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My last couple batches came out a bit darker than I intended, so I decided to knock a few minutes off of my roast time to see if maybe I can get something more in the full city range.  I usually get a nice  “full city on the plus side” roast at 24, but lately the Nesco has been really cooking the beans. I do not know if I need to clean it, open it up and fiddle with it, or start saving up for a new roaster that is both bigger and badder.  I was also thinking it was maybe some kind of power flux thing or whatever. The dang thing just seemed to a little off.

This time however, I think it cooked them exactly as a 22 minute setting should and I ended up with a pretty light roast. It looked about city plus, since it had a bit of uniform brown to it, but it was not even close to the second crack.

Well, anyway, at least is wasn’t vienna again. I was getting a bit tired of the overwhelming body and cocoa-charcoal like flavor I was getting from all of my coffee and would welcome something a bit more bright and acidic.  The unique lemon-berry taste of this guatemalan import really comes out in this ultra light roast. It makes for a cup the is brighter than sunshine itself. Sometimes, I have to look down to make sure that I am not really drinking warm lemonade. Well not as potent as the liberca, the kind of odd taste of the bean kinda of grows on you.

If only I had gotten it just a bit darker.

I might need to buy another batch, just to see if I can get this baby nailed. Excuse me as I go wash my Nesco.

First off, here is a pic of the latest addition to my expanding coffee cup collection. Every time me and the sweety pie take a trip now, I just to buy a coffee cup to commemorate the experience. I really like this slightly overpriced cup I got from the Yosemite Valley gift shop. I think it has a nice shape as well as a pleasant color, but enough about my little hobby and back to the real meat and potatoes of this blog…

I feel like I kind of sold the Mexican Proish Coop coffee a little short in my last entry. Truth be told, I was writing it a few days after I finished up the last of the first roast and was pretty much trying to rely on memory. I guess I could start taking detailed notes as I partake,  like a professional cupper would do, but then again a professional cupper would also spit out the coffee after swishing it around in their mouth for a bit and I could never do that.  So anyway, I roasted up some more of the Mexican this weekend and I have a steaming, hot freshly roasted cup of it in front of me as I am writing this. In fact, it is the same steaming cup seen in the picture above.

I roasted this batch a little longer in my Nesco, setting it at the 25 minute mark. It came out even darker than I expected, a glossy black, full city plus finish but still not quite in the expanded french roast range. This morning’s batch was brewed in my Chemex and I added a little bit of left over Ethiopian DP to sort of round things out. Thinking about it,  my addition of the Ethiopian might bastardize my cupping review of the Mexican just a bit, but hey what can I say, I was feeling experimental this morning.

Nutty, is about the best way to describe this brew. Not nutty in a crazy sense mind you, but nutty in a nutty sense. You know how around Christmas time, some relative has a big bowl of nuts out for you to enjoy and you spend all day cracking them open and enjoying the heck out of them. Well, this coffee sort of tastes like that bowl of nuts. Especially those darker banana shaped ones that are a pain in the behind to crack open. What are those called now?   Oh, yeah Brazil nuts, Thank you Wikipedia!I think that the initial taste of this coffee is closely akin to Brazil nuts.

When swallowed, the Mexican Proish Coop/Ethiopian DP brew leaves you with a slight dark chocolate after taste. I find nothing Berry like about this cup at all, which I find a bit odd since the Ethiopian DP was almost berry to the extreme on its own, but I guess I really did not enough of it to over power the clean Latin taste of the Mexican. This cup is very clean and dry,  leaving a nice bitter aftertaste in my mouth that is reminiscent of the Tanzanian Blackburn estate. Its lack of  body and overall clean taste  tells me that this is a typical Latin American coffee crop. It is a a nice bright cup on the slightly acidic side that is perfect for breakfast. Dang, I cannot believe I finished off the pot while typing this. Oh well, at least now I am wide eyed and bushy tailed.

When I decided to order a pound of the Mexico Organic Chiapas Proish Coop, or MOCPC as  the cool kids like to call it, I really was not expecting too much from this crop from our southern neighbors. My line of thinking was that, Gee wilikers, I never roasted a Mexican before, I guess I better give it a try.  I think this was one of the cheapest green coffees  I ever purchased from Sweet Marias (a paltry 5.20) and the reviews of it were so, so (It is a decent coffee, nut nothing super). However, being determined to try every single coffee on Sweet Maria’s long list, I went ahead and ordered it. And guess what.

I roasted a Mexican and I kind of liked it.

I think perhaps this coffee benefitted by coming after the wild tasting Guatemalan Oriente. It has a much cleaner profile than its southern nieghbor and almost felt like a breath of fresh air the first time I tasted it. As much as I enjoyed the Guatemalan Oriente, my palate was also a bit tired of the overpowering taste sensation. The MOCPC is a nice nutty cup, especially if roasted on the lighter side ( I roasted mine at a nice city plus).  Well, the cup lacks any character that distinguishes it, it is still nonetheless, A pretty decent cup of Joe with a slight mango infusion. I cannot say whether I will be ordering this again, or if I will tire of it after the third batch, but for now: Viva Mexico!

Sometimes, I do not know how my girlfriend puts up with my obsession for the go go juice. This past weekend, we went on a little camping trip to Yosemite with her mother, her sister and her sisters boyfriend. I used the trip as an excuse to buy a brand spanking new thermos to , you guessed it, bring along my favorite beverage. I had originally thought of buying a little camping percolator, but had decided that it was maybe going a bit too far. When I came home with this Thermos, my girlfriend just laughed,  shook her head and then took a photo of me and my latest coffee related possession…

Well,  this is a later photograph that she took at the campsite, but as you can see it is a big ol’ honking thermos.

The morning before our departure, I got up and brewed up a big pot of one of my latest aquisitions from Sweet Maria’s : Guatemala Oriente: Dry Process. It was probably the largest amount I ever attempted to brew in my Chemex and it was just enough to fill the thermos, plus have a cup left over to enjoy as we waited for our ride.  I picked this coffee due to the fact that Tom from SM compared it to the Liberica Anohki, as well as the Aged Sumatra Lintong in overall intensity and flavor. Since I happen to really like both of these coffee, I figured my liking for this Dry Processed coffee from Central America was a shoe in.

The GODP does have the same intense blueberry profile that you find in the Anohki, and the  smell that lingers out when you are brewing it is almost spot on. However, the initial taste, while still good, is not as mind blowing as the Liberica . It does have a good Harrar like taste to it and it is definitely unlike anything else that I have experienced from Latin America thus far ( an region known for its bright and clean coffee profiles).  The aftertaste leaves your mouth feeling a bit dry, like you just finished drinking a good Hefewiezen , with the fruity notes still lingering for a few minutes afterward.  Like the Aged Sumtra, this coffee is full of body but rather low in acidity making it more of a evening coffee as opposed to a breakfast cup.

The Yosemite weekend camping trip turned out to be a very cold one, but thankfully the coffee in my Thermos stayed warm until late that night. The next morning, I did wish that I had brought some sort of coffee making  apparatus and had to resort to drinking hot cocoa. I did try to down the remainder of the coffee in my mug, but the 20 degree temperatures that occurred that night had turned the last remaining cup into a cold muddy mess that just was not palatable even if I had found a way to heat it up.

I do have a feeling that my palate will probably grow tired of the GODP  after this batch, but I still find it an intriguing cup worthy of further examination. I think that it might make a good blending bean.  As much as I love my new thermos, I think I might of gone overboard on the size. It is too big to to take to work with me (I bike) and our little camping trips do not occur all that often. But still, I feel justified in plopping down thirty bucks for something that will probably last my lifetime.

This time, I paid close attention to its progress. I set the Nesco to 23 minute and watched closely, engaging the cooling cycle a minute early, giving  it a 22 minute roast. I also wasted no time in pulling off the top seal and chaff cup and dumping the newly roasted bean into a waiting jar. Burnt hands be damned, I was not going to over cook this batch. The roast turned out great. It was right on the full city side of things, being a nice uniform dark brown, just the way I like it.

I had been delaying roasting up my third batch of the Yemen Mohka Sharasi for about a week, still smarting from the bad taste experience I had got from the accidental Vienna Roast that I had made before. Although the Sweet Marias peeps say that this coffee is just as good in an ultra dark roast with a “rustic sweetness” and “buttery body intense flavors” shining throughout the city+ to Vienna spectrum, I found the dark roast just a bit too chalky and charcoal like for my taste.

I was a bit worried that it was not the roast but the bean. Perhaps this varietal just did not mesh with me. Hey, it happens, but usually how it works is that I just get sick of the flavor and need to set it aside for some time and give my palate something else to experience (The aged sumatra is a good example of this). But maybe, just maybe, I had found a bean that I plain just don’t dig (Impossible!) .

The next morning I brewed some up using one of my last Chemex coffee filters and sipped with trepidation. At last, I can say that the Yemen Mohka is umm, a damn fine cup of coffee. You can certainly taste the “rustic” quailty in it anyway, and the aftertaste does have fruity notes. Still, there is also a sense of the charcoal, mixed in with a bit of the cocoa and for some reason this taste is just not meshing with me at the time. Apparently, it was not all in the roast.

Well, I cannot really say that the Yemen Mokha Sharasi is a great cup of coffee, I also will not that it is bad. I guess it would fall into the middle somewhere. It is definitely third place amongst the the other two coffees (Perros Bravos, Organic Ethiopian DP) that I had purchased along with it.I guess they all can’t be winners.

I cannot believe that I am already down to only two bonded filter papers for my Chemex coffeemaker. It seemed like it was just yesterday, that I bought a big honking hundred pack of the guys from Sweet Marias.  I guess that is what happens when you use one filter a day for the duration of the summer. I have to say that I  kind of like the whole Chemex brewing method since  it has been the primary way that I have enjoyed my coffee these past couple of months. Sure, I would still occasionally break out the French Press and even use my Black and Decker brewer  from time to time, but really, it has been the Chemex that has seen the most use this summer.

The Chemex was designed by a guy ( I think he was a chemist) who was in search of the perfect cup of coffee and while the hour glass design of the carafe is the most striking feature of the coffeemaker, it is the special filters that are the true secret to its success. They are much thicker than most other types of filters and seem to allow all the good coffee flavor in while keeping all the bitter oils, grounds and sediment out.  I do not know what type of “special fiber” they use when making these filters, but I know that whatever they do, it sure works.  Also, the conical shape of the filters  allows for more uniform extraction, since the water is forced to seep through all the grounds before it exits at the  apex of the cone.

The Chemex does have a few drawbacks. The filter paper, while  great at giving you a perfect cup of coffee is rather hard to come by. I have only been able to get it at Sweet Marias and now I am faced with a dilemma of having to place an order today or to go without them for a week or two. Also, the papers are extremely absorbent, making it hard to judge how much coffee is going to be in the pot at times. You cannot start out with four cups of water, and end up with three if you do not take the time to pre-wet the filter paper before your start to brew. The act of brewing can also be problematic, especially if you are looking to brew up a large amount of coffee. The top of the Chemex coffeemaker fills up fast and you have to wait for the first part of the water to drain before you pour the rest in. This is not only time consuming, but also not ideal for the perfect mix of hot water to grounds. To get a good cup of coffee, the grounds should be interacting with hot water that is just off the boil(around 200 degrees) and when you have wait too long before adding more water it cools off and  you do not get the optimal amount of flavor. Another thing about the Chemex is that it does not retain heat for very long, even with the optional glass cover forcing you to either drink the coffee rapidly, or to put it into a thermos.

Even after all the troubles that I have just listed about the Chemex, I  must say that I am a true convert and will probably end up placing an order for more filters so I do not have to go back to some other primitive form of brewing. I still plan on exploring some other methods of brewing including vacuum brewing and the aeropress, but at the moment I am a Chemex man all the way baby.

Mmmm, mmm. There is nothing like a lukewarm cup of charcoal to start the day. Truthfully, I do sometimes have yen for  coffee that is a little on the dark roast charcoal side. When this craving occurs, I usually take out some of the Aged sumatra grade one lintong or even the Monsooned Malabar that I have in my stash and roast some up. Lately however, I have not been yearning for  smoky, dark almost licorice like taste that these two coffee beans offer  when roasted past that second crack.

I was certainly not looking for it when I decided to roast up some Yemen Mokha Sareshi the other day either. But, thanks to my lack of diligence, that is precisely what I got. I did set the time on the roaster for 25 minutes in order to get a slightly darker roast, but I was planning to watch the progress and hit the cool button once the beans got to a nice full city darkness. However, I ended up falling sway to the siren call of the Internet and the beans roasted the full 25 without my direct supervision. This in itself would of been forgivable, since 25 was what I was shooting for anyway, but what was not forgivable was the way I let the beans sit around in the hot roasting chamber for around 20 minutes as I tooled around.

While it is ok to wait a little bit for the glass chamber of the Nesco to cool before you remove the beans from it, it is stll important to get them out of there as soon as possible. I generally do this immediately since I have callused paws that can withstand a lot of heat. If you end up leaving the beans sitting in the chamber, they will keep on cooking and your full city roast could end up being a full blown vienna.  This is exactly what happened to the Yemen Mokha.  I was expecting a nice dark brown bean, but instead got a shiny black bean.

As I daid earlier, there are times that I crave the flavor that the darker roasts brings in a bean, but this was not the time. This dark Yemen roast had a flavor very much akin to the aged sumatra, with a sharp licorice anise taste along with a powdery finish. I did force myself to finish up the batch, to teach myself a lesson, but I sure did not enjoy it as much as I would have a lighter roast. Next time I cook up some of the Yemen, I promise you that I will pay attention and not get lost online.

After experimenting with the Ethiopian Koratie dry and wet Processes and deciding that I like my coffee a little dirty as opposed to clean, I decided to give another Ethiopian Dry Processed coffee bean a try. This one hails from Dale Yirga Alem and it is certified Organic. Now, it would be nice and politically correct to say that organic coffee always tastes better than the stuff that has been chemically fertilized, but that is not really the case. I have tasted way too many great non-organic coffees as well as a few too many sub par organic ones to really jump on the everything organic bandwagon. Actually, when it comes to coffee, I tend to be a bit leery of the Organic label because of the several bad taste experiences that I have had.

So anyways, I decided to get the Ethiopian Organic DP-Dale Yirga Alem from Sweet Maria’s not because it was organic, but rather because it was an Ethiopian Dry Process. Speaking of dry process, since some of the dried pulp remains intact on the bean after the cleaning process, perhaps it is better if the cherries had not been sprayed with chemical fertilizers after all. Not that there is really any chance of chemical residue actually making through the entire cleaning and roasting process anyway, still it is nice to be extra safe.

So anyway anyways, I roasted this coffee a little on the light side, since label suggests “amazing ripe fruit, nectarine, plum and berry. Spicey accents and intense aromatics” if I did so. I mean with a description like that, I would be nuts not to roast it light.I got a nice city plus to full city roast  out of it using the 23 minute setting of my little Nesco Roaster and making sure to remove the beans from the hot glass roasting chamber as soon as the cooling cycle stopped (thankfully I have callused hands which are hard to burn). I let this coffee sit for a few days before giving it a try.

Lo and behold, this coffee, is hands down, the best of the trio  of coffees that I had recently purchased from Sweet Marias and I think it may even rank up there in my top twenty list. It does have a real intese ripe fruit accent to it, followed by a clean earthy bitter aftertaste that can only be described as “organic”. Hooray for the organics, I finally found one that has won me over.

” Wow man that is the darkest coffee I have ever seen,” commented the new guy at work as I pulled out my little ziplock baggy full of pre-ground Yemen Mokha Sharasi that I had roasted two day prior.

“Yeah,” I replied as nonchalantly as possible, hoping to contain my excitement that somebody at my “day job” might actually be interested in my little coffee obsession. ” I kind of got it a little too dark this time, because I left it sitting in the roasting chamber a bit too long as I was tooling around on my computer.”

“Wow man, you roast your own coffee?” He asked in his stonified so-cal accent.

“Yeah, my girlfriend got me a little Nesco coffee roaster last christmas, and I have been going nuts ever since.” I replied, still hoping I do not sound too much like the coffee fanatic that I areally am. “Its really fun, and the coffee usually tastes better.” I added  wondering if maybe I should pull back a little, lest he actually wanted me to brew him a cup of my limited take to work supply.

“Thats cool man, my mother is  really into gourmet coffee too and I kinda got into it because of her.” He said as he watched me pour my precious, if not a little too dark grounds into my little bodum single cup drip coffee maker. “Did you ever try blue mountain?”

“Jamaican blue mountain? Yeah that stuff is pretty good, if you can get it fresh,’ I replied, hoping I did not sound like too much of a coffee snob as I poured some hot water into the top of my little coffee maker. Jamacain Blue Mountain is great coffee, but almost impossible to get fresh, it is also perhaps a bit overhyped, but I decided not to start yapping about it, lest I alienate the new guy.  So instead, I decided to bring up Kopi Luwak, for the sake of conversation…

“Man, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to drink anything that came out of some animal’s butt” was his reply.

“Well they do wash it off, but I can understand where you are coming from,” I said as I took a first tentative sip of the Yemen Mokha. I had let this roast sit way too long in the hot glass roasting chamber after it had finished and it it had got overly dark on me. Dang distracting Internet! The taste was a little rustic and charcoal like for me. “I don’t think I could ever bring myself to plop down 150 bucks for a pund of it anyway,” I continued as I tried my best to enjoy my coffee, ” but, I have tried Jacu bird coffee, which came from a bird’s butt.”

“Ewww..”

“Actually, it was pretty good,had a real nice peppermint aftertaste.”  I commented, wishing I had some tasty Jacu bird coffee at the moment, instead of the burnt swill that I has drinking.