Mexico Organic Dry-Processed Nayarit Rustico

This coffee's appellation is a mouthful, isn't it? It is an unusual beast - a dry processed coffee from Mexico. This is something I haven't tried. By the way - I love Mexican coffees. The simple, straightforward tastes of something from Oaxaca or Chiapas are often the antidote to the crazy flavors I tend to favor from Ethiopia and elsewhere. In this case, however, the coffee is a bit crazy itself. Dry-processed coffees are processed sort of like making raisins - the whole coffee cherry is dried in the sun with the fruit and skin intact. After that, the outer layers are milled off the dry seeds. This processing can make for some interesting fruity flavors in coffee.

I decided to roast this coffee to Full City, or just a few snaps into second crack. Since it is a low-altitude coffee, I kept the temperatures moderate. The coffee was very uneven looking at the end, which isn't surprising. This morning I had a vacuum brew of it and was very pleased. Very often when these fruity coffees are roasted on the darker side, a lot of the fruit character is muted and replaced by roast notes. Not here. There was deep, rustic chocolate as a base (reminded me of....surprise... Mexican chocolate with almonds), and there was still a lot of nice tropical fruits lingering. Perhaps right on the edge of a ferment defect, but still pleasurable. This is a rich, complex, delicious coffee. Yum.

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Addendum 6/1/08

I tried this as espresso this morning. Awesome stuff. The fruit and chocolate really work well together, and there was just enough acidity to balance things out. Keep this one in mind for future espresso related endeavors.

The Stash

I seem to have accumulated a lot of coffee over the past few years. Interestingly, I am more or less the only coffee drinker in the house. My wife will drink half a cup (literally) in the morning sometimes, and she likes her cappucinos, but for the most part it is just me.

So, why on earth do I have more than 40 pounds of green coffee in my house? My shelves are groaning under their weight. I can justify it in a number of ways:

1. I am saving on shipping by buying in bulk
2. I like variety
3. I am a mental case.

More than likely, #3 is the driving force, but so be it. From what I can tell from perusing other coffee sites, other people have it worse. Actually, over time, I have whittled the stash down quite a bit.

It is interesting to look at what origins make up this stash. A pie chart tells the tale, as above. I found it a bit surprising, though, since I am such a fan of African coffees. The majority is actually from Central and South America. Go figure.

Being the analytical type, I also keep a spreadsheet of what I have around, and what I think of it. Google Docs is a bit flaky, but I converted the current version to html here. Take a look. You'll have to play around a bit and convert my ratings to your sensibilities, but perhaps someone can get something useful out of it.

Kona Kowali Estate

Believe it or not, I have never roasted a Kona coffee. Sure, I have had it here and there at coffee establishments, both in its blended form (people capitalizing on the Kona name while using ridiculously small percentages of the actual beans), as well as single-origin brews from reputable roasters. My reaction has always been, more or less "I don't get it". This stuff is seriously expensive, and my reaction to the cup is always humdrum.

I couldn't resist trying to roast some myself, though, so I sprung the $17 or so for a pound of greens. This is almost 3X the typical price I would pay for high quality coffee from other origins. The beans themselves are gorgeous - jade green and of massive size. Seriously, these are some really big beans. I suppose this has something to do with the altitude they are grown at.

The roast profile was intended to be gentle with these beans, given both their density and their price. The last thing I wanted was to carbonize these pricey beans. I targeted a City+ roast based on some other reviews of this coffee, though I understand Kona often gets a darker roast than this.

And the result? I was surprised by how much acidity was in the cup. It was somewhat unexpected, but not unpleasant. The coffee has an interesting chocolate-malt character, and is extremely intense, even at this relatively light roast. Has a good.....er.... coffee taste. Is it worth the price? Nope. It is a nice cup, but it doesn't have any unexpected character or other unusual traits that might justify the price. Compare this to something like the Gesha coffees of Panama, which are truly unique (and even then don't justify their price, IMO), and I just don't get it. I certainly enjoyed the cup, but I have little desire to buy more. Based on drinking it throughout the week, I think it would do better at a Full City roast, so I will try that at some point.

Why?

Perhaps it is worth a minute to discuss why I am even writing these things down. There is a practical side and an emotional side. As a practical matter, I have many notebooks full of roasting notes. It is incredibly cumbersome to go back and look for something, so I started looking for an electronic method to accomplish this. Furthermore, the coffee home roasting community may, in some small part, benefit from these notes, or at the least be amused. Since I am a bit of a tea aficionado as well, my intent is to mix some tea related notes in here as well. Finally, depending on my mood, I may have other miscellaneous musings to put down. That is the practical part. I must admit that this may be secondary to the emotional part. You see, I have an incredibly stressful life. From a job perspective, things are absolutely insane. At home, life is very busy with small children around. Combine that with a bit of a "life crisis" (note no "mid-" prefix), and I sat down to think about what I need to do. I am one of those people who express themselves best through the written word. I decided that I need to focus on a few things that I actually like doing such that I find some balance in my existence. Writing stuff down is one of those pleasurable things. Why not combine that with my main hobbies? Hence this blog. Honestly, I have no idea whether this will even continue very long. It may fall prey to lack of time, or even interest. For now, though, I'll forge ahead and see where this leads.

Yemen Mokha Mattari

Recently Tom of Sweet Marias went off to Yemen to scope out some new sources of coffee. You can read all about it at his "coffee Hajj" through the website. The claim is that he found three unique Yemen coffees that were supposed to turn your pre-conceived notions of Yemeni brew on their head.

According to Tom, the Mattari is the best cup for brewed coffee, with the others better as espresso. I only had a pound of this coffee, so I decided to break it into thirds to try out a few different roasts. In hindsight, I wouldn't do this again, but would rather have more coffee roasted.

This coffee got my latest and greatest profile I have been using, but I had a bit of a setback during the roast. The room where I roast is quite dark, and it is hard to tell the actual roast color as things are progressing. Therefore I use a little maglite to peer into the drum. Unfortunately the bulb died right at the end and I was flying blind. My 2 year old was around as well, so I couldn't leave him with the roaster running, so I decided to go by smell alone.

Interestingly, this coffee turned out fantastic. I don't think I have ever had anything just like it. There was earthy milk chocoloate, but no dirt or other funky notes that you can sometimes get from this origin. It was crystal clean. I can best describe it as chocolate-covered grapefruit. It was complex, yet light, and dare I say....haunting. A really amazing coffee that I am interested to try as an espresso roast at a later time.

Tanzania Songea Flatbean

I lurve me some Tanzania coffees. The funny thing is that what most people associate with Tanzania- the peaberry, is generally some mediocre coffee. In fact, I think I read somewhere that Tanzanian coffee trees are no more likely to create peaberries than other areas, but this is more or less a marketing gimmick. Go figure

This particular lot is from Tom at Sweet Marias, and is just delicious. There is something about these coffees that strikes a great balance between some of the East African gaminess and the more balanced coffees from elsewhere in the world.

This coffee wound up in my stash somewhat by accident. I had actually ordered another Tanzanian coffee, the Ngorongoro convent from Sweet Marias, but they sent me this one accidentally. Good luck indeed, since this is tasty stuff. It has great dutch cocoa flavors with a bit of orange rind. This is medium bodies coffee that you can drink all day and be happy. This roast was my standard affair from a few months ago, and provides a very nice City+ roast level to preserve the terroir of Tanzania.

Ethiopia Dry Process Special Selection

This is the second time I have roasted this coffee. This is a naturally fruity coffee with some nice chocolate notes. This time around I wanted to see if I could keep this real sparkly and bright. I tried a lower initial temperature to dry things out a bit without generating any caramelization, and then cranked the heat to max until first crack, hoping to preserve acidity. After that I lowered to my usual temperature until the end.

This came out more or less as I intended. Very bright with pungent tropical fruit aromas. Sticking your nose in the jar was like getting blasted with tamarind. The body was a bit on the thin side, which isn't surprising. In the end, I preferred the original roast (360 degrees for 5 minutes followed by 460 degrees to the end), which actually was the same total roast time, but developed more body and chocolate.

Ethiopia Yrgacheffe Kochere District

Funny, but back in the day I couldn't abide bright coffees like this one, and many Kenyas. The concept of acidity in coffee can be a tough one to appreciate, since if not done carefully it can come across as sourness. If you have ever had a really bad, sour, brutish truck stop coffee you'll know what I mean. Pulling off a City roast that is bright but retains sweetness is one of the hardest things to learn how to do. Of course, once you pull it off you have to convince yourself that you like that style. I happen to like it very much, but not everyone will like coffee that tastes a bit like lemonade, as this one does.

My intent with the profile was to "sneak up" on first and give time for flavors to develop, as well as to ensure that the roast didn't get away from me after first crack. If you apply too much heat, things can go very quickly and you will either have more roast than you targeted for, or you have to end the roast quickly without enough flavor development. This one turned out pretty well.

I actually roasted this as part of an espresso blending experiment, but I set aside a small amount for brewed coffee this morning. This was a City roast, and was very intense. The floral aromas were very strong (hibiscus flowers?), and the taste was reminiscent of lemonade. As the cup cooled, there were milk chocolate notes in the background. Very nice, and more intense than the last time I roasted this.

Sulawesi Grade One Toraja

I have to confess that I generally dislike Indonesian coffees, especially from Sulawesi. Most of them taste like moss and dirt to me, and the harsh roast treatment one needs to burn off some of the funk goes against my preference for lightly roasted coffee. Anyway. this is a coffee from last year that got thrown free into an order I had placed. In the past with other Indonesians (Sumatra, etc.), I have roasted them to preserve some acidity and sparkle, since these are naturally low-acid, brooding coffees. This time around I decided to really draw out the roast to emphasize the funky notes; it went a full 20 minutes before I ended it, which is very unusual. I haven't tried it yet, so Wednesday we'll have to see if it is a thick, syrupy, interesting Sulawesi, or a failed attempt to roast a coffee I am ambivalent about. Either way, it should be preferable to Dunkin Doughnuts.

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Addendum 5/21/08

Well, this one didn't turn out too well. It tasted baked and lifeless to me. This batch was actually roasted in a different room than usual and I had some circuit problems. The temperatures weren't what they should have been, and things really dragged along in the roast. Subsequent batches roasted in my usual room (on the tile floor in my morning room) have been back to usual. Time to call an electrician, I suppose.