Columbia "Dos Payasos de Tolima"

Well, the few readers of this blog won't be surprised that life intruded once again on poor Scotto, making blogging very infrequent. Rest assured that roasting and drinking coffee has not gone by the wayside; in fact, it has gotten even more interesting. More on that later.

I have been in stash-reduction mode for green coffee for quite a long time. Recently, I finally got around to ordering some more coffee from Sweet Maria's after a long hiatus. Boy, did I forget how stellar the beans are. I buy a fair amount of beans from places like the Green Coffee Buying Club and such, largely because it is inexpensive. It is possible to get good, and occasionally, very good coffees from there, but the coffee from Sweet Marias is uniformly suberb. It is a bit more expensive, but you are essentially paying Tom to be your personal taster and quality-control guy.

This Columbia is a revelation for a fatigued palate. I roasted it inside (Yay! No more freezing garage with the Hottop - more on that another time) and produced a roast curve as follows:

You can see the power levels (the fan was set at 25% for the entire roast) and the boxed area where 1st crack was.

Roasting inside is taking some adjusting in profiles, as the behavior is different from the cold garage. Things were a bit quick at the end, but the coffee was still excellent. It is sweet, sweet grapes all the way in this one. There is a perfect, sparkling acidity, raisins, and an unctuous quality to the coffee that lingers forever. If you like Kenyas and such, you should definitely check this one out. It is an intense coffee, and one of the best Columbias I have had in a while, perhaps since the Cerulean Warbler.

Colombia Finca Buenavista -Carlos Imbachi Microlot

Boy, did I forget how hard stainless steel is to machine with home tools. Over the weekend I set out to install a thermometer probe into my Hottop, following the basic method outlined here. Sounds easy, right? Well, let's just say that much cursing ensued as I tried to drill through things with my electric drill. Anyway, its in there, giving me access to the actual bean mass temperature instead of just the Hottop's sensor which is bolted to the back wall. And a good thing, too! See:

This was a roast of a Columbian bean that I had ruined (and never blogged about, of course) with my Gene Cafe when it was having troubles. The blue line is from the Hottop readout and the pink from my new thermoprobe. Obviously, one should pay attention to the pink line, which is a fast acting K-type thermocouple buried in the rotating beans. You'll notice the temperature drop when you add the beans which is not sensed by the stock thermocouple, and the eventual crossover of the curves.

I highlighed the times where I played with the heater power to slow things down, and I also boxed out the area where first crack started and ended from about 10:45 to 13:30. What I was attempting to do was slow down the rate of heat transfer going into first crack in order to improve flavor development and have enough time after the end of first and before the onset of second crack. You can see that I stalled things out a bit where the pink curve flattens around 11 minutes in, and eventually it ramps up again later until I dropped the beans into the cooling tray. I need to play with the heat and fan settings more to have a slow but steady temperature increase instead of this stalling behavior. This roaster is like driving a Ferrari compared with the very slow reacting Gene Cafe. Still, you clearly need to anticipate things by a minute or so given the electric heating on the Hottop. Lots of room for improvement, that's for sure.

Anyway, the coffee was a nice City+ roast and was actually a decent cup. There were very intense fruity notes both in the aroma and taste. I called it tamarind in my notes, but I see that Tom from Sweetmarias called it guava. Your choice. The acidity was nicely controlled, and the cup was quite refreshing. As it cooled, there was a bit of a flavor change that is hard to describe, but I attribute it to stalling out the roast a bit and having things drag on too long. Let's call it "flat". Most people wouldn't pick up on it, but after roasting a lot of coffee I am starting to be able to tell what went wrong.

My next few efforts will be to speed things up a tad, and keep playing with the heat settings.

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.