-roast blends and some are post-roast blends. You can't generalize.

ken

Excellent and spot on point. Some blends are impossible to pre-roast blend with any kind of close to decent results. IMO post roast blending has greater potential to maximize each bean's potential contribution to the cup.

On Christmas Eve I wandered into a local coffee roasting establishment to pick up some pre-roasted coffee to carry me through a couple of days until I could catch up with roasting my own. In talking with the person minding the shop I mentioned roasting and she said they would be happy to sell me any of the beans that they keep/have available at any time for $4.00/pound.....

I suspect that most customers want their coffee ready to brew or ready to grind and brew and that the green bean market would be no challenge at all to their roasting business. I also suspect it is such a small group of people that it wouldn't be worth their while to advertise to that market. So....maybe just ask....

Susan