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So I took the taste challenge…

I wanted to see if my palate could tell the difference  between Starbuck’s new instant coffee (just add hot water) and stuff the has been brewed the proper way.

After much contemplative mouth swishing, I correctly determined which coffee was the Folgers 2.0 and which one was the Pike Place blend. The assistant manager of the store looked a little heart broken, so I told him that it was really hard to tell the difference.

It might have been a lucky guess too. I think they purposely used some older brew  for the Pike Place in order to throw the testers off. Still, I guess the stuff was not too bad, better than most of the instant crap, but it still lacked the total flavorocity of fresh roasted coffee.

According to what I over heard, the VIA is actually microground coffee, meaning the grounds are so fine that you can drink them. They claim that it is just like drinking a cup french pressed coffee. I guess thats pretty accurate, it is a lot like sipping on some stale french pressed.

Therein lie the rub…

Well, I might need to use the dollar off coupon they gave me and purchase some VIA for some further testing, I am pretty sure I know what the problem is. Coffee starts to lose a lot of its flavor immediately after you grind it and expose it to air. I can only imagine what microgrinding it does.

Then again, maybe Starbucks has a special process where they microgrind their beans in a  vacuum sealed chamber to keep it from degrading until it reaches their costumers cup. Maybe the have a special facility in space or on the moon where they produce the VIA packets in a near total vacuum to ensure no flavor escapes.

Or , maybe they assume the average joe drinker is not going to notice the difference underneath all the cream and sugar anyway.

Here is a batch of the Rwandan Gkongoro Nyarusiza (or however the heck you spell it) that I roasted then immediately sealed into a Foodsaver Freeze and Steam bag.

I got a bunch of these bags on sale at Target a few weeks ago, They were half priced and I just could not pass them up. The thing about these bags is that they have little one way notches in them that are meant to release the steam when you decide to nuke a bag of vegetables.

Seeing these little steam valves on the bag kind of reminded me of the one way CO2 valves that come on many coffee bags. I figured that these bags might work the same way so set up a little experiment in order to find out.

For those who read this blog with some sort of regularity (it’s good to be regular) you now that I have experimented with saving freshly roasted coffee in food saver bags in the past only to find out that if I do not wait at least a day before sucking and sealing, the bag ends up blowing up like a balloon from the CO2 that is released after the beans sit a while.  Well this is really fun to look at and might make a great emergency pillow, I do not think its the ideal way to store freshly roasted coffee.

So anyway, i roasted up a batch of my new favorite beans then immediately stored them in the freeze and steam bag (which ironically I do not plan to freeze or steam) and then let it sit overnight to see if the  bag would either inflate or become slack like a spent balloon.

The next day I was happy to discover that the bag has the same han solo frozen in carbonite consistency as it had the morning before. This means either the one way steam release valves actually do work like a degassing valve or that the RGN does not give off a lot of CO2.

Anyways, I guess I need to do a little more experimenting to find out but I figured I would let the rest of your roasters out there know that this might be a viable storing option.

Or, I guess you could just invest in some coffee bags with degassing valves.

But if you like to play star wars. It is a pretty fun idea.

I got some nice 8 oz degassing bags from the Green Coffee Buying Club  last month. Here is a a batch of Tanzanian Blackburn Estate AA resting in one after being roasted. This batch was sort of an experiment with my Behmor in which I Roasted 13 ounces on the 16 oz (thats 1 elbow to you slines*) setting. I roasted it on P3 for about 19 minutes. I heard the first crack 17:30 into the roast and the second crack came 30 seconds into the cool cycle.

Now you may ask why I did this. Especially with the remainder of the beans that I have been raving about for the past year. Why would I waste the last of my precious batch one  a foray into the unknown. Well, to tell you the truth, I have no idea why I did it. I just felt the need to fill the bag.  A compulsion that came to me last week.

It all started with the Mogiana…

The  Brazilian Dry Process Mogiana to be precise. This bean turned out a real kick in the head (in a good way) and I had decided that I wanted to share this with one of sibs who happens to be addicted to coffee almost as bad as I am.

I wanted to give her a bag of this stuff. But I did not what to give her a bag that looked half full, which my new bags look when I roast up  only 8 oz.   I thought that this would look kinda tacky, so I decided to fix the problem by going for whole LB of the Mogiana (she loved the name btw). This gave me a whole bunch of beans, enough to fill the bag plus have a little left over for me.

This however then gave me the idea of always making enough to fill my new bags. Xmas is coming up after all and I do not want to be sending out tacky looking gift bags that look half full. So, the experimentation has begun.

Roasting 12 to 10 oz’s on the pound setting also gives me the benefit of hitting a darker roast that I can never get to before the cooling cycle in the Behmor hits. And now that I know a little bit more about the curves,I am pretty sure I can handle it.

Of course, I have been keeping a close eye on it to make sure no fire starts.

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.

I found this comic in a used bookstore (walden pond bookstore in Oakland) the other day and decided that a guy like me just had to have this. I haven’t read it it, just kind of thumbed through it to get the general gist. The writer is not quite as off the deep end as as I am about coffee( not many people are) but the story itself seems offbeat enough.  I just might get around to actually reading it when I finish all the Discworld novels.

I liked the cover anyways

Speaking of Too Much Coffee Man?

This is a question that I am constantly asking of myself each morning as I work my way through my third, even fourth cup of coffee.

“Four mere cups! Pff!” You say? That it takes a whole pot just to get you out of your bunny slippers?

Well, I say to you

These are not just mere little coffee cups. I drink out of a big fricken cups that delivers 20 oz’s of the juice per fill up.   And the coffee that this joe swills is no  Folgers Fricken Crystals either.  The Chemex allows me to make it strong yet keep it smooth.

By the time I get to my Fourth cup, My neurons are snapping like nobody’s business and my urine smells just like the Folgers Fricken Crystals your drinking.

Still, I do not merely drink just to piss Folgers.

I drink to experience the subtle nuances of a particular origin, to revel in the smoothness of the Kona Kowali, to feel the brown sugar goodness of the Tanzanian Peaberry tweak the edges of my tongue, and the peppermint after taste of the Jacu Bird Coffee lap up against the roof of my mouth.

Sure, my quest for new taste sensations end up getting me a bit overly jazzed up. But that comes with the territory. And, I will admit that there are times, especially in the wee hours of the morn, in which I swill the stuff more for the sake of kick starting my day then to experience the the different tastes from plantations around the world. Still, I imagine even the most refined sommelier likes to get ripped on a bottle of Chianti once in a while.

Well, Now i gotta go roast me up a batch of Guatamala Fraijanes- Finca Agua Tibia which I am told is a real kick in the taste buds, So I will see you folks later.

Last year, as you regulars might recall, I could not stop yammering about how much I liked a certain coffee from Tanzania called the Tanzanian Blackburn Estate AA. I still find myself yacking about it and I have been hanging on to the last remnants of a five pound bag that I won off of Ebay (which I will have to get around to finishing up before it starts to get moldy). Anyways, just like the third season of Dexter (which should be out on DVD next month) I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 2009 Blackburn estate crop to show up on the Sweet Maria’s  site.

Well, the wait is over. Sort of anyways.

According to Tom of SM, who knows way too much about coffee, this years Blackburn AA crop suffered greatly on its trip from Mt. Oldeani to the port and he has decided not to carry it but did pick up the slightly more pricey but still worth it (5.65 a pound) Peaberry from the estate which somehow made the trip without getting faded or old tasting in the process.

Since the guy seems to know what he is talking about  (just take a gander at his site and tell me this guy is not a uber coffee nerd), I am going to have to take Tom of Sweet Maria’s word for it that the AA  is not worth it and stick with the peaberry for now. At least it gives me an excuse to use the extra drum that I bought for the Behmor (see picture).

I roasted my first 8oz batch of the stuff at P3 (the defacto profile) starting it at 12:00 and added an extra 3:30 after start to help lengthen up the last leg a bit.  I heard the first crack at the 2:20 mark but I cannot be sure since peaberries seem to want to crack real quiet like. The cool cycle hit before the second crack came and the batch came out looking pretty Full City.

The taste was not fully there the day after but the next couple days my tastebuds woke up to remember that smooth brown sugary taste that Tanzanian Blackburn estate is all about. It is definitely a good cup, if not as mind blowing as last years crop and I can see myself getting a bit more of it from SM before it runs out, especially since the India KatteHollay already is out already. (hey I just cannot have a paragraph without a statement in parenthesis can I)

If I can find it on theCoffee Buying Club or Coffee Buyng CoOp, I just might pick me up a few LB’s of the AA just for experimental sake, otherwise, I guess I must continue my search for a new favorite coffee (and then make sure I buy enough so that it lasts me).

     Here is a updated pic of my little coffee plant which I am discreetly growing in my apartment.  It is still pretty small, but it is pushing out some new growth at a nice and steady pace.It might even be growing a little too fast.Those top two pairs of leaves appeared in just under a month and I can see another set forming already. I am wondering if I am maybe giving it too much light. On the left you can just make out the Aerogarden (in which i am growing some basil and oregeno) . I placed Cherry (the name I gave my coffee plant) next to it thinking that it would benefit from the plant light of the Aero Garden. The only thing is that this lamp has a 17 hour light cycle and coffee plants like to thrive near the equator. Perhaps finding a way to give it a steady 12/12 light dark cycle would be more optimal.Anyways, I am no longer afraid that cherry is going to wither away, but I still need to be careful if I want her around long enough to give a crop in five to six years. Of course, if it keeps growing like this, I am either goingto have to  build a green house on my little balcony or take some Bonsai classes. 

“Enough beans to get the entire high school jazzed off thier asses several times over sheriff.  Either those kids were really going to party, or we are looking at an intent to distribute….”

Deputy Dan glanced over at the  bag of beans that he had placed on the top of the truck of the patrol car. He had never seen unprocessed ones outside of the law enforcement training seminars before, but his instincts told him that he had made his first big time bust. He had pulled over the minivan for having expired tags and then stumbled upon this big bag of coffee beans.

“Yeah I am sure, I mean, sure enough to hold them.” The deputy said into the phone after an extended period of listening to the sheriff mull the situation over. He still needed perform the caff test in order to make sure, but he knew it was going to come back positive.  Most of the stuff he had confiscated had already been cooked and ground  long before it had even made it to the county line. This was some unadulterated stuff worth a small fortune on the street. Some real Primo gourmet coffee.

He  looked past the bag of beans and into the seat to make sure the two young punks that he had arrested were not doing anything overtly stupid. Hopefully, they were talking too each other, spilling valuable secrets to embedded backseat microphones that DARE had financed the department to further fight this war on Caffeine.

“Who are they? Well sheriff, I guess thats where it gets a little tricky, It was two local boys.” Deputy Dan breathed a deep sigh and then told the sheriff.

“It’s Seth Jorgenson and Donald McAnsky,” He said and waited as the sheriff finished swearing into the phone.”Which is why I figured I better call you before calling it in.”

The two jackasses were probably doing a bean run for the big  party at Bare ass creek that every kid in the county was going to be this weekend. They were probably planning on cookin up the beans themselves and then brewing up some hooch to hawk to the kids for 10 bucks a cup.  This type of entrapeneurship was typical of Seth and Donny who were both known for dabbling in illicit activities much to the chagrin of their parents.  

Judge Jorganson and Blake McAnsky were pretty powerful guys in town and would not be too happy about their boy doing time. They were also the sheriff’s biggest supporters. Deputy Dan already knew what was going to happen.

The beans were probably going to have to disappear somehow…

He began to wonder as to whether or not the beans could actually be processed using just a oven and a cooking sheet. He had tried the stuff as an experimental teen and found even the low grade stuff to his liking and he began to wonder what ”fresh coffee” would taste like. If it was as good as all the Caf-addicts said it was. Like sipping pure heaven.

It would be a shame just to waste the stuff.  

Upon hearing that a buddy of mine, whom I turned onto home roasting, went out and bought  himself a fancy schmancy Hot top coffee roaster, I just could not wait any longer. I went ahead and cashed in a few hundred thousand shares of GM stock that I had laying around and bought me a 300 dollar Behmor Roaster from Sweet Marias. Now, my girlfriend does not  have to hear me yammering on about how much I want one. While, Behmor is not as fancy (or schmancy) as the Hot Top, it seems to have quite a following in the homeroasting community. Also, this highly regarded machine is capable of cooking up a to a full pound of coffee beans, which is almost double that of Hot Tops 9 oz capacity.This gives me the ability to produce more than three times the roasted coffee in one sitting than I can with my Nesco.

And Perhaps I went a little overboard during my first two days. Just a little.

Within two days, I was up to my elbows in beans having roasted three 8oz batches within that span. The first two were from the eight  pounds that SM included with the machine and turned out pretty good, but then I went got and too bold. I decided it was time to try some of my precious Tanzanian in this baby.  I set it to 8 oz and the P3 setting.  They started cracking 12 minutes and 20 seconds into the 14 minute roast and were still going as the count down began prompting me to add 30 seconds to the time.

Something told me that they were not finished, and I had not heard them hit the second crack  when the cooling cycle kicked in, but being a little weary of starting a fire in my new machine, I hesitated on adding more time. The beans came out too light and the resulting coffee ended up being too bright and lacking any of the delicious caramel like undertones of slightly darker roast of the bean.