Interesting flavor notes

Dave — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:21:22 +0000

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. -)

three samples & roasting notes

Not the best roast…

Dave — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:22:20 +0000

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.

Deft. Coffee Roasters. » flavor

Interesting flavor notes

Not the best roast…