Kenya auction Lot #643 - Mutitu

It has been a few weeks since my last update. Thanksgiving vacation intervened, plus I was fighting germs on and off for a while, and lastly I just didn't feel like writing. Such is life.

This coffee was hidden in the back of my coffee cabinet. My wife was doing some organizing (surprise, surprise for those who know her), and ended up moving some stuff around, uncovering a pound of these beans. No comments were made about the sheer volume of coffee I have, which attests to her awesomeness.

I haven't had a Kenya coffee for a while, so it was time to go for some tooth-peeling acidity and some otherworldly aromas. I roasted this lightly:

Unfortunately I forgot to write down when I ended the roast, but I am pretty sure it was 16 minutes or less.

Some Kenyas hide their powerful acidity, but not so with this Nyeri-region coffee. It is intense stuff. The aroma is all peaches in syrup. I could sniff this stuff all day. There is a thick body, and very strong and refreshing acidity. This roast was perfect, but beware of under-roasting this one or it is going to be puckeringly sour. The peaches carry into the taste, with some spice notes added. This is a coffee you could drink a lot of and not get tired. Very nice.

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Note added to Sumatra "Harimau Tiger"

Brazil Jacu Bird Coffee

I'd really like to know who first thought of the idea of using the coffee beans that animals ingested and then pooped out. The guy (I am pretty sure it must have been a guy) is either an idiot or a genius. Actually, likely the latter given what these coffees go for. You may be familiar with kopi luwak (easily googleable, if that is a word), the product of an Indonesian rodent with a taste for coffee cherries. This stuff goes for >$100 per pound in places. The theory is that the animal only eats the ripest coffee cherry, thereby "sorting" the best from the worst. In reality, however, the rodent eats low-grade robusta beans similar to what you get in a can of Folgers, so hang onto your wallet.

Last year a different product began to emerge, this time from Brazil. The coffee consumer is the Jacu bird, a cute creature that lives on coffee farms in Brazil:

In principle, this avian aficionado eats high quality arabica beans from the same farms that already produce great coffee. It is still pricey, ~$17 per pound, but it is being offered by some purveyors who I trust for quality, so I decided to try a pound out.

This being a Brazilian coffee, I decided to take it into second crack a bit:

It looks and roasts like any other dry processed coffee. And the cup? Let me tell you - this coffee got more rave reviews than any other coffee I bring into work, and this is without telling them what it was. My wife, also slipped a cup without telling her, also waxed philosophic about it. Of course, then I did the "you drank poopy coffee" dance around the kitchen in true infantile fashion....

It is a sweet, sweet cup with intense maple syrup tastes. Smooth and delicious, and no trace of the, er, unusual processing. I am looking forward to some espresso extractions with it as well.

Kona Kowali Estate, Second Roast

I have been sick for the past week and a half or so, hence the lack of updates. I don't much care for coffee when I am fighting a cold, so I generally either don't drink it at all, or otherwise I roast something nondescript since I can't taste it anyway.

Besides being ill, work has been more awful than usual lately, so I decided to roast up something special this week to make me feel better. I had a half pound of this Kona coffee left over, so I gave it a whirl. If you remember, I talked about this one before. At that time, I wasn't thrilled with it at a lighter roast. This time around I took it darker, to a Full City roast. Poking around, it seems like general consensus for island coffee is that it works better at this roast level, or perhaps even a tad into second crack.

Here is the profile:


What a difference more roast makes for this bean! There is an intense maltiness that I love; if you enjoy chocolate malts made with high quality ice cream and real malted milk powder, you will have a good idea of what is going on in the cup. It is incredibly rich and complex; a very satisfying cup. Of course, it is still way overpriced for what you get, but I am glad that I at least found a better roast to accentuate this coffee's character.

Yemen Mokha Ismaili

This week we have something perfect for cooler fall weather. This is one of the best Yemeni coffees I have tried, and is unfortunately the last of it in my stash. This stuff is a bit of a pain to roast. The seeds are really tiny - easily 2X smaller than most coffees. The heat transfer to the beans is different, and there are no audible cues like you have for most coffees. It really is roasting "by the seat of your pants", with highly variable results. I'd like to be able to tell you the specifics of the roast level here, but honestly I have no clue. All I know that it is darn good coffee. Here is the profile:



This is a deep, syrupy coffee with incredible spice-bazaar aromas. I can't put my finger on specific tastes, though you can look through the review below to get some idea. It is a very complex coffee that is hard to pick out individual notes. Just relax and enjoy a fairly unusual and seriously rich cup o' joe.

Panama Esmerelda Gesha, 2007 Vintage

I decided to go upscale for my Halloween roasting session. In 2008, I purchased two kinds of Panama Esmerelda; the Lot #5, previously discussed, and the more expensive Lot#10. I was originally planning to roast Lot#10, but I decided to try my chops on the last of my Esmerelda stash from 2007 first. This stuff is ferociously expensive, so I wanted to make sure I didn't dork it up.

The roast was more or less what I have been using lately:



I was shooting for a City+ roast (roughly half way between first and second crack), but this came out considerably lighter than I was expecting. Grinding the beans I was somewhat taken aback on how light it was. As an aside, it is hard to tell much of anything from whole bean color after roasting, you really need to look at the color of the ground stuff.

It is a testament to the quality of the beans that even at this light a roast, there was no sourness. There is the usual Gesha panoply of aromas - over the top floral characteristics - and typical juicy notes to the coffee. However, I missed the caramel notes that fit everything together. Another minute of heat would have been perfect in retrospect. Looking back through my notes of Gesha roasting over the years, I see that they tend to take a bit more roast than other coffees to hit the right flavor balance. Surely nothing near second crack, but a bit of time spent after first. This was certainly an enjoyable cup, but nothing to write home about. Given the price point, it is unfortunate. At least I am prepared for roasting Lot #10.

Ethiopia Korate Wet Process

I have posted on this coffee before. At the time, I wasn't happy with the roast. This time around I decided to keep it very light. As you'll see in the profile this time around, the overall roast time was several minutes shorter than the last time I roasted it. It had a huge effect.



This roast came out awesome. Super flowery aromas, great acidity and sweetness. Extremely clean cup with tons of complexity. I am usually pretty good about identifying individual flavors, but this one is hard to explain. It is a coffee to linger over and explore as the cup cools. Just delicious.

This is definitely a difficult coffee to get right. It needs a very light roast or it comes across as dull-tasting. There is a narrow needle to thread, but if you nail it, it is well worth it.

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Addendum 1/23/09

I roasted this coffee again, and had the best results to date. This time around, I used a slightly different profile, lingering at a lower intermediate temperature. It was perfect - all candy - Lemonheads, Jolly Ranchers, etc. Sweet, acidy, not a trace of graininess/grassiness. Just a great cup.

Sumatra Mandheling DP "Harimau Tiger"

I am not generally a huge fan of low-acid Indonesian coffees, though they are a nice change of pace. I was running low on my (already limited) stock of Sumatra, so I decided to pick some of this coffee up. A lot of people like Sumatra, and I give a lot of coffee away, so I decided to be a good citizen.

Sumatras can be somewhat on the softer side, and the altitude they are grown at can be lower than many other origins, so I was gentle with the profile. The mid temperature was 440 degrees, about 10 degrees lower than I would have it for, say, an Ethiopia or Central American bean.



This roast drove me batty. For a while I was convinced that my roaster wasn't working correctly. There was no sound whatsoever at first crack, and little to no chaff released. This is very odd for a dry-processed coffee, which tend to shed a lot of chaff. Combine that with the fact that this coffee colors very slowly, and it was a bit of a guessing game to complete the roast. In the end I had to rely entirely on my nose.

Colors can really trick you when roasting. For instance, Sumatras stay quite light through most of the roast, even into second crack. If you rely on this as an indicator, you are toast. On the other end of the spectrum are Kenyan coffees, which are darker than normal for the degree of roast. You really need to use all your senses when you are roasting.

Anyway, despite the tricky roast, this turned out to be a really good coffee. My notes read:

Aroma: Maple syrup, cedar wood, sweet sandalwood
Taste: Very clean for a Sumatra. Foresty, sweet, surprising amount of snap, sorghum, woody

This coffee addresses a lot of what I dislike in Sumatra coffee. There is no wet bogginess, not too much funk. It has a surprising amount of acidity, and is very sweet. If you want a cleaned up Indonesian cup, this one's for you.

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Addendum 12/9/08

I roasted more of this for a friend, and took it into second crack. Somewhat surprisingly, I was not happy with it. There was no character except burnt wood. This particular bean seems happiest at Full City, perhaps consistent with its "cleaned up" Indonesian character.

Kenya Gethumbwini Peaberry

I have talked about this coffee before. This particular batch is from a different crop, the so-called "fly crop". Don't ask me why it is called that, but it is essentially a smaller, later crop than the main one.

This profile was a bit different than last time. I took it slow this time around:


I am not sure whether it is this new crop or the profile, but the coffee isn't as exciting this time around. If I had to guess, it is the coffee itself since I have used this profile before with the same coffee.

This is a bit tricky to roast. The seeds are tiny little ball bearings, and there is nary a crack to be heard. You have to work from sight and smell to detect first crack, and there is a bit of guesswork involved. The aromas while roasting are second to none, though.

The tastes are as before - strong acidity, blackberry, and an herbal quality. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't bad coffee by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn't jump out of the cup the same way it had before. I have some more of this, so I'll be interested to roast it again and see what happens.

SO espresso and a tutorial

Sometimes I forget to mention how certain coffees fare under pressure. I have been playing around a lot with single-origin (SO) espresso lately, using some of the same coffees I have talked about here. Espresso is a tricky business; the pressure extraction can really accentuate some unpleasant notes in coffee, especially acidity. This is the reason espresso roasts are often darker and/or blended. Still, there can be great pleasure in playing with one individual bean.

The real standout lately has been the Uganda Bugisu. Roasted to Full City or a bit more, this is decent as espresso. In milk, however, it is absolutely transformed. It cuts through the milk with a dynamite earthy/chocolately taste. The cappuccinos with it have been some of the best I have made.

Also, the Rwanda Gkongoro, which was merely mediocre as drip coffee, excelled as espresso as well. Some of the gamey African notes come alive, and there is enough acidity to keep things interesting.

Lastly, I have been drinking a Full City roast of Ethiopia Biloya as espresso and cappuccino's lately. This makes a nice fruity espresso, but in milk it turns very interesting. I get a liquory quality to it, with strong cinnamon notes, almost like a cinnamon schnapps. Weird, but good.

On a separate note, I recently put together a pictorial of the roasting and brewing process on Badger and Blade. You can find it here. Enjoy!

Rwanda Gkongoro Nyarusiza

Rwanda is a new origin for me. This is the first coffee I have tried from this country, and I was interested to see what it is like. It is fascinating how different areas produce such different coffees. Circle 'round Lake Victoria, and let's see what we have:



Kenya is the home of super-high-toned, winey and acidic coffees, Tanzania is similar, but more toned down. Uganda is more like an Indonesian coffee, low acid and brooding. What will Rwanda be?

Boring.

Roasted to Full City, this is a nice, bittersweet, simple cup. Pleasant enough, but nothing to really stand out in my opinion. There is a very faint blackberry note in there, but overall it got some yawns in my house. Perhaps one could generously call it "balanced".....

Oh, and here is the profile:

Mexico La Joya Chiapas 100% Bourbon

This is a coffee I roasted for my wife's PTA meeting later this week. I try and keep around a stock of coffee that tastes like, well... coffee. I figure not everyone wants their coffee to taste like fruit, wine, etc. I picked up a few pounds of this last year, and I really need to start using it up.

I have roasted this coffee a lot in the past, and like most bourbon varietal coffees, it takes color beautifully. However, the lighter roasts I have done with it haven't been appealing, being sour and characterless for the most part. Interestingly, a few months ago I gave away some of this, roasted into second crack, for a friend to use as espresso. Unfortunately I didn't taste it before I gave it away, because it got rave reviews. Apparently some nice orange tastes came into play.

This time around I decided to take it to a Full City roast:


I think I am getting to the point where I can tell a Chiapas coffee from its aroma. There is crumbled earth and a mild fruitiness that blends in perfectly. It reminds me of the soil of Mexico, fertile and rich. The taste is traditional coffee; nothing too unusual. There is that gentle fruitiness; nothing too intense, but something keep your interest as you finish the cup. The roast notes were perfectly blended as well, with some bittersweet notes going on. Overall a nice coffee; nothing to make me want to buy more, but a real crowd pleaser.

Kenya AA Lot#758 Hiriga

I haven't roasted any coffees from Kenya lately, so it was time to dig deep in the stash. This coffee is from the Nyeri region of Kenya, home to some deeply-fruited and intense coffees. I strayed from the profile I have been using lately, adding a couple of minutes of higher temperature before first crack, and then lowering to finish the roast:

With Kenyas, I really like to have a vacuum pot within 12 hours or so of roasting, unlike many other coffees that benefit from rest. The aromas are second to none early after the roast, and I hate to miss that. This coffee didn't disappoint in that respect, with deep cardamom scents. That first cup was effervescent and acidy without being sour. There is deep black currant and other fruit notes, and the body is pure silk.

Interestingly, drinking the same coffee a couple of days later in the Technivorm brewer, it is tasting kind of dull. I am not sure if this is due to the modified roast profile, or perhaps the natural evolution of the coffee after roasting. I'll continue to enjoy it throughout the week and see where it goes.

Costa Rica El Puente "Caturra Miel"

"Miel" means honey in Spanish, and also refers to a coffee preparation method. Also sometimes called "pulp natural", or "semi-washed", it refers to removing the skin of the ripe coffee cherry and then leaving the fruity mucilage layer in contact with the seeds for some time before eventually removing everything down to the bare seed. These coffees have some additional sweetness, lowered acidity, and some fruity character compared to a fully washed coffees. It is not as intense as a fully dry-processed coffee, but somewhere in between.

I have had a few miel coffees from Central America that I have liked very much, which is why I purchased this coffee. Unfortunately, this one got somewhat mixed reviews.

First of all the profile:


Interestingly, I had less volume of finished coffee than I usually have. I am not sure if that is due to the coffee variety or something I did.

Tasting this coffee in a vacuum pot the day after roasting, I found it on the weird side. There was tannic nut skins and soy sauce going on. Medium bodied and sweet, with Brazil nuts and a strong lemondade brightness. It was somewhat disjointed, and that salty soy character really bothered me.

Later in the week after roasting, it came together better. There was less soy and more integrated chocolate and nut tones, with lower acidity and a strong sweetness. I definitely enjoyed it more than that first cup, but this is not a coffee I would buy more of. It might be interesting roasted darker and used for espresso extraction.

Tanzania NgoroNgoro Convent

As I have said before, I am a huge fan of Tanzanian coffees. Unfortunately there is so much generic "Tanzania Peaberry" out there which is pure dreck, people aren't aware of the really unique microlots of quality coffee from Tanzania. This coffee is from last year, and was one of my favorites. Unfortunately this was my last half pound of it, though I have some other interesting beans from this origin hanging around.

Interestingly, this coffee farm is managed by nuns. It is also from an incredible high alitude - better than 1800m - which leads to some serious density in the coffee seeds. Coffee trees at these altitudes mature extremely slowly, which is one of the reasons the coffee is so complex. Compare a high altitude coffee like this to a low-grown Brazil or Island variety and there is no comparison.

This was roasted quite lightly to emphasize the varietal notes. The aroma is intense pear and caramel. The fruity notes continue in the cup, with a nice brightness and chewy mouthfeel. Lurking in the back of all this is a hidey note, what cuppers generously call "rustic", which lets you know this is an African coffee. All in all, this coffee has everything going for it. I hope the nuns produce more this year

Profile:

Ghetto Lattes and Moral Codes

The term "Ghetto Latte" has entered common use in the US. I am not a huge fan of the term itself, but it does raise some interesting questions that get bandied about at work.

For those who aren't familiar with the term, it describes an action wherein someone orders an espresso in a large cup, then adds milk from the free mixers area at the cafe, thereby circumventing the more expensive order of a latte or cappucino.

I work with some highly educated, highly paid individuals, and it is fascinating to get people's opinions on whether this behavior is right or wrong. Personally, I think it more or less amounts to fraud or theft. After all, if you want a latte, you should order it instead of essentially stealing the milk.

Needless to say, these moral questions can be used as a springboard for lots of amusing lunchtime conversation. I have appended a few of them that have been actively discussed, along with my personal views. If you have any opinions on the matter, speak out!

(Q) If upon ordering a Cafe Americano, Starbucks asks "Would you like room for milk?" - is it still immoral to turn this into a ghetto latte?
(A) An Americano can be considered equivalent to a standard cup of coffee. You are free to add a splash of milk to your taste. I would say up to 10-15% of total volume. The "Ghetto Latte" term is reserved for those ruffians who order an espresso in a large cup such that they can rob the poor store owner of milk.


(Q) If one purchases tea, what ratio of milk to tea is considered allowable under the Scotto Moral Code?
(A) I would treat tea as above - up to 10-15% of total volume.


(Q) Isn't the business owner figuring the Ghetto Latte as part of their standard losses in their business plan?
(A) Perhaps, but theft is theft


(Q) Let's say that you have a young child. You enter a cafe where milk is clearly on the menu, but you have a bottle with you. Is it ok not to purchase milk?
(A) Presumably you are in the cafe to purchase something yourself, not to take up their space for free. On this one, I would say it is ok to use the bottle.


(Q) Let's say you have multiple children. Is it ok to purchase one drink for them to share? Or must each individual purchase their own drink?
(A) Sharing is one of the things that separates us from lower forms of life. Go ahead.

I'll add more as these difficult moral questions arise.

Costa Rica CoE#20 El Patio

This roast was for pride.

Costa Rica El Patio was one of my favorite coffees from last year. I had bought 5 pounds of it last summer, and I was delighted with its delicate character. During the course of my September of Experiments Gone Awry, I had roasted some of this coffee and was appalled at how lousy it was. It was time to re-roast this again at my old profile to ensure I had my mojo back.

The profile:


Drinking it a couple of days later, I thought "this is the El Patio I know and love". It is a very changeable coffee as the cup cools. Tasted within a day or two of roasting, it is deep milk chocolate malt. It reminds me of a Nestle Crunch candy bar. Later it turns jammy and sweet, with apricot preserve notes. All this is quite delicate and lovely. Really a great cup.

It's good to be back.

El Salvador CoE#11 Santa Maria

Finally! After a September of barely passable coffee due to various experiments chronicled here, enough was enough. I decided to return to some tried and true roasting profiles to enjoy some excellent coffee. I am pleased to say things are back on track.

The first is this El Salvadorean coffee, the 11th place winner in this year's El Salvador Cup of Excellence program. You can read more about the farm and coffee here.

Here is the roast profile:


This is a very good coffee. In a way, it reminds me a bit of the Gesha varietal coffees in that there is an intense flowery aroma and a powerful sweetness to the cup. I get intense, clean red fruits in the taste; grapes, cherries, etc. Very lively acidity, as one would expect. This is a juicy and refreshing cup. The flavors were well developed with this roast profile.

I also re-roasted some Costa Rican coffee with this same profile, which I'll post on in a bit. After the detour around alternate roast profiles, it is good to be back on track.

Drats!

Well, after the latest round of roasting, I have to consider the latest set of experiments a failure. It is actually a great example of how it is important to understand your own particular parameters and not take what the experts say as gospel.

To recap, I have been playing around with dwell times at the start of the roast at a lower temperature than I previously had. The last couple of coffees have been ok, but something has been nagging at me. Sunday I roasted some Costa Rica El Patio, a coffee I have roasted many times before with this new profile. It follows more or less the Costa Rica Vino de Arabia profile from the last posting.

The El Patio is normally a delicate cup filled with milk chocolate tastes. It is one of my favorites. This time around, however, what I found was strong astringency that isn't integrated well with the other flavors. It is really glaring, and not a subtle thing at all. Checking the color of the ground coffee, it is not under-roasted - this is clearly an effect of the profile. In any case, I will be returning to my original roast profiles with shorter drying times and higher temperatures for the middle part of the roast from now on.

It definitely pays to experiment. The theory is still a good one to ponder. It is all about water; there are competing reactions that go on at different temperatures of the bean during the roasting process. The theory says that too much water left in the coffee after the drying stage will lead to the formation of bitter and astringent tastes, so it is important to dry thoroughly before reaching caramelization temperatures. I am going to ponder this some more, but in the meantime I need to roast some coffees with my older profiles so I can get back to the stellar brews I have become used to.

Costa Rica Vino de Arabia

I am still not sure that I am barking up the right tree on the latest set of experiments. I have roasted a few more coffees with similar profiles to the last (starting the roast out much slower); the results have been good, but something has been nagging at me.

Last Friday I roasted some Costa Rica Vino de Arabia. I followed a similar profile to the Tanzania Blackburn Estate, thoroughly drying the beans early, keeping the temperature low until the coffee turns yellow, and then ramping to the final temperature:



This coffee is layered, layered, layered. A very interesting beast. It has the typical Costa Rica chocolate, nuts, etc. At the same time there is a deep fruitiness, reminiscent of red wine and ripe plums, that comes in and out as the cup cools. Quite complex, but perhaps a bit too complex for my taste.

A few days out and I am getting a bit of sourness in this roast which is unexpected. Either I have been under-roasting a bit (I got something similar in a roast of Ethiopia Biloya I did a few days ago), or if this profile is flawed. My gut tells me something is up with this profile.

Interestingly, when I look back at my notes from the past several months, I am finding two basic profiles, both with roughly the same starting and ending points. The difference is the middle section of the roast at intermediate temperature. Origially, I was placing this closer to the finish temperature of the coffee, 440-450 degrees. The more recent profiles have dwelled at the 400 degree range. There is clearly a difference, and one that would benefit from some blind tasting.

Tanzania Blackburn Estate AA

After the poor results from the last couple of coffees, it was time to rethink things a bit. I am not ready to give up on the experimentation quite yet. Remember that the "conventional wisdom" was to dry the coffee thoroughly and get to a uniform yellow color before raising the temperature to caramelize the beans. I presume this strategy is easy to execute on a commercial roaster, but it is turning out to be a challenge on a consumer machine like the Gene Cafe I am using.

This time around, I decided to spend some time at a higher initial temperature, trying to account for the unknown differential between the bean temperature and the environmental temperature, then raise the temperature slightly to turn the beans yellow, and then ramping up to roasting temperature. To wit:



I waited for the coffee to turn yellow (2 minutes into the second stage) before cranking it up. This roast turned out very well. It is a very dynamic coffee; strong acidity, but no sourness. It is sweet caramel all the way, with some interesting syrupy notes (boysenberry?). As often is the case with Tanzanian coffees, there is a subtle hint of funk at the end, perhaps leather or burlap. Nothing to detract from the cup, but something to let you know its origin. Interestingly, I also got a strong green apple taste the first day or so, which faded as time went on. I really enjoyed this coffee, and will be experimenting with similar roasting profiles going forward.

Aged Sumatra Grade 1 Lintong

Life has intruded on blogging quite a bit lately. Not only has it prevented me from spending time on the computer typing things out, my coffee has suffered. I have been playing around with roasting profiles again, as I mentioned on the last post.

Very rarely do I produce coffee that is truly bad. Sure, I have had my mediocre roasts, mistakes, etc., but generally they are still better than the dreck I find at work, in a restaurant, etc. This time around, though, the results were truly bad.

I was playing around again with longer roast times and lower initial temperatures, like I did for the Nicaraguan coffee I last posted on. This time I pulled out some Aged Sumatra. I had roasted this one some months ago and really liked it. It reminded me of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum, if you have ever had that fine concoction. This time around, I dragged the profile out to a full 20 minute roast:



I hesitate even posting this profile; you should just go ahead and burn it. The coffee it produced was truly vile. Leathery and gross, but at the same time baked and lifeless. Yuck.

I consider these two last roast profile experiments a failure. I have done some more experiments trying to stay close to the spirit of the original recommendation of drying things out more early in the roast, which have been more successful. Stay tuned.
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If anyone wants the profile I used a while back for a good version of this coffee, send me an e-mail and I can dig it out of my notebook.

Nicaragua Esteli - Nueva Esperanza

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I was getting very good results with roasting profiles that were on the longer side, more than about 15 or 16 minutes. Now the conventional wisdom, such as it is, says that faster is better. Of course, "fast" can vary drastically depending on what sort of roaster you are using.

In addition, I have been reading a few things here and there about drying times. There are some interesting posts over in home-barista.com about the importance of thoroughly drying the coffee before entering into roasting temperatures. The specific recommendation was to keep the coffee temperature below 300 degrees Fahrenheit until it turns the yellow color of the initial Maillard reaction (caramelization).

Well, never one to back away from an experiment, I roasted two coffees last week with modified profiles. The first was a Nicaraguan coffee, an origin I haven't had very much coffee from. I immediately tried starting the profile with a longer soak at 300 degrees. The result was green coffee; this temperature on the Gene Cafe may be enough for drying things out, but isn't hot enough to produce any sort of lightening of the seed color in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, I had to eventually get the environment temperature up around 400 degrees before things really yellowed:



I am guessing that the glass cylinder of this roaster loses a lot of heat. The internal bean temperature is a lot lower than the environmental temperature. Interestingly, first crack on this coffee was very loud and very drawn out compared to what I am used to. I could hear cracks for a full 2 minutes or more. I wonder if this is due to the increased drying the coffee had.

With this roast taking almost 19 minutes for a City+ level, I had low expectations. The coffee was certainly quite good, but never having had this origin before, I can't really separate the roast effects from the coffee itself. This is quite a light coffee, with a very nutty and malty taste to it. The aftertaste is lingering, and again has that malt syrup aspect to it. There is also strong milk chocolate and a good waxy mouthfeel to it. A solid coffee, but nothing to really wow you. I am going to plan on roasting the same coffee using two profiles so I can really see if I can tell the difference next time.

Ethiopia Korate Wet Process

I was so excited to get this coffee, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I love wet processed coffees from Ethiopia. They are a great change of pace from the rustic dry processed coffees. Coffees from the Yrgacheffe area, etc. have a prickly acidity about them, as well as piercing citrus notes and floral aromas that make them almost tea-like at times. Second, this is the exact same coffee as the dry processed version I spoke about last month. Being able to do a comparison where only the coffee's processing has changes is fascinating.

High off my roasting success of the superstar Panama Esmerelda coffee, I used the same exact profile:


Alas, sometimes such high expectations get dashed. I was somewhat disappointed with the way this came out. Despite the same profile and the exact same time between first crack and end of roast, I think I brought this coffee a few degrees too high. The silverskin/chaff on these beans really holds on, and it made looking at the roast color difficult. The aroma was promising, but I found the taste somewhat muted. There was peaches-in-syrup tastes, some Jolly Rancher candy notes, but the acidity I expected wasn't there to back it up. Some bittersweet roast character crept in to spoil the fun. I'll have to roast more of this to see if I can hit the sweet spot a bit better.

Panama Esmerelda Gesha, Lot 5

THE. MOST. EXPENSIVE. COFFEE. IN. THE. WORLD.

That got your attention, didn't it? Sorry to let you down, but I am not willing to spend over a $100 on a pound of green coffee beans. Also, don't forget that you lose about 20% of the mass of the beans after roasting....

Panama's Esmerelda gesha coffee is the most acclaimed and pricey coffee on the planet. The last two years have seen the prices skyrocket to stratospheric heights. Is it worth it? That depends. Is it great coffee? Yes, indeed it is.

Luckily, the folks that produce the coffee separate lots out from different areas of their farm, and there are "bargains" to be found beside the auction lots that go for serious cash. Last year I had some of the non-auction Esmerelda coffee, and this year I picked up two of the less expensive lots. These are still not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, being two or three times as expensive as other high quality microlots of coffee.

This coffee cultivar, gesha, is originally of Ethiopian origin. Those familiar with this blog and those coffees, know that these beans can produce some very exotic fruit and flower tastes. Combine that with the terroir of Central America, and you have an unusual coffee. It has great acidity, and incredibly powerful aromas of wildflowers and tropical fruits.

This time around I started with the "cheaper" lot, a mere $10 or so a pound. This is a coffee you definitely want nowhere near second crack, so I decided to ramp up slowly to first crack. Here is the profile:

The result was a rare "wow" reaction after trying this 12 hours post-roast in a vacuum pot. From the moment you grind this stuff, it just fills the room with intense jasmine and exotic flower aromas. In the cup, it is juicy, juicy, juicy. Great acidity, tons of clean tropical fruit, and caramel. The finish is unique; there is a menthol/cooling sensation going on, perhaps citrus zest or something similar. Awesome stuff.

If there is any drawback at all, I feel this coffee fades faster than others. On subsequent days, the flowery notes fade and the caramel tones come more front and center. Still enjoyable, but not as legendary as the first day.

I was really happy with this roast; it will be a good starting point when I eventually get around to roasting the more expensive sister lot I have.

Some Miscellany

Things have been sort of hectic around these parts lately, and it seems to have had a negative impact on my coffee roasting. A couple of notes:

I generally roast coffee to bring in to work once a week. It is a good opportunity to help reduce the stash, as well as bring a tiny amount of happiness to an otherwise brutally boring meeting. This week, I had originally planned to serve some Mexico Oaxaca Don Eduardo that I had laying about. You see, I admit to sometimes dumping off my older or less favorite coffees on my co-workers (sorry guys!). I figure they will be way better than anything else they are going to buy locally. Anyway, I grabbed a bag of what I thought was 8 oz of green coffee, my usual roasting amount, and dumped it in the roaster. A few minutes later when I looked in, I noticed that something was odd. It looked like there was more coffee than usual tumbling about. My confusion turned to horror as the beans started to expand (they swell to 2X or more their green volume while roasting), and completely clog the chamber. Luckily I was able to abort, smoke billowing, without burning my house down. You actually need to be very careful, since coffee is extremely combustible if you over-roast it. It turns out there was at least 12 ounces of coffee in the bag. Figures the one time I didn't weigh it out.....

That went in the trash and I was looking for another coffee when my son, all of two years old, opened a cabinet and insisted that I roast "this one", pointing to a five pound bag of Ethiopian coffee. I decided that it was as good a choice as any and roasted it up. This was the Ethiopia Korate from a couple of weeks ago, and it was fabulous then. Pure berries, simple and sweet. This time around I decided to use a different roast profile, one that had been very successful for the Kenya Gachatha. In the end, it wasn't particularly successful, being a bit thinner and less fruity than before. My co-workers felt it was bitter and overall not very good. It goes to show you how a different roast profile can have drastically different results.

Another Misty Valley in Ethiopia

First of all, a picture of some recent stash additions. I was doing well on stash reduction, but things are out of control lately. Such is life, I guess. There was a shipping special going on, so I had to take advantage. After all, I was saving money, right?

It is no secret that Ethiopia's Idido Misty Valley is one of my all-time favorite coffees. The complexity and fruitiness of it, combined with the exacting preparation of the seeds really provides a clarity of flavor that I think is spectacular.

This year, there was another coffee playing off the "Misty Valley" moniker, namely a coffee from the same region exported by someone else. This one was deemed "Menno's Misty Valley" in honor of a certain Menno Simon who produced the coffee.

Apparently this was quite a small lot, and it disappeared from the Sweet Maria's offering list in a short time, too quickly for me to grab some. In an act of generosity, a fellow internet roaster sent me a pound to try out. My thanks go out to Eddie for his kindness. I have been playing around with slow roasts for a while, and I thought that would perhaps bring out the qualities of this coffee well, especially since I was aiming for quite a light roast. Here it is:


I need to collect my thoughts a bit, but some of these Gene Cafe roasts with what look like long roast times are turning out really well. In this case, the coffee was dynamite. This has a character that I haven't encountered before in Ethiopian dry processed coffees. There is an intense orange note, of all things. Berries are common enough flavors in these coffees, but never have I had such an intense orange note. The coffee is thick and liquory (is that a word?), with intense chocolate and orange notes. As espresso, even at such a light roast, the results are delicious. This is a heady brew, no doubt, and one that I am glad I had a chance to try.

Kenya AA Nyeri Gachatha

I lurve me some Kenya coffee. It is sort of funny since in the beginning of my roasting career, I really disliked the stuff. Too many examples of teeth-peeling acidic samples I guess. This particular coffee is sort of unusual. It lacks the strong berry-like flavors that are common among high-end Kenyas, but boy oh boy is this stuff good. This was a small lot that arrived late in the season last year, and unfortunately is all gone now from Sweet Marias.

The roast:


I tried to give this coffee a lot of heat to build flavor since Kenyas are so dense. It took everything I could give it and laughed - my roaster never got to 482 degrees before first crack started and I had to lower it. The smells from the roaster were intense - just like candy.

In the cup, this is a somewhat simple coffee (for a Kenya). It has a deep malty sweetness, mild acidity, and a long sugary aftertaste. Seriously, this coffee is like drinking molten sugar. It is that sweet. As the cup cools a bit, there are some interesting notes that emerge, almost like an aged coffee. There is some spice, maybe tobacco, but it is a subtle thing.

All around, one of the most enjoyable coffees I have had lately.

Brazil FTO Poco Fundo x2

The coffees from the Poco Fundo cooperative in Brazil have a unique distinction: they are the only Brazilian coffees I like. I have tried many, and they always disappoint me in terms of overall flavor, intensity, and interest. They serve as a nice backdrop in an espresso blend occasionally, but on their own I just don't like them.

Then there is Poco Fundo. This is a dry processed coffee with some great character. In the darker roasts I do with this bean, it is one of the best single origin espressos out there. Nutty, fruity (plums, raisins, etc.), chocolately - Poco Fundo has it all. As drip, it is also a very nice cup, but it really shines as espresso.

Anyway, I had a pound lying around and I thought it would be interesting to roast this coffee to a very light level, something I hadn't done before. Maybe I have been missing something all this time while roasting it past second crack?

Here we go with the light roast:


Brazilian beans are typically not that dense, so I tried to take it easy with this roast. I eagerly anticipated the first pot of coffee. And the result?.... Lousy. This was thin and boring. There was some nuttiness, but the characteristic fruitiness that I love so much in this bean wasn't there. It wasn't a terrible cup, but it wasn't very good either.

Just to prove that I wasn't going crazy, I took the other half pound of coffee and roasted it darker:



Here you'll see that the final temperature was up a but to make sure the coffee entered second crack, and the total roast time was longer. This time the coffee was phenomenal. Low acidity, intense nuttiness, chocolate, and plums. The mouthfeel is unique - creamy and crunchy if that makes any sense. The espressos were just perfect. With this coffee, I will be avoiding the light roasts like the plague.

Still Around

Sorry for the lack of updates - work and vacation have gotten the better of me. I'll be back in business next week with a bunch of stuff including a tasting of two roasts of Brazil Poco Fundo, and many others.

Mexico Organic Chiapas

I often call Mexican coffees my "palate resets". After drinking lots of over the top Kenyas, Ethiopias, dry processed fruit-bombs, etc. it is nice to drink some unassuming beverages that taste like "coffee"; nothing too complicated, just a cup you can enjoy with the morning paper and not spend time analyzing flavor components. If I had a cafe, something like this Chiapas would be my house coffee. It is complex enough to intrigue the hard-core coffee drinker, yet at the same time it is eminently approachable for the masses.



This roast behaved quite oddly. In retrospect I know that it was due to roasting on a day where we were having record heat and humidity. I think that the voltage at the outlet was lower than usual due to power company load, and things heated up in the roaster much slower than anticipated. Still, the coffee came out great.

On the first day, the aroma and taste were very nutty. I think hazelnut is the best descriptor. It is sweet, but with some interesting earthy tones. Several days later, it is a different coffee. If I was drinking this blind, I would almost think it is a dry processed Ethiopian coffee. The aroma is brown sugar and graham cracker, with some coconut lurking around. The taste is pure milk chocolate with a fruity background. The nuts have receded quite a bit.

Overall this is a really good coffee. I like the fact that it isn't too heavy, but it has a unique character true to the Chiapas region.

Uganda Bugisu AA

OK, I am going to say a country name and you tell me what springs to mind. Ready?...... Uganda.

Come on, admit it. You are thinking Idi Amin, despotism, torture, and other unpleasant things. Well, believe it or not, Uganda also exports coffee. And an interesting beast it is, too. Other coffees from Africa are of the citric variety; very acidic, refreshing drinks. Kenya is the archetypal example of that style. This is the first time I have tried a coffee from Uganda, and I was intrigued to find out what it is all about. Word on the street was that this is a low-acid, funky coffee more in the vein of something from Indonesia.

I decided to roast this one to Full City, darker than I would normally start:

I slowed this one down to develop the body and more brooding notes.

The roasted bean fragrance was unexpected. There is a very fruity aspect to it, perhaps papaya of all things. In the cup, it is low-acid, rustic and earthy. At the same time there are subtle fruity notes buried in there which make it very interesting. The papaya hangs around, creating an interesting impression.

It will be interesting to try this one over the next few days to see how it develops, but so far I am enjoying it. It is deliciously different compared to what I have been drinking lately.

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Note: New addition posted to the Rogues Gallery

Ethiopia Korate Natural Sidamo

I couldn't resist adding more Ethiopian coffee to the stash. I was doing well on stash reduction for a few months and had whittled things down to 40 pounds or so. My wife was very happy, and the cabinets were relieved of some extra weight. Lately, though, I seem to be acquiring more coffee...

Anyway, this is an interesting coffee. Very clean, both in preparation, and in the cup. I roasted this one with the intention of mimicking some really good roasts of another Ethiopian coffee, but messed up the initial temperature. Still, the coffee was great, and I have another few pounds to play with.

The profile:


I had intended to start at a lower temperature (300 degrees) for a bit, but I was working from a flawed memory. Such is life. The aroma is pure berries, sweet and clean. The flavor follows suit. This was quite a light roast, just out of first crack, and there wasn't much roast/chocolate character going on. It was all sweet fruit.

The interesting thing here is how clean the taste was. Most dry processed coffees have a bit of funk to them. Call it "rustic" if you will, it is that very faint hidey, baggy, leathery flavor that lurks in the background. Not so here. There is a purity in the cup that I haven't encountered before. I think "simple" actually applies here, although overall there are a lot of flavors. However, there is really nothing to interfere with the fruit. I'll be curious to play with this one in subsequent roasts.

Panama Bambito Estate

Panama produces some great coffee, and some wickedly overpriced ones as well. The most famous coffee of all, Esmerelda Gesha, has gone for well over $100 a pound for the past few years. Yes it is very good, but not worth the price in my opinion.

Bambito Estate is one of those coffees I thought I was really going to like based on the description and the enthusiasm of the folks at Sweet Marias, but I really hate this stuff. Unfortunately I bought several pounds together with an order of other (excellent) Panama coffees last year, so I am stuck with it.

This one got a gentle roast, looking for a light Full City level:

And the taste in the cup? Well, lets see. The smell, I mean aroma, is fairly nondescript. Some flowers, spice, etc. The first thing that hits your mouth? Barbecue sauce. Yeah, you know - ketchupy, smoky, salty. This is followed by some unpleasant brothy notes, and eventually settles down into a sludgy aftertaste. Mmmm, I am really selling it now, aren't I?

I suppose I just may be mangling this coffee during roasting, or my skills are insufficient to bring out its true character, but I don't think so. Perhaps roasting it darker might help as well. In any case, I'll take a big ole' pass on Bambito next time around.

Guatemala Fraijanes - Finca Agua Tibia

I don't know why, but Guatemalan coffee just makes me yawn. It is good enough, I suppose, but I find it unexciting. I find myself a bit bipolar when it comes to coffee. I like really wild coffees like various dry-processed kinds from Ethiopia and elsewhere. At the same time, I like real simple, clean coffees from Mexico and Costa Rica. The Guats have a strange herbal thing going on for me that just doesn't thrill me.

This coffee is good enough, but not one I would buy again. Translating the name into English via Babelfish, we get "lukewarm property water", which is amusing. We'll stick to Spanish where it sounds more exotic. I roasted this coffee hot and fast, looking to preserve acidity and accentuate the bright notes:



The coffee has a very strong aroma of cloves, and something close to rose hips. The body has that typical bourbon creaminess, and a nice amount of bittersweet chocolate in the finish. This is definitely a coffee that would be a crowd pleaser; tastes like most people think coffee should taste, with some potent flavors and a bit of an interesting aroma. For me, I find it forgettable.

Yemen Mokha Sharasi

My wife makes me feel guilty whenever I buy or roast Yemeni coffee. After the USS Cole incident, it was clear (if it hadn't been before) that Yemen is a hotbed of terrorist activity. Should we support Yemeni coffee farmers? Are they all a bunch of terrorists camouflaged as farmers? Unlikely. I suppose if I refrained from eating or drinking foods that come from areas that hate America I would lose a lot of weight....

Anyway, I find Yemeni coffees a pain to roast. They are very uneven, and the cracks tend to be quiet and/or run together so I have a devil of a time getting the roast correct. This one got away from me a bit and was darker than I intended, but it was still quite good.

The profile:

I was looking for just a few snaps of seconnd crack, but things got rolling pretty good before I had a chance to hit the breaks. This coffee has some unusual character - very buttery and deep notes. Perhaps "brooding" is a good descriptor. I was expecting some more fruit lurking about, but perhaps if I roasted it a bit lighter it would be evident. As espresso it was really nice. Deep, deep flavors and that buttery richness that coats your mouth and just lasts and lasts. In milk, it cut right through - a very nice cappuccino. Delicious and different.

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As an aside, I have a bunch of tea stuff I need to post, as well as some notes on coffee brewing techniques. I haven't had much time lately, but hopefully over the next few weeks I can get caught up

Colombia Antioquia -Jardin Cerulean Warbler

Tweet, tweet. Tweet, tweet. What's that sound? It is the sound of a really dumb name for a coffee. You can see the picture of the birdie to the left - the Cerulean Warbler. Apparently this coffee comes from an area where there is some sort of conservation project to help out this bird whose population is declining. That's nice, but how does it taste?

I wanted to roast this one very lightly:


Based on observing the roast, this is one dense little seed. Seventeen and a half minutes got me a City roast, perhaps a tad more. Despite the silly name, this is a really nice coffee. Sweet, balanced, and delicate - this is a good palate reset after a bunch of dry processed coffees I have been drinking lately. There is some peach in the aroma, and plenty of acidity as a backbone. Drinking it later in the week, I find some typical raisiny notes as well. This was dynamite in a vacuum pot also. I would get this one again.

The Rogues Gallery

I find that my food and drink snobbishness has declined over the years. I don't turn up my nose at anything, more or less, and drink and eat what is available without getting all uppity. I hear lots of people say things along the lines of "I won't touch restaurant coffee now that I know what the good stuff tastes like", or similar, but I am not that way. As they say, you gotta do what you gotta do.

To that end, I have decided to keep a chronicle of some of the cups of coffee I have had from outside my own house. After all, it is important to keep comparing yourself to others if you want to improve. So, starting today, we have the Coffee Rogues Gallery (cue ominous music). I'll update this thread as I encounter new specimens.

McDonalds "Premium Roast", from store drive through in East Fishkill, New York, about 9AM

Aroma: none whatsoever
Taste: Brown water. Seriously. I am not sure if any coffee grounds stayed in contact with the water for more than a nanosecond. I can't even do a serious review because this tasted like nothing.
Other: This coffee was hotter than a small thermonuclear explosion. Alas, cooling it down provided no additional redeeming values.
Recommendation: Avoid. Licking stagnant water from a puddle in the middle of August would have more coffee flavor.

Decaf Coffee from Mind-Numbing meeting in work, 6/26/08, 8:30AM
Aroma: Burning tires
Taste: Matches the aroma. Brutally sour, with a paint-thinner aftertaste (no I haven't drunk paint thinner, but give me some artistic license, please)
Other: This was fresh - I can only imagine what it might have been like after it was sitting in the urn for a few more hours.
Recommendation: Might be useful for removal of stomach polyps, but not as an enjoyable beverage. Avoid.

touch restaurant coffee now that I know what the good stuff tastes like", or similar, but I am not that way. As they say, you gotta do what you gotta do.

To that end, I have decided to keep a chronicle of some of the cups of coffee I have had from outside my own house. After all, it is important to keep comparing yourself to others if you want to improve. So, starting today, we have the Coffee Rogues Gallery (cue ominous music). I'll update this thread as I encounter new specimens.

McDonalds "Premium Roast", from store drive through in East Fishkill, New York, about 9AM

Aroma: none whatsoever
Taste: Brown water. Seriously. I am not sure if any coffee grounds stayed in contact with the water for more than a nanosecond. I can't even do a serious review because this tasted like nothing.
Other: This coffee was hotter than a small thermonuclear explosion. Alas, cooling it down provided no additional redeeming values.
Recommendation: Avoid. Licking stagnant water from a puddle in the middle of August would have more coffee flavor.

"Coffee" at in-laws house in NJ, early AM consumption
Aroma: Rubber, stale hazelnut
Taste: Brown water
Other: I love my in-laws, but to call this coffee strains the definition. Imagine that you took a few granules of Dunkin' Doughnuts coffee and diluted it 100:1 in lukewarm water and you'll have a good idea of the taste. Add to that a brewer that hasn't been cleaned since the Carter administration and you have one foul brew.
Recommendation: Sometimes you get what you get; pour in enough milk and pray that enough caffeine comes through and smile

Stay tuned for more additions

Ethiopia Harar Horse, Lot 17406, Roast #2

No horses were harmed during the making of this coffee.... Just kidding - it is just the mark of the importer.

This coffee really annoys me. I love dry processed Ethiopian coffee, and this lot got a lot of praise. However, I find it boring at best. I originally tried it last week, and found it flat. Interestingly, the aroma of the beans themselves was more interesting than the brewed coffee.

Thinking another roast profile might be in order, I used this one:



As expected, this quick ramp robbed the coffee of some body, but accentuated the fruity notes and acidity. Overall it is better than last time, but still uninspiring. The ground coffee aromas are intense - fermented mango, tamarind, some coconut. Very intense. What winds up in the cup, however, is quite light. It kind of reminds me of one of those frou-frou summer fruit soups you might come across at a fancy restaurant. The flavors are mild, and integrated with some syrupy malt notes. Not bad, but not worth purchasing more of this coffee. We'll see if it gets any better during the week, and perhaps some espresso extraction is in order also.

Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley

In the last part of the Ethiopia No Holds Barred Cage Match, I told you that the winner would go up against a perennial favorite, Idido Misty Valley (IMV). Well, let me tell you, it was no contest whatsoever. The Sidamo took a brutal beating by IMV, leaving it bruised and bloody on the mat.

IMV is my favorite coffee, bar none. It has somewhat legendary status among coffee geeks. It comes from an area around Yrgacheffe that has a tradition of wet processed coffee, but the IMV is dry processed. It roasts like a dream - incredibly uniform for a coffee of this type. From the green seeds through the roast, through the cup, it is a powerhouse of fruity goodness. There is an interesting article here as well.

The 2006 crop I found to have strong notes of dried strawberries. The 2007 I am roasting now is blueberries all the way. At the same time, with the wild blueberry and over the top honeysuckle aromas, it is such a balanced cup. I smile whenever I drink it.

The roast profile was very similar to the Cage Match coffees, but I started at a lower temperature to make sure I didn't burn off any of the fruity goodness:



I extended the middle time by a minute since it had just barely reached the temperature set point by the time 10 minutes had passed. This is quite a light roast - just out of first crack and a little more. Even after 12 hours it is phenomenal. Intense floral aromas and berries, berries, berries. It is well integrated with some chocolate notes, and changes as the cup cools. It is a sweet, medium bodied cup. There is really nothing like it.

Just for chuckles, I roasted the last of the Harar from last time with a different profile to compare it to the disappointing performance of last week. I'll try it tomorrow and see what's what.

Roast Profiles, II

Yesterday I wrote down some largely incomprehensible thoughts about roast profiles I have been using. Let's see if today I can make things a bit clearer.

There is another popular option for roast profiles, which more or less says "crank the heat as high as it can go (482 degrees) until first crack, and then lower it until the end of roast". This is not a profile to use until you are fairly familiar with the Gene Cafe, since you can easily make charcoal (or a fire) if you are not tuned in to the sounds and smells of the roast, and it can be tricky to get things to slow down such that there is enough time between first and second crack for sufficient flavor development. This fast ramp can also reduce the amount of perceived body in the coffee.

However, this can be an effective method for high-altitude/dense seeds. Using this method tends to preserve a lot of acidity in the coffee, which can be good or bad depending on the coffee itself and what you are looking to accomplish. You can further combine this with my observations from yesterday on starting temperature to come up with some sophisticated profiles that can really dial a coffee in.

Let's look at some examples, and I'll refer back to previous blog postings.

#1 High-altitude, bright, Central American coffee. Here I'll refer back to the Guatemala Yellow Bourbon posting. Here I was looking for a light roast, and to ensure that the acidity wasn't too overpowering. Therefore I started at a somewhat higher temperature (350 degrees), and crept up on first through some intermediate temperature ramping.

#2 Low-altitude, low-acidity coffee. An example might be an Indian coffee. Since this is lower grown, I try and keep the temperatures more moderate, and again use some intermediate temperatures in the ramp to slowly develop the flavors.

#3 High-Altitude, medium acidity coffee. An example might be a Yemeni coffee.
Here I was looking to add some sparkle to the coffee, since Yemen can be a bit brooding, so I used a fast ramp up to first crack and then settled things down. I would use similar profiles for a Kenya coffee, where you can be aggressive with the heat due to the extreme seed density.

So there you have it. Depending on what you are looking for out of the coffee, you can choose how fast you move it along to change the amount of acidity in the coffee, and trade that off against body, etc. There are a lot of variables to play around with, and I'll try to highlight my thinking as I roast, taste, and post about these coffees.

Roast Profiles, I

I suppose that if you are a professional roaster or an apprentice to one, there is lots of wisdom and experience to impart. As I have said before, the taste of roasted coffee is very much a function of how you get to the final temperature of the beans. In principle you want to keep the coffee moving up in temperature steadily, but there is some artistry in how fast or slow during various times in the roasting process.

From an equipment perspective, the amateur roaster is often at a disadvantage for a couple of reasons. First, it is often impossible to know what the actual temperature of the beans is during a roast. This is one reason I miss using my iRoast 2; I had a jury-rigged thermocouple in there that I was able to keep a close eye on, plot out temperature versus time, etc. With the Gene Cafe there is really no way to do this. You can tell the air temperature, but of course that is not at all the same as what the beans are doing.

The other disadvantage is temperature ramp rate. With the Gene Cafe, you have in principle infinite control over temperature settings, but in the end the heater is either on or off, and the ramp is a function of the bean amount and density, etc.

Over the past year or two I have played around a lot with roast profiles. I have learned a lot (I think), and I still am mystified by other things. I thought I would sketch out some broad thoughts here as a jumping off point for some other experiments.

First, a word on pre-heating. There is a lot of thermal mass in the drum itself and the various components, and I am a firm believer in pre-heating the machine a bit before adding any coffee. You really want all the thermal energy going into the beans, not the machine, so you can get the roast moving and have consistent results. I typically run the roaster empty at 350 degrees or so while I am getting other things ready. I am not too particular about time, but even a few minutes makes a difference. This pre-heating can also affect how loud first crack can be, but that is a story for another day.

At the beginning of my journey with the Gene Cafe, I generally started with a simple profile of 360 degrees for 5 minutes and then 460 degrees until the end of the roast. I got this profile off the internet somewhere, and I stuck with this for quite a while. I made some good coffee that way. At some point during some discussion via the Sweet Marias Home Roasting List (Archives here), there were folks using a slightly different profile; one that starts with a lower temperature to start (about 300 degrees), then an intermediate temperature (somewhere between 400 and 450 degrees), and then to the final temperature.

I tested this out by roasting a Costa Rica La Minita coffee in two different batches to compare. My wife drank both coffees over a period of several days and noted the differences. The first batch was roasted as:

360 degrees/5 minutes, 460 degrees to end

and the second as:

300 degrees/5 minutes, 445 degrees/5 minutes, 460 degrees to end

Both were roasted to City+, and not surprisingly the second roast took 2 minutes longer to complete. My wife and I decided that the second roast was considerably better than the first. It was bright, sweet and alive compared to the duller tasting first batch. An interesting result.

From there I started using this type of profile a lot, varying mostly the middle temperature depending on what type of bean I was roasting (higher for denser beans, etc). In retrospect, however, I think the starting temperature may be more important....

In watching lots of roasts, I noticed that the first five minutes at 300 degrees basically produced no color change in the coffee whatsoever. It was just drying out the beans without any sort of caramelization happening. I am not saying this is bad necessarily, but it is a data point. Furthermore, as I told you the Gene's heater is either on or off, so is sort of "does what it wants" from a ramp rate perspective. Despite tweaking the intermediate temperatures around, I don't think the actual temperatures of the beans were very different at all.

This is getting confusing, even to me. Let me cut to the chase for today, and tomorrow I'll post some other thoughts on another profile entirely.

For coffees that are very dense and have a lot of natural acidic notes (Kenya, Yrgacheffe, some Centrals), it is better to start at a higher initial temperature, greater than 300 degrees for the first part of the roast. If you don't, you risk grassy and sour notes.

On the flip side, where you are trying to preserve delicate, fruity, or acidic notes, if you start too high, it tends to dull those flavors out. I think this is what happened to the Ethiopia roasts I just talked about. They started at 350 degrees and just seemed lifeless to me, especially the Harar. I think they would have done better started at 300 degrees and then ramped quickly to first crack. I intend on trying this with one of them next week.

More tomorrow, and I'll try to summarize all this into something people can make meaningful use of.

Sidamo v. Harar - No Holds Barred Cage Match, II

Yesterday, Ethiopia Sidamo attacked first, perhaps leaving Harar slumped against the turnbuckle. What can happen next in this epic battle?

In the other corner we have the rather interestingly named Ethiopia Harar Horse DP -Lot 17406. What about lot 17405? We'll never know....

This coffee was roasted right after the Sidamo, with the same profile. Here are the details:


Smelling the beans, you can easily tell the difference between Harar and Sidamo. The Harar smells like over the top tropical fruits - smashed up mangoes, pineapple, etc. Very heady, almost fermented. The Sidamo is more of a stone fruit melange: apricot, peach, etc.

In the cup, I also found the Harar more muted than I might have expected. I noted something similar with the Sidamo. I think it might have something to do with the initial temperature being too high. I am going to combine some of these trends and observations on roasting profiles into a different post when I have some extra time.

The fruity notes of the dry grounds are there, but are tempered with chocolaty flavors. There is some good acidity as well, but it is not the wild cup I imagined. Certainly it is tasty enough, but at this roast treatment I am not running out to stock up.

If I had to choose a winner, it would be the Sidamo, hands down. The complexity of the cup, how the fruit integrates with the more rustic and funky notes, and the pure intensity make it a winner for me. I wouldn't pass up either, but Sidamo gets the edge this time.

Next round: our current winner goes up against one of the icons of home roasting: Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley. Stay tuned....

Sidamo v. Harar - No Holds Barred Cage Match, I

When it comes to coffee, for me, Ethiopia is where it is at. The incredible variety, origin character, and history make these coffees truly special. I have in my possession a lot of Ethiopian beans, so I thought it would be fun to compare two especially lauded ones.

Both these coffees are dry processed, and hail from Harrar and Sidamo, two of the most famous areas of Ethiopian coffee production. Dry processed coffees leave some of the fruity mucilage layer of the coffee cherry in contact with the seed for some time during processing, leading to fruity flavors in the cup. Both these coffees are for the adventurous, since they can push the envelope of what many people interpret as "traditional coffee flavor"

In today's corner is Ethiopia Sidamo Dry Processed Biloya. This coffee has the distinction of being one of the highest rated coffees at Ken David's coffeereview.com. What weight do I place behind this recommendation? None whatsoever. Still, it is a data point. If you search around the web, you will find lots of accolades about this coffee.

I first roasted this coffee back in August of 2007. My tasting notes were effusive to say the least:

"Very impressive, complex and changeable coffee. Dry grounds are overwhelmingly estery, spicy, fruity, chocolaty. Aroma in cup is intense cinnamon. First third of cup is dry spice, fleeting leather. 2nd third is cinnamon-laced apricot; last third is a deep wininess that reminds me of a Kenya coffee. Very very nice"

Wow, I must have had a lot of free time back then to write this stuff.

Anyway, I roasted a new batch on Friday with the following profile:



And the cup today? Yeah, it's good. I am not sure I have the enthusiasm I previously had for it, though. I can imagine a few reasons why. First, the coffee is a bit older now. Second, I have tried a lot more coffees since I first tried this stuff, and I am less easily impressed, and third, the roast profile was a tad different this time.

Don't get me wrong - this is a tasty cup. "Cinnamon-drenched apricot" is a good description. In a way, this coffee reminds me more of a Yemen than a Ethiopian coffee. The Harrar I'll talk about tomorrow is quite a bit different beast. As for which is better, you'll have to wait and see.

India Mallali Estate "Tree-Dried Natural"

Coffee from India. I have had a few interesting examples over the years, but of course nothing beats the puerile pleasure of saying "Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold". Come on - say it a few times - you know you are laughing.

Anyway, today is not about that coffee, but about an unusual coffee from India that is actually dried on the tree. The coffee cherries are left to ripen on the tree and essentially turn into little raisins. If this works well, you should get some interesting character to the coffee. If it doesn't, well....

As an aside, dry-processed coffees like this one are always going to be more variable since wet processed coffees allow you to sort out unripe cherry more easily (they float), instead of having to do things by hand. I can't imagine how much work went into this coffee, and for something which ultimately sold for a few dollars a pound.

I have roasted this coffee a few times, so the notes are a compilation over those sessions. This is a somewhat low-altitude coffee, so it is easy for the roast to get away from you if you heat it up too fast. Slow and gentle wins the race. The coffee was roasted to a Full City level.



This coffee has some very nice dry-roasted peanut notes, low acidity, but coupled with an interesting fruitiness. In the aroma, I swear I smell ripe melon. Interesting! I am not sure I have tasted anything quite like it. It is sort or a cross between something like a low-acid Sumatra coffee mixed with the fruitiness of an Ethiopian. The combination is somewhat unexpected, but very pleasant nonetheless.

Kenya Thika - Gethumbwini Peaberry

This is the last of my beans from the 2007 main crop. I thought this coffee was one of the best of 2007. My notes from last October read, "Intense stuff. In-your-face sweet grape and blackberry aroma. Powerful, crisp, sweet, and acidy. Medium body. A powerhouse of a coffee that keeps getting better and better every day I drink it". Hardly faint praise.

Since the new crop had come in, I wanted to finish off all of the last stuff I had laying around, so I roasted it up the other day. The profile was slightly different than the first time:



This was a faster roast then back in October, and I think the body suffered a bit. However, the intense fruit character that I love is still there. Think ripe cherries, blackberries, grapes overlaid with fresh sage and other herbs. It is definitely a unique taste profile for coffee, and quite unexpected. Personally I love the stuff, but I could see people who favor a more "classic" coffee taste might be put off.

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Addendum 6/11/08

As is often the case, this coffee gets better with more rest. Besides the great fruitiness, I get a strong sense of Ricola candies in the aroma. Interesting! The herbal qualities of this coffee are something I hadn't fully appreciated before with previous roasts.

Yemen Mokha Mattari Redux

Bear with me here - I am highly caffeinated at the moment. I consumed a lot of espresso this morning to write this piece. Such are the sacrifices we make....


I described last month a roast of Yemen Mokha Mattari from Sweet Marias. Despite some mishaps during roasting, it turned out particularly well as brewed coffee. Last Friday I decided to roast up some more of these beans, but take them darker for use as espresso. The claim is that Yemen's like a lot of rest to really come together flavor-wise, so this is a good test. I also added the picture above to show the "before and after" of the coffee.

Here is the profile:


As you can see, another minute and a half of roast compared to the previous gets you into second crack. This is what I was looking for in this roast. The espresso extraction process can really exacerbate acidic flavors, and light roasts in general don't do well. I roasted this one dark (for me) to get better balance.

As an interesting aside, you can take a look at the variation in color post-roast (common in dry-processed beans) in this picture:

If you compare this to something like the picture in the blog's title (which is a Guatemalan coffee), you should see the differerce.

So, what about the espresso? I tried this coffee three ways (shots pulled from my Rancilio Silvia machine):

Double espresso
Cappucino (double shot in ~6oz of milk)
Double ristretto

Now you are starting to understand the caffeine jag I am on....

Anyway, this stuff was darn good. The espresso was very intensely woody, with a packed house of "spice bazaar" tastes. Chewy and very long lasting. Great stuff, but a bit on the rough side. In milk, it really shined. The spice notes were still there, and solid chocolate notes cut well through the milk. The ristretto was probably the best of the bunch. A lot of the roughness was gone, and it was smooth, sweet, spicy, and exotic. I didn't get any real fruitiness in this one; it was more in the woody camp. Perhaps another roast treatment would pull out more fruit.

Kenya AA Giakanja Coop Coffee Mill

It look me some time to get to like Kenya coffees. The altitude and climate these coffees are grown at can produce some ferocious acidity in coffee. Some people like this, and some people don't. Originally, I didn't.

The issue is the difference between acidity and sourness. When the term "acidity" is used when referring to coffee, it is the slight puckering sensation and crispness to the cup that actually makes the coffee very refreshing and drinkable. However, when not done correctly (or under-roasted), this can turn into a grassy, sour flavor that can make your whole body shudder. Back in the day I roasted a lot of coffee that tasted like that and it really turned me off.

Now that I am pretty devoted to light roasted coffee. I find that when done correctly, the brightness of Kenya coffees comes with a sweetness and complexity that you will find in few other places. Now I can't get enough of the stuff.

This particular coffee was roasted quite lightly the first time around, back in March of this year:



My notes were as follows:
3/23/08: "Intense stuff. Very powerful flowery aroma - roses! Interesting bitterness to go with it. Perhaps could have ended the roast a tad sooner"

3/24/08: "This aroma is so weird - I have never smelled anything like it in a coffee. In your face rose bush aroma. Unique, but I don't care for it"

I tell you, I have had weird fruity aromas, intense florals, nuts, you name it. But this rose aroma was so strong it turned my stomach.

With a half pound left, I decided to pawn this coffee off on my co-workers. I decided to roast it much darker to see if I could drive off the weird aroma. The profile this time is as follows (yellow marks the differences from the previous):


This time the coffee was roasted into second crack. With this treatment, the odd rose aroma was gone, and I was left with a very nice, pungent, and rustic cup. Not a coffee I would rush to buy again, but certainly very drinkable. It never ceases to amaze me how the same coffee roasted different ways can be so different in the cup.

Roasting Apparatus

I just realized that I haven't mentioned what I am roasting with. All these roast profiles aren't that useful unless you have some idea what I am doing.

Anyhoo, I originally started out roasting using an iRoast2. This is a decent starter machine, but I had some quality issues with it (the power base kept dying), and the amount of beans you can roast at one time is rather limited. Still, the coffee was decent, and had the typical air-roaster quality of "brightness" in the cup.

At this point, a hoard of people are going to come out of the woodwork (or maybe not, since not too many people read these entries...) and tell me that you can produce great roasted coffee with a wok, a roasting pan, a heat gun and a dog bowl, a popcorn popper, a blowtorch, or perhaps a small thermonuclear explosion. In a sense they are correct, and you can read for hours and hours on the web about these things.

However, roasting coffee is more than "turning beans brown". The profiles of time and temperature make a huge difference to the final product. Even two roasts with exactly the same final roast time, with different ways of getting there can be completely different. It is useful to have some control over time and temperature (and ramp rate if you can get it). This can be done manually with some effort, but there are some machines out there that make it much simpler. I am a gadget guy, so I went the route of buying a GeneCafe.

I won't review the machine here; you can read about it in the link above, or search around on Coffee Geek or other web sites. Suffice to say that you have very good control over the key variables.

My typical batch size is 8oz. The way I drink coffee at home, that gets me through about a week. For espresso, I'll often drop it down to 6oz or so, since I drink less espresso than drip coffee. I also like to preheat the machine a bit before adding the beans. There is a lot of glass and metal that should get hot first, such that the thermal energy goes into the coffee beans instead of heating up the machine. Pre-heating can also have a pronounced effect on the ability to hear first crack, which I can talk about another time.

For cooling, I typically use the "Emergency stop" procedure which cools the coffee in the drum down to about 212 degrees. Then I move the coffee to a sheet pan on my granite countertop, which quickly cools things to room temperature. I then let the machine complete the rest of its cooling cycle down to 140 degrees, which hopefully will help out the lifetime of the roaster.

There are other options out there as well, ranging from the now very popular Behmor roaster, the Hottop, and others. However, my GeneCafe is going strong, and makes great coffee.

As for brewing the coffee, I have an article I need to parse through before posting here, but there is a lot to say on that topic as well.