Tag Archives: Bean

From green bean to coffee bean to cup Doing it right

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Respect the coffee bean. Simple concept but so many don’t do this. Get to know your beans, where they come from what their flavor profile is, and what roast will really bring that out. Experiment with the green coffee. This is what I will be witnessing over at Buona today (Jan, 02, 2012).

So today I went over to Buona Caffe and picked up some medium roast Ethiopian Sidamo coffee and helped roast some of it. It is not cold today, the winter thus far has been as mild as they come for this part of the country. The jet stream has stayed well north of us.

Today I felt lucky as I could stop by on my day off and try to help out some as opposed to pick it up and fly out the door. One of the things you cannot really delve into unless you are there at the roasting is the smell. The smell permeates everything. The warmth of the roaster, the sounds. When the crack goes, you can definitely hear it. The smell and the visual appearance of the coffee as it roasts, as it comes out. This is a very tactile thing. It is not put it in a roaster for x number of minutes, though I am sure that is how some do it. While yes, one uses a timer, to back up the crack, I think this is where the art starts.

Upon arrival I greeted my gracious hosts, John and Pat. I got there at the same time as a photographer from the Augusta Chronicle. Going in john had a batch in the cooler already. It smelled amazing. After greeting Pat she showed me their new coffee toy, an Aeropress. This is a very interesting little device. I think I recall Pat using 8/10ths of an ounce coffee and there is a fill line on the device. After settling the coffee in she pours in the water. When you are doing this you have to watch to get the water line up to the mark, not the top of the foam. Then she stirs with the provided paddle which is followed by the plunger (I think it was 10 seconds of immersion between stir and plunger).  The air pressure really moves it quickly and efficiently. I do not recall the time she took to plunge it. If you have young kids this is a great experiment to demonstrate the principles of air pressure by the way. There is a filter at the bottom of the device that the coffee must go through. This made a nice clean cup of coffee. Then I had a heck of a chat with Pat over coffee. This proves their motto: “Good things happen over good coffee”.

Let us get to the roasting. There were a number of people at the roaster that day. So their roaster is the very roaster that started “Land of a Thousand Hills” coffee. This is a tried and true machine. With the roaster heated up we add the coffee. This was sumatra I think it was, that we put in this time. The coffee roaster was heated up and when the coffee got put in the temperature just plummeted. I mean it dropped through the floor. John times this as well as watches and listens. Just about all your senses are require here. It took a little while but you could see through the front glass that the coffee was starting to get darker. After a while John checked it in the little scoop thing on the front that lets you pull coffee out to check while roasting. This is apparently an easy place for coffee to get stuck so it is good to make sure you check it so you don’t wind up with a green bean in your roasted coffee.

John has been doing this for a while now. He new pretty well spot on when to expect to hear that coffee start to crack. Coffee cracking is something akin to a faint popcorn popping. You do not realize you hear it till you do, but then you recognize you were hearing it longer than you thought. Hopefully that makes sense. We were doing this a dark roast (not a bucks roast, actual dark no charcoal here) so the coffee continues on roasting, the cracking subsides and life continues. At a point in here John shut off the heat to make sure that the coffee doesn’t over cook. Soon the second crack starts and once it is well under way (which is seconds) he opens it up to the cooling tray. This stuff looks like dark chocolate chips, it makes you want to reach in and grab some to snack on. Two things about that though. First, these goodies are over 400 degrees hot, and uh, that would be a catastrophically bad idea, tow, they would not taste like you want. Second they would not taste very good. So avoid the temptation! ;p

He does one thing that took me by surprise, when the beans came out of the roaster and were starting to their cool cycle, he sprayed them with water from a spay bottle. I was taken aback to be sure. I asked him why he was doing that would that not cause moisture problems. Well let us thing about this for a moment, how hot were those beans? Yeah, that water just vaporizes instantly, but it does help kick start the cooling process.

After that batch had cooled long enough we started the Ehtiopian Sidamo he wanted to a light side of medium roast on. I have been asking them about a lighter medium and here was the opportunity to experiment. So we go the beans in and too them to the first crack, just barely. Since this is an Ethiopian there is a natural tendency for bean color to vary some. So there are some outright blondes mixed in there too.

This is going good coffee. I tell you, this is a flavorful roast. I had a clever drip of it yesterday and it was wonderful. I will have one in the morning. I would have tonight but I went to help my son with some homework. I went with 30 grams coffee to 340 grams of coffee, that was a good combo.

I have been focusing a lot on SO coffees (Single Origin), next I will try their blends. They have one called Midnight Oil I will try first. They are developing a couple more blends now I think. I hope they will choose to experiment on me. I like Pat’s method for choosing names. I will leave disclosing that method to her.

Coffee roasting is something you must have a passion for, you cannot do it just to turn out product, you have to do it because you want to, because you love it. John and Pat do.

 

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Batdorf and Bronson Holiday Blend is a Gift to drink

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There is lots of holiday goodness here. This is a wonderful and special coffee. This batch was roasted on I am guessing the 13th (correct me if I am wrong there Jason), and Inner Bean got it on the 14th, not sure if they could have gotten it out the same day. Either way, well within the freshness window. How can you tell? BLOOMIN Coffee! Yep, blooms. When your coffee is fresh and you pour a bit of the heated water in the coffee bubbles up, it erupts, looks like coffee lava boiling up. So, I let it form a crust and then break that down with pouring in the rest of the water. I really let the water pour in rapidly so I get a full immersion. Yep, Clever Bloomin Dripper! 

Light acidity, light body, balanced that way, a little fruity, not over done, smoothness. Swishing it around I get a really good feel on the tongue. The coffee has good mouthfeel the caramel notes do come through for me almost as an aftertaste. Lots going on in this coffee. I find myself drinking it moving it around trying to hit all the tastebuds. This is rather pleasant coffee. It doesn’t leave you regretting it. It’s a medium roast so there is no ashy aftertaste common to darker roasts. I want to chew it. 

This coffee left me with different flavors from different cups of it. I honed in on my grind to a fine grind, using 30 or 35 grams of coffee to 350 grams of water. This coffee leaves you with a pleasant taste. I had eight cups of it over this weekend. I did not want to leave any stone unturned. Punish me you know? 

What I figured out, was that the more coarse grind did not seem to extract enough. It was a bit watery tasting. I had let it steep for four minutes total, that includes drip time. Including the drip time in the four minutes was an experiment this weekend too. Normally I let it steep for four minutes then setting it to drip. Not sure if that really has a big effect, I will try that out tonight.

Overall this was an excellent cup of coffee. I really enjoyed look forward to drinking more of it. I might take a bit of bashing at work for not bringing it in but I refuse to put that coffee in the Bunn. The aroma of the coffee however did have several of them salivating and standing near my office asking why I wasn’t making any. So have yourself a merry little Christmas and give yourself a coffee present.

Merry Christmas everyone.

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Ethiopian Sidamo Grassroots Coffee Review

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Monday I received a message from Spencer Young from Grassroots Coffee, in Thomasville, GA on facebook, after an exchange of messages, I had coffee to review.

Drinking this coffee was a pleasure. I received the coffee while at work, very nice packaging by the way guys n gals. The coffee smelled quite good and I could not wait to break it out! Needless to say I paraded it around to my fellow coffee lovers at work, which almost got me mobbed!

Ethiopian coffee is known for a winy fruity flavor as is predominant in African coffees. Most coffees from Sidamo are wet processed. This batch was sun dried. This I do believe means it was dry processed. Or this could mean that it was let to dry in the sun after being wet processed. The Sun Dried on the bag is perhaps a bit vague. This processing will affect flavor (well at least some say, I do not thin my palate is quite that developed yet).

So let’s get to the coffee I received. It was a medium roast from the looks of it (point in their favor), there were varying shades of brown on the beans, not uniform. The roast date was the 11th of October. This was received on the 24th of October. So we at the edge of the two week window, just barely. Although I must say, if it was within say a week of roast, the smell would have been strong enough that the ladies at work would not have let me out without handing it over! Think that roast date was going to stop me? Think again! The aroma was still terrific. I could not wait to get home and grind it up!

Once home I open the package up and actually open the Sidamo bag. The smell of the beans is sexy as all get out. But that does not compare to what it smells like when its ground. Oh yes, once ground is when the aroma really starts to hit you, exciting those olfactory receptors; the anticipation hits.

I eagerly get my clever out and set everything up, weigh out my coffee and water. I like my coffee a little ‘heavier’ than most. Usually one sticks to a 16:1 ratio, water to coffee. I am a bit off that. For 250grams water I use about 30 to 35 grams coffee. It just tastes better to me. This is likely going to be too out of whack measurement wise for most, I suggest you stick to the 16:1 ratio. Back to the coffee.

So I start my water heating. When I judge there is about a minute before the water is done I grind my beans and put them in the filtered Clever (BAM nose candy once coffee is ground).

Pour water over the coffee stir a touch let it rest for two minutes. Stir, rest. This goes on for four minutes. Ok I want to go into a bit of detail here. When I stir the coffee in the filter I get the upper crust of coffee that forms back down into the water. I noted a lighter brown froth forming on top of the water. The coffee is letting loose all kinds of smells, this is all very good. Let us taste that coffee now, smooth, very smooth. I get the wine notes, a lively feel to the coffee. It is not too heavy on the tongue. As I swish the coffee around and let it settle, I feel a medium bodyweight, it has a good mouth-feel to it. At this point, I almost tasted something like brownies, but I will defer to calling it a rich warm chocolate note. Again, very good. Since the coffee was past that two week time, I wonder if the flavor profile would have been stronger? Maybe.

So after doing a second clever pour over tonight I got very similar results. Rich wine notes, chocolate notes and just solid gold. This means that the beans were uniformly roasted and quality was consistent. You could begin to know what to expect out of the coffee from cup to cup. In the morning I am going to grind up for some drip. Let’s see what different tastes come through. I will edit this post to let you know how that came out. If you are looking for a top notch coffee, something to really enjoy. Give the Ethiopian Sidamo from Grassroots Coffee a whirl. You will be glad you did.

Next coffee on the list is their Espresso Blend. Looking forward to it!

EDIT – The drip is a little heavier body; however you lose the wine notes.  But its a coffee you can drink and think with or about. It kinda warms right up to you. Not sure I am conscious enough to write more about that at this time. Fridays are looong.

 

in the interest of full disclosure this coffee was provided free of charge. This in no way shape or form influences the opinion of the blogger. I will call it straight everytime. If you wish to have your coffee reviewed drop an email to SanitybyCoffee@Gmail.com

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Clever Dripper done right, good coffee

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Smooth, creamy, velvety, yes, that is coffee without anything added. Straight black coffee. The magic of the Clever Dripper. What I found when using this is that I have a lot more to learn about it. The trifecta of good coffee is of course, the water, the bean (and how it is ground) and the brewing method.

I got closer to the perfect cup I think. I use only filtered water from my britta. Nothing too fancy there, but it gets the bad stuff out and leaves the good stuff in. Tap water is disgusting, you should not cook with it nor drink it non-filtered. I have mentioned before that water is 98% of your coffee, ignore that fact at your own peril.

The bean was Dancing Goat from Batdorf & Bronson, always a good choice. My grinder is probably not the best but it gets the job done. I did notice some larger chunks in with the smaller grind. I did not notice however, that the coffee was uneven or unbalanced. These

Roasted coffee beans, the world's primary sour...

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characteristics are  a signature of a grossly uneven grind. The oils have to be extracted from the bean. If you have a larger bean chunk it will take longer to extract the oils and flavors. I thought that perhaps it could be better if the grind was more even but it was not bad at all.

The brewing device. I used my still shiny new Clever Dripper. The beauty of this is the steeping capability. Allowing the coffee to really soak through and get all those oils out. If you have a Mr. Coffee like 99% of us (I still have and use one) you know how it works. The water is rushed through the coffee. The water gets in saturates the coffee and flows out in near record time. You can still get a decent enough cup of coffee from this but let me tell

Clever Dripper

Image by doubleshot_cz via Flickr

you about how much better the Clever Dripper does. Once the coffee has been freshly ground (should be used within a minute or two of grinding) pour in that water. Give the water a stir and let it sit. Stir it in two minutes then leave it alone till you are ready to serve.

Let us talk about the ratio of coffee to water. The recommendation I have received was 1:16. Now I used a bit different than this because I like my coffee to stand up on its own. I used 30 grams of coffee to 250 grams of water. Jason Dominy of Batdorf & Bronson, uses 24 grams coffee to 340 grams of water. This shows how widely tastes can vary. I think one of the problems I had with the first couple of attempts at coffee made by the Clever and I, was that it did not produce as much coffee as I thought it should. I use a little bit larger cup than a 6oz and was expecting it to fill up. After all I put in a lot of coffee and water. Well I wound up adding more water the first few times and I think that was a big mistake. This morning I just thought to myself ok I sticking as close to the ratio as I can.

So this morning I brewed a cup of coffee that was less than I might normally drink but wow what a cup. The coffee had a velvety feel, it was smoooooth and creamy. This was coffee that had no creamer, no sugar, nothing added. You can get a huge variety of tastes out of coffee. Good tastes, good coffee good mornings are waiting for you if you just take the time to brew it right.

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