Sunday, August 31, 2008.

Roasted more Guatemala, Mexico, and Espresso today, as well as samples of gerbicho leila and Danau Toba.

We are attracting more and more exceptional staff, so that is an incredible bonus to using good equipment and taking coffee seriously.

I'll introduce staff as we go here, but I want to get their permission before putting photos along with personal info up on a blog, as it were.

Results from Espresso Blend Numero Uno-

Our first attempt at a house espresso blend involved Brazil Yellow Bourbon Natural Process from Fazenda Cachoeira, Guatemala FTO from Maya Ixil, and El Salvador Jocotillo.
Surprise, surprise, the El Salvador, although only 15-20% of the blend, was the star, lending a buttery body and caramel aftertaste that defines this particular experiment. I also am going to roast vertical batches of our next experimental blend, with no pre-roast resting to equalize moistures (roasted today) one tomorrow- 24 hours pre-roast blend time- and another on Tuesday- 48 hours.

The idea:
Is there an obvious taste in performance between blends which are allowed to rest before roasting?
The common knowledge says:
DON'T roast blends at all.
IF you have to:
LET THEM SIT-
for at least 24 hours.
Since we are the kind of shop that likes to throw conventional wisdom on its head, all in the name of personal growth and the ultimate experience in coffee, we started from scratch.
We had a relationship with one of the best roasters in the country.
We kept that.
We're moving forward.

The New Blend- which I am tentatively calling

Espresso in the fields of the Lord.

Brazil Yellow Bourbon,
Mexico Nayarita
Guatemala Maya Ixil
and-
Sumatra Danau Toba.

This one is a real kick in the pants. Our last batch of Toba was really lovely. Grind a cup and you could smell it across the street. Killer sweetness, with roasted vegetables aftertaste and flirts of citrus.

Flirts of citrus? I must be tired.
Sounds like a great band name though.
LIVE!
at the hot box- Saturday night- all ages!

fLiRTs of CiTRUs!
and following-
Mason Jennings.
..
So...

I am also wrapping up a set of instructional videos tonight for Terra Keramik. You should be able to view them on terrakeramik.com sometime next week.

Basic video on Espresso and tamping.
Basic Latte Art.

I really like the format of these, and will continue to make them for staff.


so.

Here is a close-up of some pasta I took for Al from Gindmaster. He's participating in an online forum for pasta lovers. :)

Friday Morning

Busy busy.

Things are picking up.

We've updated our website with a new online shopping cart. You can order our coffees- with detailed roasting information, across the world wide interweb.
Fancy schmancy.

Also, I'm editing a video today of basic tamping, and basic latte art, comissioned by Terrakeramik.com

Makers of the fabulous, wonderul, amazing, platinum rimmed espresso demitasse we sell here in the shop. Also, these are the cups top baristas are using for competition. When you need a cup that is fit for the presidential espresso bar, this is it.

Also - TOMORROW- we will be hosting a campaign event for John McCain. Called "Coffee with Coffee" a veteran who was in the P.O.W. camp with the senator will be discussing politics and things Republican. We urge you to come and participate, whatever your particular point of view.

As for me- I am supporting:

I believe Synesso would make a great candidate. Synesso is consistent, time and time again. Synesso stands for dramatic, consistent, intelligent performance.

Clover would do an excellent job running Congress. And with its political connections in the corporate world, Clover would be well positioned to brew up change.

Some new things:

The website ordering section has more distinct information about roast details- for specific coffees. That profile I posted above tasted good but was flat. I have since modified that coffee to be far less linear- and am paying much more attention to ambient drop temperatures as relating to batch size. I like to think things through in terms of the clothes dryer analogy. Imagine a dryer pre-heated so hot that all your towels burn. This is essentially what can happen when small batches enter a hot drum-

But, if you aim too low, you end up sample roasting a coffee for 17 minutes- ending up with a dryed out boringness that tastes vaguely of yogurt.

In any case, we cup every batch before we put them on bar- so you can be sure nothing that is sub-par will leave the facility.

On a related note- I have PLENTY of sub-par coffee available for compost!
You'll find it near our herb-planters out back...

Sunday, SUNDAY, sunday.

So, another open to close day. 14 hours of... coffeeeeeee!

On the upside, I did quite a bit more about profiles and standards today.
Some notes shared with me in contrast to our initial profiles, and Diedrich's recommendations.

Drop temperature calibrated by density, and batch size, so that the roast not only bottoms out somewhere between 160-180, but that lower grown coffees are given a slightly gentler entry into the pre-first crack slingshot- so to speak.

9 minutes from bottom out is a good general target for first crack.
4 minutes from rolling first crack is a great target for all of the appropriate chemistry that is to take place- as the roast evens out, so to speak.

Here's an updated profile from today. I was so discouraged by yesterday's profiles and results being just blah that I dumped all of the previous coffee- and started over. Even though the coffee was drinkable, and perhaps some of our customers might not have known the difference, I believe it is this very fact that separates good from excellent. The coffee is either exciting or it isn't. I know the beans cup well. I know the sample roasts have huge potential.

Speaking of potential, let me say goodbye once again to our Audrey Tatou lookalike- along with a photo or two from last night's farewell bash.







































And now another profile, one I felt had much better results. - Actually I'll post more soon, I'm exhausted, time to feed the cats and sleep.

Weekend Roasting

Bluegrass Saturday mornings are just one reminder why I love my job. Alternate Route- bluegrass band, have been playing Saturday mornings.

One of their members, RIP has since passed from the same cancer which took my brother in January. Needless to say they hold special meaning for us.


Jerry calls to let me know when they can or can't come. The 5 or 6 members are in something like 11 bands total, and they're busy. So we started putting out our sign to read "60% CHANCE OF BLUEGRASS."
Love it.
Limited edition T-shirts to follow.



So today, cupped 5 days worth of roasts on 4 coffees- and learned quite a bit.
It was eye opening to see that quick changes in temperature, even when offset by airflow so that the ambient temperature followed a gentle curve- can scorch the beans at any stage of the roast.
Especially the Brazil. Two scorched lots out of four test batches.
ugh.
Dumped those.
On the other hand, the roasts yesterday where I was most distracted and didn't tweak the burner but once or twice during each phase turned out the best.
Also the upper limit for the Tawar is 411 degrees- unless I start backing off the heat at least 90 seconds before first crack, which was borderline baked on the sample roast from 8.21. Steady gentle finish through first crack to 409 preserved the acid and sweetness while developing the mid-notes and diminishing that grassy note which exists below 405.

Did some tweaking to the profiles before starting today, with greatly improved results.

So - the coffees are revealing themselves, seems to take us about 8-10 roasts to really develop a solid profile. We'll continue to tweak of course as we cup daily, but we're at least fulfilling the promise of sample roasts- and production roasts from other roasters.

The El Salvador especially. Brought down the finish temperature a bit- well before second crack, but finishing three minutes after first crack at 418.

Here's a sample profile for the Guatemala Ixil 8.23 and some notes.
3.5 # batch.
Drop temp 392
initial gentle blowout to clear chaff/dust.
Minutes Temp Ambient Temp Burner
:
0:30 235.1
1 189 523 30%
1:30 188 530 31%
2 201.4 545 31%
2:30 233.0 542 (thermometry has caught up)
3:00 242
3:30 251.3
4:00 260.5
4:30 270.2 536 35%
5:00 278.9
5:30 288 538 42%
6:00 296
6:30 302 543 (Roast is Yellow- Color change most intense)
7:00 308.5 55%
7:30 314.6
8:00 319.7 61%
8:30 325.8 63%
9:00 331.9 560
9:30 338 567 65%
10:00 344 571 68%
10:30 351 575 many trowel samples..
11:00 364 581 ramping down... watching
11:30 371.6 50%
12:00 378 576
12:30 386 572 47%
13:00 1st Crack at 13:25 45%
13:30 565 finish up a bit... samples
14:00 399
14:30
15:00 406 sampling furiously.
15:30 smells changing.
15:55 409.6 beautiful.

Dump - 1:30 agitate. Stop motor, spread out. Coffee cools much faster when agitator arm is stopped- the airflow can find a pathway through the irregular bean shapes.
Pick and irregular beans/underripes- I usually do this for at least 5-10 minutes per batch while the auto-temp prepares for the next batch, drum cools a bit, stabilizes. I'll let this batch cool for at least 5-10 more minutes, dump, poke out any broken or smallish beans from the agitator tray.

This roast produced (cupping right out of the tray here.) A bright acidity with mild aroma (always a bit muted until the coffee has rested for at least 6-10 hours.) - bright citrus, some ripe red coffee cherry sweetness and wonderfully clean aftertaste. It was also a little bit effervescent, almost carbonated. I think perhaps this is a degassing thing. Carbolic acid? Someone with more chemistry can explain this to me.
I am fortunate to be able to work with great coffee.

Also, one of our neighbors, it turns, also grows Coffee in Hawaii. Small farm, maybe a hundred or so trees, she said, only a few years old. We discussed Will and Grace farms, what little I knew of their processing experiments. Gave her their information. She was also interested in a small roaster so I sent her straight to Diedrich. She was sold and said she would order one Monday.
We spent a while discussing the state of business in small towns, and the attitude of youth- people who feel entitled, feel like they can leave without notice or miss appointments or can't seem to manage their money.
I felt about eighty years old having this conversation, also apologetic, because until recently I didn't understand what it means to put roots down, build something from scratch. I might have been one of those kids who can just walk away from a job and who gives a flying care about anyone or anything but what's best for me right now...
But times are tough, and they are forcing people to really boil life down to the essentials. You can't take a bus two hours to work for a below living wage when you have no place to live and you really want to build a career in art or music someplace else.
Small towns are tough. Gas prices are tough. Food costs are tough.
And yet here we are, tasting, refining, pretending like the quality is all that matters, because, after all,
it is.

Roaster is up!

Its here, its installed.

Thundercats are GO!


So when you install a new roaster, you have to run many batches of Arabica coffee through it to "season" the drum.

This process essentially over-roasts the coffee to coat the drum with coffee oil. The rich scent of burning coffee fills the surrounding blocks. It only lasted an hour, but I thought, what worse way to introduce any given -new coffee roaster- than by filling the neighborhood with quite probably the worst smells it will ever produce?
Hmm.

Anyhow.

Roasting is in progress!

So far we're keeping track of:
Coffee
Harvest, origin information, etc. Cupping notes from Cafe Imports, cupping notes each time we roast that coffee.
Coffee Density- measured against a standard acrylic box 5 cm x 5 cm x 5 cm.
The weight is taken of the amount of coffee which will fit into this box- and a relative density is achieved.
Moisture content
All profiles tested for any given coffee.

Eric Faust and Luke Mills have been participating/apprenticing as we all learn together.
We conduct experiments with each coffee to find the natural absorption curve of each coffee roasted with very steady burner settings, then try to approximate a standard s curve, then lastly we modify that curve a series of times to find the ideal finish time past first crack and drop temperature.

The results so far:
Start with great coffee- and the window for very high quality is very high.
Roast crap samples, you get crap.
It is possible to mute some of the crap with good roasting, but not all. Defective beans do not roast evenly.
Brazil: Such a wonderful coffee to roast. Natural processed coffees produce more chaff, of course.
Mexico Nayarita: Aromatic, acidic, mild. Beans are compact and rounded- first crack is a bit more spread out.

El Salvador: Another mild coffee- well balanced, which I can appreciate more and more after serving such extraordinarily bold and single-minded coffees for two years. Please understand I hold great respect for Paradise Roasters.
It was me, as a new cafe owner- that tried to find the boldest, sweetest, the 'est' coffees available.
Americans cup this way, I am told. Looking for superstars, instead of nuance.
the El Salvador is like passing a bowl of freshly roasted/toasted cashews. Aromatic, redolent with raspberry.
Hawaii: A wonderful coffee, the green is aromatic and floral, and unbelievably pristine compared to any other coffee I have seen. Delicately roasted, gingered through first crack and taken up bit by bit until it gives off sugary floral notes.
Sumatra Tawar: Superstar- just through first crack and a bit past with a gentle drop and a ramp up to first crack.
Sumatra Danau Toba: Superstar cousin, gentler, sweeter, more nuanced. Less vegetable-like.