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Here is a pic that I took at a coffee shop that sits next to the Grand Lake Theater here in Oakland’s Lake Merritt District. The place has a  skull theme throughout, which makes it cool in my book. It has pretty good hot dogs too. Their coffee is called “Smokey Joe’s” and lives up to its name, being very dark and smoky. It is pretty decent with enough cream, although the cup I bought did taste like it had been sitting around for a while.

Since the place seemd pretty quite and the guy behind the counter seemed almost dumbfounded that he actually had a paying customer who, yes, wanted to spend 6 bucks on a hotdog and a cup of coffee.

Times are tough I guess.

I do hope this place makes it if only for its cool decorum and I might try to make it a point to stop by once in a while to get a hot dog. I do what I can to support the local community.

I will  pass on more Smokey Joe coffee though.

I got enough of my own to drink.

Maui Moka

Speaking of smoky, I got a pound of Maui Moka From SM the other week in preparation for my upcoming vaca to this tropical paradise. Since the beans are on the small side and Tom from SM advised against using a Behmor to roast them, I decided that it was a good time to break the old Nesco out and give it a whirl…

The problem, however, was that my Nesco skills have gotten a little rusty and I got the beans a little bit too dark. I set it at 27 and let er rip, only to have to hit cool  with 3 minutes left after seeing sparks. They still tasted ok, but I think a little to the left of Vienna would be  preferable. Nice thing about the Nesco is that I still got two more tries to get it right.

I also got some Brazilian beans that really have a kick to them, but I will talk about those at a later date…

Hello y’all

Well, I told yah that I would get around to posting up one of my hand drawn roasting curves, so here it is. This recent one is a bit nicer than the others, since I decided to actually use a little carpenters square to make it look all prett so that I might obtain a better understanding of what is going on to my roast. This little blots  on the right are actually some of the finished product that spilled out of the drum and landed on the paper as I was doing my bet to transfer them to a storage container which happens to be a washed sauce jar.

As you can ascertain, this is the Jacu Bird Bean  roasted in my Behmor at P2 for 14:10.

Okay, it is probably hard to realize that I roasted it for 14 minutes and 10 seconds, but I did. First I started the machine at 10:10 then, in order to extend to last leg of the roast and get a darker result i tacked on 3 minutes. Then as the the time was running out I added another minute and thirty to make sure it got to where I wanted it.  I heard the first crack kick in at the 13 minute mark and the second crack happened as the roast went past the 14 minute mark prompting me to hit the cool button.

P2: love it leave it throw it a party

While Profile 2 has given me trouble in the past resulting in uneven roasts, I have discovered that with a little tweaking, it becomes the best way to go dark without the Behmor shutting down on me. This time, I got the Jasu bird nicely dark to the point of full city plus which is a real accomplishment  with the Behmor especially if you do not skimp on the weight

The poop on the jacu

I knew I was on to something special when I got a good whiff of the Jacu Bird Beans and decided I could not wait until the next day to give them a try.Making coffee the same day as the roast is usually reserved for desperate times but something told me to give this roast a try.

To my surprise the roast tasted great even the same day and got even better throughout the week. This years Jacu Bird Crop is even better than last years. it has a smooth mouthy feel and a great peppermint aftertaste that may or may not be attributed to its unique processing. (for those who do not know, this coffee bean first goes through the the digestive track of the wild Jacu Bird before it is collected cleaned and shipped).

In fact, it is one of my favorite beans of the summer and I plan to grab some more before it disappears again and comes back next year with more hype and a bigger price tag.