New Supplier, New Coffees, and More Data

Over the past few months I have changed my coffee buying habits in a lot of ways. For a while I had been buying things in bulk (5 pounds or more). The end result is that I ended up with a LOT of coffee. It is more cost efficient to deal with some of the green coffee buying clubs compared to retailers, but I had been finding the coffee more hit or miss than I would like. In the end, I decided what I really like is VARIETY and really high quality coffee. I would rather have 10 one-pound lots of really individual and fantastic coffee than 10 pounds of a mediocre coffee, even if it costs me significantly more. Net net: I switched to buying most of my coffee from Sweet Marias, much as I had done when I started out in this hobby years ago.

Anyway, fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I came across a posting from the Green Coffee Buying Club about a discount that was being offered from Roastmasters.com. Happy alarm bells started ringing in my head for a reason that took me a day or two to work out. Turns out that Roastmasters is the green coffee/home roasting endeavor of one of my favorite coffee shops - Willoughbys.

You see, my infatuation with great coffee started at Willoughbys in New Haven, Connecticut during my years as a grad student. I had drunk coffee all my life, but finding Willoughbys was like finding an oasis in the desert. They roasted all their own coffee, had tremendous variety, and the brewed coffee they offered was like being in a different galaxy compared to what I had been drinking. In short, I was hooked, and stopping by the cafe became part of my daily ritual. Some of my nicest memories are of me and my wife hanging out outside the cafe, drinking coffee together, enjoying the sunshine, and having a bagel at breakfast time. Even after I graduated and moved to New York, mail-ordered coffee from Willoughbys was my modus operandi.

Realizing this, it wasn't hard to convince myself to buy some green coffee from them. What is really nice, though I haven't done it myself, is that you can buy the same exact coffee from them roasted, as well as the green beans, to try your roasting chops against them. This is a really nice option for those who are learning to roast.

So far I have tried a few coffees from their selection, and they have been really good. They are a bit on the pricey side, but the shipping from Connecticut is a whole lot faster then buying from Sweet Marias. I will definitely be a repeat customer.

The first coffee I tried was an Ethiopia dry processed coffee, Amaro Gayo. These beans have made the rounds lately, gaining a name for themselves as a really nice cup. I have to agree- a City roast I did was packed full of berry aromas and tastes, with a solid cocoa background. I'm glad I bought a couple of pounds. The next coffee I roasted was a lovely, light Guatemala Antigua by the name of "Finca Columbia". As usual, I was playing around with roast profiles, and I managed to come up with a temperature progression I really liked. Here is the derivative curve, as I discussed in my last post. I should also fess up that I did a rolling average to clean up some of the noise in the data.



The roast profile for this coffee was 80% power to start, dropping to 70% at 360 degrees. I have been looking at these derivative curves for a while, and something jumped out at me suddenly. There is a common trait in this temperature data - the rate of temperature change drops consistently at first crack. Thinking a little more, this makes perfect sense; at first crack the water in the beans is powerfully boiling off (hence the cracking sounds). The heat being applied to the beans at this point is going into this reaction, instead of driving the temperature of the beans up. Similarly, at about 400 degrees or so (about 13.5 minutes in this graph) you see an uptick again. This is the point at which you have a City roast - first crack is ending, and the beans start to expand more before eventually reaching second crack. I have overlaid a lot of roast data, and these characteristics are very consistent. It points toward some interesting ideas in terms of roast control, and I see that other folks have also picked up on this in cyberspace, designing controllers and real-time data collection devices to track this rate of temperature rise.

Here is another example I added to the same chart:

This is a Kenya I roasted, and you can see how these derivative charts are useful. I started using the same exact profile as the Guatemala in the previous example, and noticed that it was taking heat slower than I expected. In retrospect, it isn't surprising since Kenyas are such high-grown, dense seeds. I won't bore you with any specific heat calculations, so never fear....

Anyway, you can see where I increased the heat flow and the subsequent rise of the curve, and again the drop when first crack arrived. These diagnostics are very interesting indeed, and I have some other ideas to make them better. By the way, that Kenya Muranga'a was super-intense, sweet, and fruity. Great stuff.

Engineers Gone Wild

One of the things that has been troubling me for a while is better understanding the differences between roast profiles. A change in how a coffee has been roasted, even when the final temperature is the same, can be dramatic. However, looking at the temperature data doesn't always tell the story. Here is a good example:


This is two Kenya beans that were roasted differently. The differences in the curves are quite subtle even though what I was changing in terms of temperatures, times, and fan speeds were very different. Even roasts that were absolutely terrible, like the experiments I did on high drop temperatures, show barely a difference in the roast curves. Some of this is due to the fact that the scales are large since you cover a sizable temperature range in the roast, but some of it is just subtlety in the temperature profile producing large effects in the taste of the coffee.

I was playing around in Excel the other day trying to determine if I was just fooling myself that I have any control over the roasting process. I decided that I needed to look at the data another way, so I decided to take the derivative of the temperature data and see if anything illuminating happened.

Without getting into the mathematical details, the 1st derivative is essentially the rate of change of temperature as a function of time. Taking the same two coffees, plus a third example, you can see the data this way:


The x-axis is still time, but now the y-axis is the change in temperature per unit of time. You can see when the coffee is dropped in at time=zero, there is a huge temperature drop (this is why it is a negative number), and eventually it recovers to something between 10 and 50 degrees of temperature increase per minute until the end of the roast.

One interesting fact immediately popped out after looking at a few charts like this. On the experiments I did with a higher drop temperature, the rate of temperature decrease when the beans are added is substantially higher than when the coffee is dropped at a lower temperature. I am not sure why this is (or if it matters), but I could imagine that that heating element is still on and going strong for the lower drop temperature, and in the other case the environmental temperature and thermal mass have stabilized such that the heater is not on as much. Anyhoo....

The more interesting data is when you zoom in around the region from first crack to the end of the roast:


Don't worry too much about the noisiness in the data; that is typical of this sort of data analysis and the sample size I have used. A couple of things are interesting here. First, I strive to keep a roughly 10 degree per minute temperature rise from first crack to end of roast. You can see that these roasts are doing pretty well. Looking at the earlier times, you can see my attempts to ramp down the heat as first crack approaches in order to have a nice slow, steady progression through that phase of the roast.

The dots on the graph indicate where first crack began on each roast. You can see that the roast of the Kenya Tambaya had a slower ramp rate at first crack than the other two. This is exactly what was intended. I am trying to develop a roast profile that very gently enters first crack. By looking at these curves, it is evident that it is working. The other two Kenya roasts were roasted with the same profile, hotter going into first crack, and the data shows this clearly.

I'll be looking at these derivative curves more as time goes on. It really hones in on important parts of the roast. Amusingly, I came across some other posts on the web where people are actually building micro-controllers for their roasters that track this same 1st derivative data as a hands-on tool for roaster control. Mediocre minds think alike and all that.

Mathematics aside, you are probably wondering how the coffee tastes with the slow entry into first crack. The initial data is extremely promising - very sweet coffees with well integrated acidity and no grassiness. Stay tuned for more coffee reviews.

Drop Temperature and Ethiopia Birbissa again

If you have paid any attention to the roast profiles I have been posting with the Hottop, you'll see that the coffee is typically getting to about 300 degrees in 5-6 minutes. This drying phase is important, as I have talked about before, and really sets the stage for what the coffee is going to taste like.

There are some hints out there that drying the coffee a bit faster can have positive qualities in the cup (more sweetness/acidity, less woodiness), so I started thinking about how to do this.

Unfortunately, all electrically powered roasters are very underpowered. You really need a gas-fired tool to have a significant effect on the ramp speed. Since a gas powered roaster isn't in the cards for me any time soon, I decided to play around with the temperature at which the coffee is added to the roaster. Letting the roaster pre-heat more, I surmised, would speed things up. It did indeed, but with less than stellar results, I am afraid.

Here is a graph of Ethiopia Birbissa with the two roasts:

You'll see that the roast that had the coffee added at 400 degrees did recover faster, and the earlier part of the roast was overall somewhat shorter. The total roast time and final temperature were the same. Comparing my notes from the original roast to this new one was like reading about two different coffees. While the first one was a fruit bomb, the higher drop temperature roast was woody, flatter, and much less interesting. I am not sure if there was a bit of scorching going on or something else, but it wasn't a positive improvement. I did a second test with some Red Sea Blend at the higher drop temperature and had a similar result. Rather than increasing sweetness and/or acidity, these coffees were flat, uninteresting, and overly woody.

It looks like it is back to the drawing board a bit. I have had some really excellent coffees lately with a more traditional roast profile which I hope to post about soon. Also, I may play around with smaller roast loads to see if the ramp speeds can be modified in that way instead of with the drop temperature.

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.

Ethiopia Dry-Process Birbissa

As I think I have mentioned, there is very little information on "optimum roast profiles" out there. Searching the internet will find tidbits, but it is still a DYI affair for the most part. If I had to sum up the conventional wisdom such as it is, it would be this:

• Keep roast times below 14 minutes or so
• Slow start/fast finish is better than the reverse
• There are three main segments of the roast:

1. The drying segment, from start to about 300 degrees, should be about 3-5 minutes (longer for light roasts and shorter for dark roasts)
2. The segment from 300 degrees to the start of first crack should be as rapid as possible to avoid woody flavors
3. From the onset of first crack to end of roast should be 3-5 minutes. Shorter for drip and longer for espresso

Got all that?

Let's have a look at this roast of Ethiopia Birbissa:


Under 14 minutes? Check.
5 minutes to dry? Check.
Fast ramp to first? Maybe.

Pretty good against the "standard" if I do say so myself. Too bad I totally spaced out during the roast and forgot to lower the heat when I originally wanted to, but in the end it seems to have worked out. I wished I had pulled it a bit sooner since the roast got a bit darker than I had intended, but so be it.

The aroma in the cup was amazing. Pure, pure blueberies all the way. This is really the first coffee I have had that has been so distinct in one berry note, though I jave had many others with grape, strawberry, etc. Very nice. The taste follows suit, but the acidity was lower than I wanted, either due to the coffee or the roast - I am not sure. The body was syrupy and overall this was a nice dry-process cup, but nothing that exciting, IMO.

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.

A New Toy and a New Learning Curve

Well, I ended up going down quite a rathole with my Gene Cafe. I replaced the heater, but things still weren't as they were. As far as I can tell it works ok, but something is just different than before. After roasting a pound or two a week for years, I knew what the coffee from that roaster was going to taste like and what the behavior during the roast would be. For whatever reason, something changed and I was staring down a new learning curve. The coffee just wasn't good enough.

Then the little devious part of my mind started working. "Hey Scotto, if you are going to have to learn something all over again, why not upgrade and do it on a new machine? Expensive? Sure it is. You're worth it, though...." Before I knew it, a Hottop roaster was on its way to me.

I had quite the internal debate over roasters. Everyone is hot on the Behmor roaster (pun intended), and it is certainly a lot cheaper than a Hottop. The deal breaker for me was the fact that you can't control the roast profile. Being a scientific type, I like to be able to control things and tune profiles for different coffees. That, combined with the excellent track record of build quality of the Hottop, as well as external cooling of the beans, won me over.

A few roasts in, and this is definitely a different beast for me. There is fine tuning over the heater power (not just on/off like the Gene) and a variable fan as well. The stock thermocouple is bolted to the rear wall and is slow to react, so that will have to be addressed as well. My first couple of roasts blasted through first crack into second. After that, I learned to anticipate first crack and turn down the heater to gently ease the beans into it. By the way, I can't believe how quiet this thing is and how trivial it is to hear the cracks. There is no mistaking them whatsoever, and the challenge in other roasters of hearing over air blasting or inside a closed drum is gone. What a pleasure!

Here is a look at a recent profile:


You can see that I reduced the heater power at about 7:30 in, and the slow reaction of the measured temperature. Remember that this temperature (the pink line) is the essentially the temperature of the back wall of the roaster, not the bean temperature. I boxed out where 1st crack stopped and ended as well.

Unfortunately each bean is different, and changing power and fan on the fly is difficult, so I ordered a thermocouple probe to be able to get at the temperature of the bean mass itself. Stay tuned for that. I'll also mention how nice it is to dump the beans when you want, so there is no worries about "coasting" after you reach your desired roast level. The external cooling works great.

Most importantly, the coffee has been very good. Roasts in the Hottop are extremely sweet and full bodied, especially good for espresso. I suspect as I get better and driving this thing I will exceed my previous coffee skill by a wide margin.

Costa Rica "La Margarita" Honey

Use of "unconventional" processing (not wet-processed) coffee seems to have flourished in Central America over the past few years. The increased body and fruity flavors associated with leaving the fruity mucilage layer on the coffee seed longer is something that can be very attractive.

That being said, I get the sense that a lot of these coffees have forgotten their origins as really excellent coffees, letting the processing flavors take over too much. This particular coffee is special in that there is a really lively acidity that competes with the miel chewiness/waxiness.

Aromas from the roaster are often harbingers of things to come, and this is no exception. Flowers and malt, all the way. In the cup, that floral note continues, with more malt, milk chocolate, and some nuts. It is juicy and supremely drinkable, a honey coffee that hasn't forgotten its origins as a great Central.

Brazil Ipanema Tree-Dried Process

Why do I keep buying Brazilian coffees? They all taste like one-dimensional, ashy coffees to me, with the exception of my beloved, Poco Fundo. Mmm, Poco Fundo (insert Homer Simpson voice)....

Anyway, I have been doing a lot of roasting for espresso lately, and I am always on the lookout for interesting coffees to add in. This one caught my eye because of the "tree dried" moniker, and the allusion to Oreo cookies in the review at Sweet Marias. Recall that I had tried a tree-dried coffee before, and it was interesting, so I bit for a pound.

I roasted this twice. The first time was in my standard treatment:

For some reason, this coffee raced from 1st to 2nd crack and got away from me. It ended up as a Vienna roast. In a second session, I blended it (pre-roast) with some Uganda Bugisu, and that was a more normal behavior during the roast.

As espresso, this was indeed redolent of an Oreo cookie. You got that chocolate cookie thing going on, with a very unusual creaminess to the body and taste that reminds you of that cookie center, which is of course nothing more than vegetable shortening and sugar.... It is certainly an interesting effect, but I found the whole thing a bit one-dimensional. It lacked that dynamism (is that a word?) that you get from a great dry-pricessed coffee, that core of spices and leather that keeps things interesting. Even blended with the Uganda, I just didn't find it interesting. Oh, well, another Brazil bites the dust. I am done with this origin, with the one exception.

Kenya Kiambu Peaberry -Ndumberi Coop

There are a few things that really make you stop and appreciate life. The first blooming tulips in spring, taking a quiet evening walk, etc. To this, I will add the aroma of freshly roasted, quality Kenya coffee. A lot of people like to talk about resting coffee after roasting for a day or more, but to me this is just staling it. If you want to try something special, brew a vacuum pot of a really good Kenya coffee about 12 hours after you roast it. The aromas are so piercing, so floral, so sweet that there is almost nothing else like it.

Coffee is a seasonal crop, and I went some time without Kenyas in my stash. This coffee reminded me how much I missed it. Word on the street is that 2009 is going to be a great year for coffees from this origin, and I am looking forward to it in a big way.

After roasting a lot of coffees darker than I otherwise might have, working on the blend I previously talked about, I wanted to get a nice, crisp, light roast on this one:



The aromas of the grounds, and in the cup, are pure muesli: sweet toasted grains, brown sugar, and dried fruits. It is a heady aroma, almost intoxicating in its sweetness. The taste follows, with refreshing acidity, some green grape, and a chocolate note that gets more prevalent as the coffee ages a bit. For me Kenyas change very rapidly after roasting. Capturing that initial burst of aroma and fruit before the roast and chocolate notes take over is one of the purest pleasures of roasting your own, and something you can't get in storebought coffee. What a great cup.

The Mod Blend

Normally I eschew blending of any sort, with the exception of espresso. Part of the allure of specialty coffee for me is that uniqueness of each coffee, how it represents the terroir of where it is from, etc. That being said, there are some cases where coffees aren't complete, so to speak, and benefit from some supporting characters.

Yesterday I went to a BBQ with some good friends. A few weeks before, I set out to put together a blend from things I had on hand in order to give away the coffee as a goodie bag to the attendees. It was surprisingly challenging.

I decided that this was to be a rich blend with the majority of coffees near the Full City regime in order to have a "crowd pleaser" quality, with some interesting twists. I roasted up some Tanzania and some Sumatra I had, and first tasted them individually. The Tanzania was funky and rustic with some melon notes, and the Sumatra was super sweet molasses. My expectation was that the Sumatra would win as the heart of the blend.

Interestingly, when combined 50:50, I didn't like it. The coffees clashed way too much. I gradually started to play around with ratios, and finally found something really nice at 4 parts Tanzania to every 2 of Sumatra. The sweetness of the Sumatra was just too powerful, and had to be toned down.

At this point, I had a decent base blend, but I wasn't happy with the aroma, the body, or the quality of the cup as it cooled. Looking through my coffee stashed, I came across some nice Mexican Chiapas, which has great body and a fruity taste. Adding a small amount (1/4 the amount of the Tanzania) provided a really nice fruity background without being overbearing, and helped the body quite a bit as the cup cooled. Finally, I played around with some intense Ethiopian dry processed coffee as a spice, and found that a minuscule amount was enough to really show in the aroma without being detectable in the taste.

So, the finally tally? 4:2:1:0.5 Tanzania:Sumatra:Chiapas:Ethiopia. The Tanzania and Sumatra were roasted to the verge of second crack (or just into it), and the other coffees lightly roasted to a City+ roast. The "Mod Blend" is aromatic berries in the aroma, rich, unctuous body with some funkiness, and a really interesting interplay of melons and berries as the cup cools. I am quite pleased indeed.


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Note: I am playing around with a cooking blog. We'll see if it lasts. You can check out my trials of recipes from Cook's Illustrated magazine here.

Ethiopia Wet Process Bonko

I broke down recently and ordered a few more coffees which I don't need. My stash had run out of wet processed Ethiopian coffees, and there were a few interesting ones around, so....

On any given week my favorite coffees change a lot. One week it will be syrupy dry processed coffees, the next a light Mexican bean, and so on. However, I have a soft spot in my heart for wet processed Ethiopian coffees. I love the clarity of them, the intensely sweet citrus notes, so different from the brooding and fruited notes of their dry-processed brethren.

This coffee, with the delightful appellation of "Bonko" (a coffee mill) was roasted after a less successful roast of another WP coffee whose notes got lost in an unsuccessful attempt to get my roast log into a better electronic format. So much for progress. Here is the roast:

I tried to keep things fast and light, and was rewarded with a really spectacular coffee. In a vacuum pot the next day, it was so clean, so fruity and refreshing that it brought a smile to my face. There is no sourness or grassiness to it, despite the relatively light roast. There are lemons and graham intensely in the aroma, and that carries directly into the cup. As it cools, there is a touch of anise, surrounded with a sweetness that is so appealing. The acidity is bracing, but never jarring, playing so nicely with the citrus notes. I could drink this all day long. Highly recommended.

Uganda Bugisu Kawomera

The previous version of Uganda Bugisu I have been drinking for a while has been running low. That coffee has become the base for a lot of espresso blending I have been doing; I love the earthy, malty complexity of it. It also makes a delicious cup of drip coffee.

Since good Uganda coffees can be hit or miss in terms of availability, I snatched 5 pounds of this Kawomera when it became available. This is a really excellent cup.

The roast was fairly standard:


The sounds got a bit hard to hear, but I stopped the roast at what I believe were the first few snaps of second crack. The taste confirms this. I really nailed this roast, if I do say so myself. The hint of roast taste was perfectly integrated with the coffee, without being overpowered or carbonized.

There is rustic maple sugar in the aroma, which carries over into the taste. There is a thick body, but the overall effect is still refreshing. This is not a coffee you take one sip of and put aside because it is too rich. As the cup cools a bit, there is the most interesting cherry cordial taste that becomes prominent. It is a very sweet cup, with lingering butterscotch hints. All and all excellent - that cherry taste is fascinating! I'll be very curious to try this as espresso later in the week.

One other point I should make. This is a good example of a roast/coffee that is taken rather dark (compared to what I normally roast), but still has tons of origin flavors. It goes to show you that a good roasted can take coffees to both ends of the roast spectrum while maintaining the identity of the coffee.

Tanzania Organic AB Hope Project

The bad news is that this isn't the best Tanzanian coffee I have had in the past year or so. The good news is that it is a decent cup.

I have been trying to reduce my green coffee stash for the past few months with decent success. People at work have benefited greatly from this, since they are the victims of my coffee every week. When I saw a new Tanzania coffee crop up (pun intended)recently, I grabbed 5 pounds to try. Tanzania may well be my favorite coffee origin, so it was very hard to resist.

The roast was a standard affair:


This took a long time to get to first crack, which was odd. I didn't observe any temperature issues, so perhaps it was the bean itself. Grinding the beans, they looked quite light - this is a City+ roast - nowhere near second crack.

Drinking this over the past week, it is lighter bodied than I expected. It is balanced, with decent acidity. There is a dense nuttiness as well that I don't think I have encountered in a Tanzania coffee. In the background, there lurks some funk/jute/leather that reminds you that this is an African bean. It isn't unpleasant, but there is a "wilder" element to it. A day or two post-roast, a creamy cantaloupe character emerges, splashed with milk chocolate.

All in all, this is a nice cup, but it didn't blow me away. I need to play with the roast level a bit to see if I can improve it. I think a tad more roast might work well.

Guatemala Oriente Dry Process

There is definitely a trend for Central American coffee producers to be trying their hands at more traditional methods of production such as dry processing. I have had some excellent examples of these over the past couple of years. This was a coffee that came and went at Sweet Marias, and I didn't get a chance to order any. I ended up trading some green coffee with someone else to get some of this to try. It is strange stuff.

Here is the roast, though it doesn't tell the story:


This coffee presented a conundrum in that it seems to race from 1st crack to 2nd very quickly. I rely on the sound of the cracks as a key indicator of how the coffee is roasting, and this one made all sorts of sounds that were hard to differentiate. Luckily the results were good, but I have honestly no idea what roast level this coffee is. Most likely Full City. Actually, I have roasted this coffee twice and had the same experience.

For those who have tried the truly bizarre Anokhi coffee, which is a different coffee variety altogether (coffea liberica v. coffea arabica), this Guatemala coffee is quite similar, but not nearly as intense.

The best analogy I can offer is Frankenberry cereal. There are odd berry notes galore, but not the clean fruit you get from say a Kenya, but fermented, slightly "off" fruit. There are some grainy notes and chocolate as well. The overall effect is slightly offputting, but not altogether unpleasant. I am glad I had a chance to try it, but I have no desire to have any more. For those who are bored by coffee, here is one to wake you up.

Espresso Blends #4 - #6

This espresso blending thing is a lot more complicated than I originally thought. I am finding that even subtle changes can have a large effect on the shot. Iteration #3 was the best yet. As a reminder, it was the following:

50% Uganda Bugisu AA
25% Panama Lerida Estate "Miel"
10% Aged Sumatra
15% Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley '07

For the next variation, I decided to replace the Uganda base with some Brazilian coffee, in this case the Fazenda Barreiro that I did not care for as a single origin espresso. All other coffees and percentages were the same.

Net: yuck. I had low expectations, but this was terrible. I just hate that particular Brazil coffee. It just goes to show that you should take other people's recommendations with a grain of salt. This blend was 1-dimensional, woody dreck.

For blend #5, I decided to return to the successful #3 and try for a fruitier coffee. I upped the Ethiopia amount, and lost the aged Sumatra:

50% Uganda Bugisu AA
25% Panama Lerida Estate "Miel"
25% Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley '07

I also went a tad lighter in this roast, stopping at the onset of second crack. This was actually quite a nice blend. There was a lot of fruitiness in there, and the corresponding acidity level was increased as well. Shots of Misty Valley by itself remind me of the cherry liquor-filled chocolates that you can find, but in this blend it was tamed by the gentle earthiness of the other coffees. This blend rates as "very good", though it might be a bit intense for some people. Cappuccinos were interesting, coming out like strawberry milkshakes.

The last experiment was to swap out the Panama "miel" coffee for another coffee. I had some Costa Rica El Puente Caturra "Miel" hanging around, so I gave it a try in the "#3" blend:

50% Uganda Bugisu AA
25% Costa Rica El Puente Caturra "Miel"
10% Aged Sumatra
15% Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley '07

This again proved that if you don't like a coffee by itself, like the El Puente, don't waste your time blending it. This variation was flat, with some weird "off" notes to it.

I have blend #7 queued up at the moment. Stay tuned.

Espresso Blends #2 and #3

Last time I talked about some espresso blending I am doing, or rather green bean blending for espresso. Here is where I started with Blend #1:

50% Uganda Bugisu AA
25% Mexico LaJoya bourbon
10% Aged Sumatra
15% Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley '07

This was a nice blend, but perhaps a bit too acidic from the Mexican coffee. For blend #2, I decided to add some more murky complexity by adding some Yemeni coffee, in this case Yemen Moka Mattari.

50% Uganda Bugisu AA
15% Mexico LaJoya bourbon
10% Yemen Moka Mattari
10% Aged Sumatra
15% Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley '07

This was roasted into second crack for about 30 seconds. As you might imagine from looking at the ingredient list, it produced some seriously rich, intense espresso. It was similar to the Moka Kadir blend that Sweet Maria's produces. Rich and spicy, with most of the acidity of blend #1 gone. I particularly liked this as straight espresso. In milk, however, I wasn't as thrilled. A lot of the complexity was gone and things weren't cutting through that well

Which brings us to iteration #3. Now I went back to #1 and replaced all the Mexican coffee with a "miel" coffee from Panama. Remember that "miel" means honey, and is a wet hulling process sort of in between wet and dry processing. It increases body and fruitiness at the expense of acidity and clarity.

50% Uganda Bugisu AA
25% Panama Lerida Estate "Miel"
10% Aged Sumatra
15% Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley '07

This was a super sweet espresso. The crema was incredible - super thick and mousse-like. I really liked this one in milk; it is perhaps the best of the bunch. Ristretto shots of this were particularly luscious, while normal shots were very good but not quite as stellar.

Lots of interesting data here; more experimentation is clearly needed.

Espresso Blend #1

OK, if you read this, you need to promise me when I make it big in the coffee world, you won't steal my secrets. Then again, how do you know I am telling you the real blends? Mwa ha ha ha....

Ahem. Back to this post. As I mentioned previously, I have been playing around with coffees for espresso extraction. I have sampled a lot of stuff individually as so-called "single origin" (SO)espresso to get a sense of individual personalities. I'll remind you that the high-pressure extraction of espresso does strange things to coffee. Tasting something as drip coffee doesn't necessarily translate into the small cup.

I decided that I wanted to start with the excellent Uganda Bugisu AA I have. As a SO espresso, it is earthy, sweet, and supremely malty. It also does a good job cutting through milk. I decided to use that as a base and came up with the following:

50% Uganda Bugisu AA
25% Mexico LaJoya bourbon
10% Aged Sumatra
15% Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley '07

I was looking for something with decent complexity, very sweet, and subtly fruity. I roasted it just a few snaps into second crack about 5 days ago and had a chance to try it today for the first time. Not bad at all for a first attempt!

The straight shot was a bit more acidic than I planned for, but not unpleasantly so. It was fairly well balanced, medium bodied, with a long, lingering woody finish. I assume that is the result of the aged coffee. In milk, the maltiness of the Uganda came through, but things were a bit more muted than I would like.

There are a couple of ways I want to take this next time. First, I think swapping out a part of the Mexico for some Yemeni coffee would add some additional complexity and reduce the acidity. Also, I think substituting the Mexico for a pulp-natural Central American coffee would add more sweetness and some more body.

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Update made to Ethiopia Korate Wet Process

Brazil Pocos de Caldas - Fazenda Barreiro

Have you ever gotten really excited about something based on its description and then ended up being totally disappointed after you got it? That pretty much sums up my experience with this coffee. I have been doing a lot of thinking about espresso lately, and trying to come up with a blend of my own. Before even getting to that, however, I have been exploring individual coffees to get a taste picture in my mind, hoping that will make things easier.

Quoting Tom from SweetMarias:

"... This is a very unusual and complex coffee, and has won quite a few accolades: BSCA and COE in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, and Illy award in 2007. The dry fragrance is has strong nut tones, sunflower seed, and savory qualities. There are hints of fresh leather, which perhaps doesn't seem like something you want to smell in your coffee, but it is very attractive in this cup! The aromatics have hints of ripe muscat grape and a bit of banana sweetness, as well as hazelnut roast tonality. Cup flavors are so unique, with toasted almond, savory spice, honey and bee pollen sweetness. The cup is very dense, oily, thick. I get a raw sunflower seed flavor, and hints of olive oil. The overall flavor profile is concentrated in the middle ranges, without high acidic effect or (at my City+ cupping roast) dark, pungent deep tones. As it cools, it seems thicker and thicker. I start to get a single-malt scotch flavor from the coffee, with a tiny suggestion of roasted red pepper. For me, this is a unique flavor experience overall, that might have aspects of Indonesian coffee (low acidity, rustic sweetness), even Aged Sumatra (leathery hints), but is also unique when I line it up against other natural and pulp-natural Brazils on the cupping table. I can easily pick it out of the line-up every time in blind cupping."

Wow - sounds awesome, doesn't it? I picked up a pound and roasted it a few snaps into second crack:

This had some seriously dry, leathery aromas during roasting.

Bottom line - I wasn't impressed. In fact, I felt a bit let down. As espresso, I found it quite one-dimensional. Low acid, dry and leathery, but without any interesting character to it. I played around with temperature, time, and grind, and couldn't find a good operating point. As drip coffee it was a bit better - waxy bittersweet chocolate was the theme. I am just not a fan of Brazil coffees with the exception of Poco Fundo, I suppose.

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"