Sep 07 2008
India Monsooned Malabar AA
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…
