Tag Archive for 'coffee'
The ambiance set by clear morning light and this Kenyan from the Giakanja Cooperative Mill in Nyeri match perfectly.
Light Streaming through Ponderosa Pines along the banks of the Metolius River
This was a casual morning cupping - one where it happens as you wake up… The beauty of this coffee pulled me immediately out of my frozen slumber. Yes, the air was chilled, felt like dry ice, but with bright morning light glinting off the Metolius River as it burbled by the site. I got full round fruits, melons playing in a bed of rich stone fruit (without any hint of starch). Intense flavor mingled with the clear bright yellow, almost white light coming through the tops of majestic Ponderosa Pines along the Green Ridge line.
On a plate in front of me, a slice of pan fried (in butter, of course) sourdough bread topped with Cheddar and slices of real Tomato. The Satisfying tartness of the sour starter, crispy and chewy, the caramelized / browned butters sweetness supports the bright marmalade-like fruitiness of this Nyeri district Kenyan. The fact that I stretched the Millard phase of the roast a tiny bit, giving the fruits a bit less clarity, but more intertwined complexity works well with the acidulous nature of good fresh tomatoes.
I’ve been casually been making a survey of coffee related books available.. the most recent book being skimmed through is "Coffee & Tea" (4th ed.) by Elin McCoy & John Frederick Walker. As a book originally written in 1976 and updated in 1998, it’s nothing new if you’ve read any other books that claim to be "The Complete Guide to Evaluating, Buying, Preparing, and Enjoying Every Variety of Coffee and Tea". It basically covers the same ground as all the others….
But even though it’s pretty quickly clear that this isn’t an unique book, I still wanted to check out the glossary of terms to see how they define certain common words, especially ones that are flavor descriptors. I came across this one:
Cocoa: Characteristic sweetish smell of completely stale roasted coffee. (emphasis theirs).
Hmmm… Perhaps it’s a result of the difference between theirs and my times, but I haven’t ever attributed the dryness of cocoa to staleness of the roast. Maybe I should. I’ve occasionally noted a dry blueberry flavor in Harrars that were once lush and vibrant and thought that it was maybe getting a bit too far from the harvest. Possibly a different situation. Anyway, I’m friends with a purveyor of super fine chocolates with whom I’ve had some 100% cocoa bars that are exquisite with a somewhat powdery texture, but not dusty as their &qout;completely stale roasted coffee" would suggest. But yeh, I’ve also tried some Hershey’s cocoa and it was dead as dust. But it hadn’t occurred to me to attribute the flavor to staleness. Not till now anyway.
It also makes me wonder if sweetness isn’t one of the last flavors to go as the coffee stales? Hadn’t paid attention to that either.
Lots to do. lots to do. -)
I have three new roasts to post about: I think that I am getting close to actually being able to reproduce my results (which means installing the manometer I purchased a few weeks ago…) which means that I am going to start posting more complete roast profiles than what I’m jotting down on the chip of paper bag. I am working through a way to do this easily, cause I don’t want to spend my time copying information from one place to another.
On a somewhat side note, but still related, I do think that the air control isn’t set right. Even in the better roasts, there is a cloudiness to the flavors. They just aren’t as clear as I am expecting. It’s perhaps simply nothing more than my expectations, and looking for that unattainable, but I do think that the air isn’t being drawn through the roast chamber well enough. Noting to pay more attention to this in future roasts.
Anyway, I roasted three different coffees to help Christy and me re-enter daily life after our honeymoon (5 days on the Metolious River in Central Oregon. The whole week was totally amazing!). I’ve roasted two of them before with good results and one with not so good results… They are:
El Salvadore Matalapa Estate
Roasted 27 July, 2008
27 July '08 roast of El Salvadore Matalapa Estate
250g / 210g (16.0% loss)
1Cb = 10:23
1Cr = 10:46
1Cf = 11:05 (stragglers til 11:20)
D = 12:40
Cupping Notes:
29 July ‘08 (~36 hrs)
Base flavors are nut - hazel mostly. There are hints of other flavors in there, but it is somewhat muddled together. Slightly harsh acidity wrapped up into some nice fruit flavors. But off balance.
Roasting Notes:
10:23 is really too long to hit 1rst crack. It’s clear from the cupping that it dried out the coffee too much, baking it, and setting of some internal scorching. Visually, verified in some beans.
What the hell, I’ll blame that on poor planning and not having the guage hooked up yet. This was the last batch roasted, and jumping from 150g to 250… I just didn’t get it moving quick enough. The beans were turning yellow - indicating the end of the drying phase - about 1:30 past where I would normally expect that.
Once I turned up the gas, things progressed fine, at least on paper. The duration of 1rst crack was nice and short. The progression of the roast after that was about right. I still think I held it in a bit long, but honestly, the damage was done before I passed 5 minutes. The beans were too dried out to really develop good aciduous flavors without also turning the insides darker than the outer surface.
Rwanda Gkongoro Nyrautzi
29 July ‘08 (~36 hrs)
27 July '08 roast of Rwanda Gkongogo Nyarusiza
Roasted 27 July, 2008
144g / 123g (14.6% loss)
1Cb = 7:09
1Cr = 7:36
1Cf = 8:20 (stragglers til 11:20)
D = 9:28
Cupping Notes:
Cups bright, a bit tight but not as green as I had assumed based on the times.
Roasting Notes:
Nope. It was clear from the times that this wasn’t going to cup stellar… Actually, since I’m judging the progress almost purely visually in the early stages of the roast, I knew I was flying through it when the end of the warming/drying phase was showing at around 2:20. It was already too late by then, but might as well finish it out.
It was the first roast after the warmup, and the first couple do tend to race too fast - and it didn’t help that I was dumping in only 144g (all that I had left). In hindsight, shouldda sent the El Salvador through first and saved this for last. Though not sure that would have been what would have helped.
So, though first crack began at 7:09, started rolling 25s later, it cupped pretty green.
Not a whole lot else to say. It wasn’t particurally thin, but there wasn’t any development to the flavors, and this should have been a nicely nutty, balanced coffee.
Bolivia San Igacio (2007 CoE 2nd place)
Roasted 27 July, 2008
27 July '08 Roast of Bolivia San Igacio (CoE)
198g / 168g (15.2% loss)
1Cb = 9:13
1Cr = 9:3
1Cf = 10:10
D = 11:09
Cupping Notes:
28 July ‘08 (~12 hrs)
This is a Spring/Summer coffee for certain… Fresh, clean aromatics - flowery.
Sweetcream sweetness like Crème fraîche. Light chocolate, light nuttyness - a bit peanut with some few cashews thrown in for better creaminess.
Light tending towards medium body.
I just can’t get over how, um pervasive the sweetness in this coffee is. It brings back to memory a sample of a coffee from the Galapagos sent to me about 4 years ago that blew me away with how mellow and sweet it was. I wasn’t able to purchase it only because of the cost, but shit did I want to. This Bolivia did the same thing - so mellow, so sweet in an unassuming way. Like it was so easy for this coffee to be this good, it didn’t have to prove it. It did by just showing up.
Roast Notes:
Well, of any to get right, or at least not screw up, this would be it. The times seemed right on. Breaing open a few beans and checking how evenly their color was compared to the outer surface, I am very happy with where this turned out.
I could probably cut of the roast ever so slightly sooner and get a bit more pronounced fruit, which was here more than any other roast of this coffee yet, but I wanted more of it forward. Though I don’t want to lose that sweetness. Had I the samples, this is where it would be excellent to try roasting again with identical progression up to 1rst crack and dump at the same end temp, but with stretch the time between 1rst crack and dump temp by about, say 15-20 sec. Gets me wondering about what, exactly would happen. Would the fruit hold together and it increase in overall sweetness? or would it dull, and begin turning to caramel? I suspect the latter, but not totally sure.
This is an experiment waiting to happen…
I had just a small amount of the that San Ignacio left (~18g, to be exact) and it is hot as a mutha here right now, so I set out to make a delicate, fully satisfying iced coffee. (Vietnamese stye)
Bolivia San Ignacio as it's brewing, icing
Sweet isn’t quite enough of a word for it. The buttery body (mmm) that was in hot cup, completely turned inward, and became more of a perceived sense than actual flavor - like jabbing your finger in the stick of warm butter sitting on the butcher block, maybe even on a slab of Himalayan pink salt, and putting it in your mouth. Warmth. Oily. Yummy.
Then. And then… that delicate flower of sweetness takes off, floats lightly, and clearly above the cool ice and butter. Like finding lost berries and cream. Clear hints of cherry and super ripe raspberries (just like the amazingly juicy ones Christy just brought home from the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island the other day…) ‘Twas beauty. Total beauty. ‘Nother please… If only I had some more.
I still need to post the roast notes from this batch…
My friend Mark has been asking me for a Brazilian coffee that will rekindle his interest in Brazils.. This is one for that… Satisfyingly sweet up front, delicate floral nose, and generally balanced, mild and interesting. More nutty and round in the body (mild)
Roast 2 has more vibrancy and a bit more body. In comparison, the longer development (in roast 1) after 1c muted it’s fruit and floral notes, and slightly muddies the body tones. Not that it’s awful, just not as good.
Bolivia Cup of Excellence: San Ignacio Juana Mamani Huanca.
Not my best effort at the roast. Rushed the warm, and pushed 1rst crack up about 2+ minutes. Shit. And it shows in the cup. Green and tight on the tongue, florals and fruits aren’t well developed. It still has some real nice sweetness that comes out as it cools, but it should be more delicate, balanced than this.
Well, still tweaking the roaster, but damn, wish i’d done this with a coffee that I didn’t have so little of, or that cost so much ($25/lb). Oh well, at least it was only 125g. And I still some.
But, on the bright side of things, I fiddled with the air/fuel ratio on the pinhalense tonight and have a much better flame now, one that has a slight hiss and a good tightly formed flame - not the laziness that it was before. Seems it needed more air (O2). I hope that this means that I’ll be able to mve at least a full load through the times I’m expecting… till now, 300g has been somewhere about a slow 30min. ugh.
This is alertness beautifully balanced with elegant patience. Summery. Well structured. It’s clarity cuts through me like sitting in the sun porch on bright mornings. Bright warmth, eye squinty and attentive.
Beautiful, clean, light and floral sweetness. Grapefruit like undercurrent helps round out structure - especially in the mid range temperatures as the cup cools. It shows a lighter body than most other Brazils - even compared to the more citrusy, nutty sul de Minas region or certain Central American coffees - this tends toward the light side. But don’t take this for thin. It has depth and structure.
Said sample of Brazil Carmo de Minas at a light - city plus - roast in order to preserve the delicateness of the yellow bourbon varietal. You can see that the surface color is still mottled as it hasn’t progressed far enough past first crack to even the surface out… Not a bad thing at this stage of roast. The interior is very even and consistent with the surface color.. and by the way, this is the first roast that I am satisfied with since hooking up the Pinhalense…
Here’s a little slideshow of the new roaster. I’m planning to take some more details this weekend and will post those as well.
cheers
