Tag Archives: Roasting

Coffee Chain of Action

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You may think that good coffee starts with getting it in your cup and down your throat. You’d be wrong. That is indeed the end.

English: Coffee berries Polski: Owoce kawy

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Coffee starts long before you ever get it. Many of you know that it grows in the regions of the earth within about 1500 miles of the equator. I will not delve into the specifics of how coffee is grown or harvested, I have done that here.

Coffee has to be roasted right. It has to be done, but not over done. Coffee can be roasted to a number of degrees of done, from light to dark, from cinnamon to full city to vienna I wrote about that here.

What you need to understand is that there are a ton, a ton of factors that go into your coffee. We aren’t even done yet. The beans should be used within a couple of weeks, three on the outside. Buy small, buy locally roasted. Besides this will give you a chance to stop by more often and get to know your local coffee roaster.

BERLIN, GERMANY - JANUARY 24: Freshly-roasted...

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So at this point your coffee might have sat from a few days to a few weeks to a few seasons has likely traveled several thousand miles so that it can be roasted. Your roaster is your friend. They have to pour the love into the bean. If they are not passionate, your coffee cannot be saved. The quality will be off, uneven, horrible. You can tell. Now there is one exception to this rule (there always is one), Starbucks. This cold heartless soul-less coffee giant produces consistent coffee day in day out. Consistently burnt.

So now let us say you got your coffee from Buona Caffe, Batdorf & Bronson, Grass Roots Coffee, Simple Joe or Frankly Good Coffee (get the point there ARE good local roasters) and you are the proud owner of freshly roasted greatness. Ok congrats, now what? So if you go to a coffee house for this you need to make sure that you go to a place that grinds the coffee fresh PER CUP. Failing that certainly per pot. Hopefully you will have a place that will do a french press or a clever or hario or whatever.

Well you’re a nerd and you don’t go to a coffee place, you brew at home. W00t you! GO!!! Bust out your clever, or your preferred method (see above but don’t see Mr. Coffee). Start with your grinder, get it ground and get it in your cup. Is it that simple? HA! Of course not. You need to watch this all carefully. You have to have a grinder that can get you a consistent ground. This is important. An inconsistent grind will give you dissimilar chunks which will give you an uneven flavor profile. Do the best you can with what you have. You can get some reasonably decent grinders for not too much. Just shop smart (shop s-mart (those of you that got it will be laughing)).

So, how about some water? Yep water is easily as crucial or more so than even the coffee itself. If you don’t believe me know that water is 98% of your coffee. Yep, wrote an article about that one too. Clue, if your water smells like sulfure or if you are on a well and you have particulates or iron in the water, well, it isn’t going to help your coffee, at all. If you take coffee beans from plant to grinder and into your filter perfectly, and you put some nasty ol’ city water in it, you have ruined the efforts of hundreds of people that moved it along the Coffee Chain Reaction before you even touch it.

All of this to get to the perfect cup of coffee for you. This is determined by choices made all along the way. People you don’t even know have had something to do with how good your cup of coffee is. But in the end, it will be up to you to determine your cup of coffee. When you do drink it and its great, thank everyone that put effort into that cup. There were a lot of people involved.

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Frankly my dear…. It’s just good coffee…

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I received Sumatra Mandheling from Frankly Good Coffee the other day, you can find them here on Facebook. Frankly Good Coffee is a small batch coffee roaster that does his roasting at a farmer’s market near where they live. They have a I have had coffee delivered to my workplace before. This time I was actually informed that if I did not get down there immediately they were going to go get a grinder and make it all themselves as of now. Well, at work we have those volume Bunn machines. I cannot have that happening to good coffee; that would have been catastrophic!

Topographic map of Sumatra. Created with GMT f...

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The coffee was packaged inside of a bag within a bag within a bag. I think it did a great job of keeping things from getting into the coffee, which is always a concern. However a box would have given more piece of mind I think as someone could have dropped it, stepped on it, cut it open, a number of things come to mind. I don’t know what the cost difference would be, but, if it were a problem yet, I imagine that Glenn (the head roaster) would have changed it by now.

Well time to try some coffee. I only really brew with the Clever Dripper anymore. With the clever you need to measure out your water and coffee (by weight please (thanks Alton Brown!)). This allows me to exert extreme control over the brew. This highlights one of the great things about coffee. You can alter things minimally and experience different characteristics to one single coffee. It is like having several drinks at once. If only I had an espresso machine I could super tweak things.

English: A pile of medium roasted Arabica coff...

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Well let’s pile right into it shall we? The roast was very even and the beans had a very universal coloring. There should not be much variance then in the bean flavor from roasting, good. I used a medium grind setting. On my poor little overworked Mr coffee this produced some chunks slightly larger than others. Not the most even of grinding but what am I going to do right? ( I know buy a better grinder, its on the list!) The bloom was really impressive. It really did do a total muffin top. Very active.

I was definitely getting serious spice notes with a greater water to coffee ratio. The chocolate hints are subtle. This is a really good coffee. At first I used a 350:35 w:c ratio (in grams). This produced what I call a brute force coffee. Very strong, robust, good and earthy. There was a hint of spice and chocolate, maybe it was more caramel but that might just be my taste buds. With the 350:30 w:c ratio the earthiness let up a good bit but the spicy notes kicked it up a notch in prevalence. The chocolates however seemed to disappeared.

After four cups of this coffee, I have to say I like it. I would recommend it. Check them out at their fanpage. Frankly, its good coffee…

 

 

I received Sumatra Mandheling from Frankly Good Coffee for purposes of sampling it. I was given this coffee free of charge with the understanding that all opinions would be honest and forthright.

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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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Full City, Cinnamon Roast, City, Vienna Roast, Spanish Roast, what?

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I would like to clarify what a roast means to you when you hear the description. When I go to a coffee roaster I hear light, medium and dark. When I have been to non-roasters I hear the more fanciful terms of Italian Roast, Viennese Roast and what not. I want you to know what that means. There is no reason not to be able to request the right roast of coffee for your tastes.

There are plenty of descriptors out there for how your coffee is roasted. Many of these are regional and your use of them is important to determine the characteristics of the coffee you want to drink (not to mention the caffeine levels). A few things you should know, there are many methods for determining the degree of a roast. Color, temperature, time on roasting device and sound. Yep sound. When coffee beans are roasted, they start to crack. The coffee bean is a seed, as it heats up, there are tons of chemical changes going on inside the bean that is altering the structure. The bean expands and at certain points the casing of the bean just cannot take it anymore and cracks. Caffeine content decreases as the roast progresses. So your lighter roasts will have more caffeine. Flavor profiles will also change. A more full bodied flavor is achieved with darker roasts. Too dark and you are left with charcoal. So on to descriptors we go.

The light roast is also called the city roast, cinnamon roast, there are a host of descriptors here that will further break down into + categories. Some of these you will see as City + to describe a slightly darker variant of a lightly roasted coffee. Light roast coffees will traditionally have the highest caffeine contents. So if you are seeking that buzz you need a light roast. What does this tell you? You have to go to a real coffee joint to get a light

 

Afrikaans: Geroosterde pitte van die koffiepla...

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roasted coffee to drink. Something that can grind per cup for you. Most all coffee joints I have ever seen have only a medium and dark roast available for immediate drinking. Heck most won’t even have a light roast available. Usually this roast is considered done at first crack or shortly there after in the roast process. They will still have some silver skin (or chaff) on them. Light roasted beans will be about 426°F and this usually takes 10 minutes or so on a drum roaster.

A medium roast, this is also called a full city roast (with the + iterations), New England roast, American Roast, again a plethora of descriptors. These roasts are a little more full bodied in taste, a little less caffeine content and so much more common. Pretty much any

Roasted coffee beans.

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roast shop should have a selection of medium roasts on hand. These beans have been on the roaster for maybe 11 minutes and have a temperature of 454°F. Once sitting for a few minutes some oils will work out to the surface of the coffee giving it a satin looking finish. Right as the second crack starts a medium roast has been achieved.

Your dark roast coffees are also known most famously as French Roast, also as Viennese or Continental Roast, New Orleans Roast and Espresso Roasts. It’s all in the degrees (get it, heat joke there). Espresso roasts are on the high end of a dark roast. The subtle nature of roasting coffee really comes into play here. When we get to a dark roast you can go from a full bodied rich warm (flavor not temp) tasting coffee to ash and carbon in seconds. Tom at Sweet Maria’s notes that when you get to a dark roast, roasting

Dark roasted coffee beans

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characteristics can over take origin characteristics in flavor. Be careful! The temperature range of dark roasts is anywhere from 444°F on up to 474°F or so. It would really take some skill to manage the temperature at this level. From low dark to dead I think was 30 seconds or less. This is an exacting activity and not for the faint of heart!

So as I stated in my post titled “If you would not order dinner burnt, why burn your coffee?” be aware of your taste preferences. Know what you want to taste. If you want to taste that bean you just paid 14 or 15 dollars for a pound of, get it in a medium roast. Taste that country, the hill side, the forest it came from. Not the carbon it got turned into. Dark roasts are alright, but you have to watch it carefully or the flavor will get away from you, permanently.

 

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Fresh Roasted Goodness

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Went to the Augusta River Market again this last weekend. It was beautiful weather for it too. Met with Buona and picked up a bag of Nicaraguan Matagalpa Selva Negra Estate. This is one long name for good coffee. It is a medium roast so I was definitely looking forward to it. A medium roast will let more of the bean flavor profile come out. That was September 10th. The roast date on this coffee is September 9th. This is important! Freshness matters.

Pat from Buona was talking to a couple of ladies that came up and told them “Coffee is an agricultural product, like any agricultural product freshness matters”. That is a great way to put it that people can understand. She even busted out the freshness of coffee from grocery store shelves, six to nine months! Not good.

After Pat was done speaking to them I chimed in with how quality coffee can give off many different flavors and that they did not need to put in sugar and creamer if they paid more attention to the coffee they were drinking. This is so important. The vast majority of people just don’t pay attention to the taste of coffee because they order their machiattos or mocha chinos or whatever. This isn’t necessary for good tastes!

Flavor is waiting for you in a cup of good coffee. Explore the floral notes, or chocolaty hints or earthy goodness that can be found in coffee. All you have to do is visit your local roaster and you can find these tastes waiting for you.

Time-line: Next day

A photo of a cup of coffee.

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Ok so I had some of the Nicaraguan with breakfast. It is a light coffee, not too heavy, earthy taste. But what is an earthy taste? An earthy taste as best I can describe it is low in the mouth. Maybe it reminds me of how wet earth smells? A slightly musty flavor. This is not unpleasant I might add. Perhaps some hint of a wine flavor but if so it was faint. There were not any other flavor hints I could find there. It is however a really good cup of coffee. I will be enjoying this quite a bit.

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