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.