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.