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I ended up watching The Bucket List a couple of days ago. Good Movie, a bit sad though (my movie review haiku of it coming soon on my other blog site). Anyway, to get to the point of this entry, the infamous cat poop coffee (Kopi Luwak) was prominently featured throughout. Jack Nicholson’s character a billionaire businessman who is terminally ill, is featured savoring the stuff throughout the movie. The strange thing  (spoiler alert) is that he actually does not know the source of his exotic coffee until it is revealed to him by Morgan Freeman towards the end of the film at which point Jack Quips: “You’re Sh!tting me.” I found this a strange that someone who is paying 180 bucks a pound for something would not know its source. I guess that is rich people for you.

They say Kopi Luwak gets its distinctive taste because of the exposure to the gastric juices that occurs as it passes through the intensital track of the wild civet cat of Indonesia.According to researchers, who have done blind taste test studies, Kopi Luwak is not really considered to taste any better that any other premium coffee, but this had not dissuaded cat poop coffee enthusiasts from shelling out top dollar to get their hands on a cup of this stuff.  The Kopi Luwak industry has become extremely profitable in the last several years to the point that some entrepenuers have resorted to caging the the civet cat and force feeding it copious amounts of coffee in order to meet the high demand for the stuff.

I am sure that Kopi Luwak does not really taste like crap, and that it might actually have a distinctive taste that justifies its price tag. If it was offered to me, I would try it, if only to get the real scoop on the poop. I did find a site (animalcoffee.com) that sells unwashed green kopi luwak for half the price of the roasted stuff, but it is still sixty bucks for a bag of beans that are shaped like cat turds.

Crappy cat crap humor aside, the thing that I found more interesting in the movie was the cool looking siphon coffee maker that Jack has his assistant lug around so that he may enjoy his pricey poopy coffee wherever he may be. I have heard of the siphon process before, and have always been intrigued by it.  There is a place in San Francisco called the Blue Bottle Cafe that has a siphon coffee bar that they imported from Japan. A cup of siphoned coffee from this bar  does have a hefty  price tag of 12 bucks, but I think I would be willing to part with that in order to experience it. I will be sure to let you all know, when I finally get around to it.

Feeling the urge to add to my stash, I went ahead and ordered another 5  lbs of coffee from Sweet Marias the other day.  I still have some of the Monsoon Malabar as well as the aged Sumatra left over, but for some reason I do not feel like drinking these for a week straight. This time, I went all over the map ordering beans from both Africa and Central America. I got me another Ethiopian DP (that’s dry process- you sicko) , plus a  Yeman Mokha. I also got a pound of Columbian “Perros Bravos de Huila” which is really a blend of similar beans from various micro lots around Columbia. On top of that, I also ordered two pounds of the Tanzanian Blackburn Estate, since I liked it so much and felt justified in buying it in bulk so that I might share it with others.

I have been pondering giving away freshly roasted coffee beans away as gifts this coming holiday season since most of my family and friends  are avid coffee drinkers. The only problem about this grand idea is that my little Nesco Roaster does only small batches and I am afraid I will end up burning the little guy out if I try to send a five ounce bag of beans to everyone in my extremely large family. After nearly a year of use and abuse, I am surprised that nothing yet has gone wrong with the machine ( knock on wood). I have been trolling around online looking at different roasters that I could upgrade to. I think the Behmor roaster would be the next logical step up for me. It seems to have a lot of cool features and it is able to roast up to a full pound of coffee at a time. The Behmor costs around 300 big ones, so it is not like I am going to be breaking the bank if I want to get one. Besides the Behmor, I have also been taking a gander at the more industrial type coffee roasters that run around ten to twenty grand and need an area much bigger than my apartment’s kitchen.

Besides shelling out ten grand for a real big industrial type roaster, I have been looking into more creative ways to roast large batches of beans. I have seen these large drum roasters online that are meant to be used over a modified gas BBQ grill. These babies can cook up to five pounds of beans in one sitting but I imagine that a lot of smoke and CO2 is involved. You can get one made for you for around three grand, but I imagine that I could find a way to piece one together myself if I was determined to do so (Hey I did take shop class in High School you know).    Although I am just looking at them right now and dreaming of the time I could actually invest in a large industrial type roaster, I think it is a good dream to have and someday I plan to act on it. Until then, I will hve to be satisfied with my little Nesco roaster and my little coffee blog.

Right now I am sitting here drinking my a cup of the remaining Panama Esmeralda Gesha that I had roasted this past Thursday and pondering what I should write about in my coffee roasting blog today. In order to get more people to visit my site, I  have been considering turning it into political blog, just in time for the upcoming election madness. Those blogs seem all the rage these days, and anyone with some sort of half assed opinion on how this country should or should not be run, seems to be blogging it out to a hungry audience. Or, I guess I could just start reguritating funny photos that I swiped off other blog sites. People just seem to go all out for pictures of monkeys smoking pall malls and whatnot. And to think I actually thought showing off pics of my growing coffee cup collection was enough. No dammit, I need a pic of a coked up chimpanzee on roller skates in order to get noticed on the internet. Ok enough about Dubya,  I think I need to calm down. I am getting all worked up  after going through all the most popular blog sites here on today.com, hoping to come up with some inspirational ideas that would make my little blog here actually get some traffic.

Dang, I drank all my coffee already, I guess I better go pour me some more before it gets all cold and stuff in my chemex brewer. I really needed to  start pouring it into the thermal carafe that came with the coffee maker that my parents gave me a couple of years ago for christmas. I really do not use the coffee maker that often, but that thermal pot does keep hot liquids hot. Ok, let me go pour myself another cup of this way overpriced coffee. I will be right back. So don’t you go and start looking for those bad monkey pictures or reading about how so and so thinks Bill O’ Rielly is the best thing since chocolate pudding just yet.

Ok, I am back. Mmmm. You know this Gesha stuff is pretty dang good. Perhaps I am just thinking that, because I shelled out almost three times what I normally pay for green coffee to get it. Maybe, I am psychic myself out and thinking that this coffee is the bomb diggity bomb in order to justify my purchase just like those rich idiots who plop down fifty bucks to drink a cup of coffee that originated from some cat’s butt. Perhaps, but then again, I only shelled out 18 bucks for this coffee not 125.  Its not like I really need to fool myself into thinking that this coffee is all that and a bar of soap. It is  pretty good coffee, I can give it that. It is nice and smooth with subtle floral aftertastes that linger on the palate. Will I be cashing in a CD in order to get myself some of the higher priced lots of the Gesha? NO. But, I will say that this one was probably worth the money I paid for it.  I do not think I will be exploring the Gesha craze any further after this batch, for a while anyways. The coffee is just not my cup of tea. But enough about coffee and back to politics…

As much as I love my little Nesco  counter top coffee roaster, I have to admit that using it as often as I do makes for one hell of a mess in my kitchen. Chaff from the the roasting process covers my kitchen like a layer of volcanic ash. While the chaff cup, prominently displayed in the picture above, does a pretty ok job of collecting some of the free floating particulates, it does not trap all of them. Also when I try to dump out the chaff cup , a lot of the wispy floaters tend to escape. It also does not help that my method for cleaning out the chaff deposits from the base of the machine is to blow them out onto the counter, leaving the mess for a later time. Perhaps, I should invest in a dust buster to help take care of this little problem. Or a shop vac.

Chaff, for those of you not in the know, is the outer parchment layer of the coffee bean, that tends to flake off during the roasting process. Some beans, when roaste,d release copious amounts of chaff, overfilling the chaff cup, while others release minimal amounts. I think the amount of chaff a particular bean has has something to do with the way it was processed and cleaned as well as particular genetics. While chaff is annoying to a everyday neat freak who like a spotless kitchen, it really does not effect the overall taste of the coffee. At least, I do not think it does.  I have, on occasion, roasted coffee and got tons of chaff  within the batch (usually because my screen was clogged), and I could really see no adverse effects of grinding the stuff up along with the beans. In fact, I think it might actually add a little bit of flavor to the pot.

Still, my kitchen is a mess and I know that I am probably breathing in a good amount of these little free floating suckers everytime I decide to do another roast.

To counteract my pricey purchase of the Panamania Esmeralda Gesha, I decided to get a few of the more affordable offerings that Sweet Maria’s had going on. One of these happened to be a pound of the Tanzania Blackburn Estate AA.  It was going for just over six bucks, yet still had a cuppers rating of 91 (just one point below the Gesha). I had not really explored the Tanzanian coffees all that much and decided to at least give this one a try. To my surprise, I ended up finding a coffee that I  like better than the pricey Gesha.

I roasted this bean to a full city ( around 24 minutes in the Nesco), up to the beginning of the second crack. The first time I tasted it, I had brewed it in my little budom single cup brewer, which I like to use when I am trying to cut down on my consumption. The taste was great, especially as the cup cooled.  The tanzanian is actually still good when it gets lukewarm (if not a bit better). This is a plus for me, since I usually end up getting sidetracked in the morning letting my coffee cool to room temperature before I finish it.  It has a strong bitter berry taste and left a nice dry winey aftertaste lingering in your maw for a long while.  I found myself savoring this Tanzanian more than  the Gesha which cost me almost triple.

Too bad that this is the only tanzanian that I could find at SM. I would like to explore more offerings from this country although according to Tom (the SM guy) Tanzanian coffee crops are plauged by drought and destructive water buffalo, and getting a good batch of beans from there is a bit rare. I guess I better stock up on this one then.

Where was I?

Oh yeah…

I took a sip….

And to my surprise it tasted rather good in a unique sort of way.  Its taste reminded me of the aged sumatra with its tobacco licorice mustiness and charcoal chocolate undertones. After several more cups I knew that this roast was probably something I wold tire of quickly, but it definitely had enough character to keep me interested for now. This coffee was the complete opposite of “clean” and “bright”. It was dark and brooding and chocked full of body.

The next day I decided to blend it in with some remaining Tanzanian Blackburn Estate AA (review of this coffee coming soon)  and found that the two complimented each other very well. I think that the Monsooned Malabar is great for adding another dimension to a blend, but I think too much of it will end up overpowering any other tastes in the cup. I made a mental note to do some more experimenting with it later on.

A few days later…

I roasted some more of the bean to the darkest level that my little Nesco would allow but this time I made sure that I paid attention to its progress and that all the seals were properly intact. I ended up getting essntially the same roast, except perhaps a wee bit darker. I brewed myself a nice fat pot of it and did some more pondering. I realised that I had indeed grown a bit weary of the overpowering musty taste and I could not really finish up the batch without blending it into something else.

I still got a about a half a pound left of the marshmallow Monsooned Malabar left unroasted and I think I might try it a little lighter next time. Perhaps the taste would not be as overpowering at full city or full city plus as it is at french. Whatever the case, I will be sure to let you all know.

Instead of just eyeballing it, I should have used the new postage scale that I had recently gotoff of E-Bay. If I had, I would have realized that I had not put in enough , even for a really dark roast. These India Monsooned Malabar are some big friggin beans. If coffee beans played  professional sports, these guys would make excellent defensive linemen. Hang on, cancel that. They are not very dense, they just take up a lot of space so they would probably not make really effective lineman although Matt Millen might still be interested. A pound of the India Monsooned Malabar AA comes in a bigger bag, yet ounce for ounce it weighs the same.

I should have realized this as I filled up the Nesco, stopping at the Dark Roast line. Something told me I should be adding more, but I shooed the errant thought way like like it was a buzzing mind fly and stuck to my plan. I cranked the Nesco up to 30 minutes, pushed start and went back to washing the dishes. The notes on the bag, as well as the Sweet Maria’s website call for this bean to be roasted dark as dark can be. So, I figured I better get it as dark as I can get it. Or, at least as dark as my little Nesco can get it before my smoke detector starts beeping because of all the CO2. I thought I was roasting around 3.5 ounces, that being the average weight of the beans when the Nesco roasting chamber is Filled to the Dark Roast Line. But alas, while my intuitive self conscious had picked up on the difference in volume concerning the Mosooned Malabar and its marshmallow like consistency and had tried to prod me into doing the smart thing, I did not listen to it.

I had let in run for about 20 minutes when the kitchen began to really reek of roasting coffee. I thought maybe the Nesco was leaking, which it was,  ( I think I need to replace the seals), but I also noticed that the beans were already pretty dark. According to the little postcard roast chart that I had got with my last purchase from SM they were past dark roast. Yet, I had not heard the second crack and the beans did not look like they were expanding any more. Still they looked burnt already and sometimes this happens when I try to roast less than 3 ounces, for more than 20 minutes. I then remembered what my intuition was trying to say to  me twenty minutes before and decided to weigh the remaining beans. Sure enough I had only used about two and a half ounces. Curses! Why did I not listen to my guts and did some weighing. I was roasting a lot less by volume than I had originally thought, causing the roast to heat up  and get dark real quick.  Crap.

I rushed to the Nesco and placed my finger on the cool button, getting ready to hit the panic button. Then I paused. My guts were speaking up again, and this time I listened. “Hold off dude,” it was saying . I looked at the beans, while they were dark as heck, they had not really blown up. I looked closer, while they were pretty black, they still kind of lacked the glossy finish that a french roasted bean takes on. Something told me to let go a little further. Damn the smoke alarm, lets cook these suckers.

I let the roaster run its course and prayed that something good was happening.  I put the beans in a jar. They smelt funny, worsening my fear that I had made a serious boo boo.  Yet there was something intriguing about them. A certain je nais sais qui that told me that this bean is different. The next I brewed up a batch in my chemex and poured some into my Grand canyon coffee cup.

I took a sip…

I had bought my first grinder to grind my own beans around ten years ago, after a friend had introduced me to the wonders of the French Press (thanks Jackie). It was a whirly blade type that I had bought from a Miejers superstore. Oh boy, did I think I was some hot stuff, grinding my own beans. No more coffee in the can for me, from now on I would drink the whole bean gourmet stuff and nothing else.  I scoffed at my peers, telling them that did not know what they were missing, how coffee tasted so much better when you wait until the very last moment to unleash the power from the bean. I figured that I had reached the peak as a coffee connoisseur with my little Mr Coffee whirly gig grinder.

To quote a Zappa song:” How could I be such a fool?”

Now that I have upped my level of coffee consciousness, it has now come to my attention that you standard blade grinder is not the optimal way to prepare your coffee. Sure, it is fine for the regular hoi polloi who do not care about the subtleties of the coffee taste experience. However, if you you consider yourself a true coffee aficionado, only a burr grinder will do. That’s right, a burr grinder. Apparently a burr grinder will give you a much more even grind than a whirly blade grinder will and also cause less damage to essential oils in the coffee bean. A good burr grinder will also allow you to adjust the grind to match you brewer with much greater precision than relying on the counting method.

So suffice it to say, I could not sleep peacefully until I got myself a burr grinder. I did not know how I could of gone so long without one. Imagine, drinking substandard coffee all these years and not even knowing that I was.  I immediately began my search. After perusing Sweet Marias website and ebay, I came to the conclusion that a good burr grinder was probably going to cost me a pretty penny. The top line models were going for around two hundred smackers, and I could not find a used one on e-bay that I could get for less than forty. But surely, one cannot put a price tag on better tasting coffee right? Wrong. As much as I needed to get me a new burr grinder, I also had to face the fact that I had bills to pay and groceries to buy.  So I went a checked out was was going on on my local Target Superstore and Lo and Behold they had a little Black and Decker burr mill grinder on sale for just twenty five bucks! Sure, it was smaller and much less industrial with fewer buttons and settings than those other ones, but it seemed like a good starter. So I bought it.

Somehow, immediately after I took it out of the box and placed it on my kitchen counter, I managed to snap off two of its little plastic peg legs. However, since this did not seem to affect its stability, I decided not to return just yet. Its little hopper holds an adequate amount of beans and it seems to have enough settings to suit me. It is a rather loud device, but no louder than my old grinder.  You also need to keep pressing on the button to finish grinding your beans, but this is only slightly inconvenient for me. The only thing I really do not like about it, is the way the grounds container is made. It is a bit of a pain to try to pull the little plastic receptacle out9especially in the wee hours of the morning) and the grounds tend to stick to the sides of it. But besides that it is a pretty neat little machine and my coffee is tasting a little better. Since the machine only cost 25 bucks, I do not expect to last forever, but hopefully it will do until my budget gets a little bigger.