Peet's Coffee

It has been quite a while since I have posted - I've been roasting but I have had nothing new to report so I have been silent. However, a few minutes ago I opened a bag of Major Dickason's Blend coffee from Peet's Coffee & Tea company. I have to admit that as biased as I am against store bought coffee this is a very good cup of Joe. It is smooth, rich, well balanced, and most of all it tastes good - very good.

While nothing beats the freshness and flavor of a self roasted coffee, this is a very good bean to have on hand for those rare days that you do not have any beans roasted.

Sulawesi

Kalossi

I just roasted the very last of my Sulawesi. What I discovered was that I like this bean roasted to just into the Second Crack. I have been roasting it very dark as I prefer a French Roasted coffee but this bean seems to exhibit a flavor not noticeable when dark roasted.

When roasted just into the Second Crack this coffee smells rich when ground and its flavor possess a hint of sweet-wine flavor. Have fun with your own roasting experiences and let me know how they turn out.

Peaberry Showdown

Papua New Guinea - Kimel Peaberry
Kenya - Kahura Peabery
Tanzania - Kigoma Peaberry

When only one can be the best, I am on the job, and I put the coffee to the test. The other day my wife suggested that we do a taste test and explore the three types of Peaberry coffees that I currently have. So we did. She and I both sampled all three types, and we rated them according to Aroma, Flavor, Body, Complexity, and Uniqueness. Here were the results.

*****Kimel Peaberry*****

Aroma: John- 7 Megan- 8
Flavor: John- 8 Megan- 8
Body: John- 6 Megan- 4
Complexity: John- 4 Megan- 4
Uniqueness: John- 10 Megan- 10
TOTALS: John- 35 Megan- 26 (61)

*****Kahura Peaberry*****
Aroma: John- 7 Megan- 6
Flavor: John- 8 Megan- 6
Body: John- 5 Megan- 7
Complexity: John- 4 Megan- 8
Uniqueness: John- 10 Megan- 6
TOTALS: John- 34 Megan- 35 (69)

*****Kigoma Peaberry*****
Aroma: John- 9 Megan- 5
Flavor: John- 7 Megan- 7
Body: John- 4 Megan- 8
Complexity: John- 7 Megan- 7
Uniqueness: John- 10 Megan- 7
TOTALS: John- 37 Megan- 34 (71)

Since I am writing this I will describe my experience as my wife will have to speak for herself.

As I roasted these beans I had a tough time hearing them crack and so I ended up with 3 different levels of roast with each batch. The Kimel was Dark Roasted, the Kahura was darker roasted, and the Kigoma was sweating oil when I was finished with it. (Mmmmmm - French Roasted coffee)

I liked the Kigoma best for its Aroma. This one jumped out at me but It is completely possible that it had the best aroma because it was the darkest roasted. But, for whatever reason, it was a great Aroma.

The Kimel and the Kahura were the best tasting as they both demonstrated a complex Flavor that made you happy to be alive. This is not to say that the Kigoma made you wish for death but either my palatte was tired by time I got to it or it was not as good as the rest as far as Flavor went.

The Kimel seemed to have the best Body but then after loking at how the Body numbers dropped with the progress of the sampling I suspect that my subjectivity may have been in question.

With Complexity I was looking for definite taste attributes like floral, woody, and nutty. In this arena the Kigoma stood out as it had a definite nutty/woody attribute in its flavor.

I scored each of the 3 coffees with a 10 for Uniqueness because each of them are wholly unique from regular Arabica or Robusta coffees. I did not compare them against one another but with coffee in general.

By the end of our testing my favorite wound up being Kigoma with a combined score of 37 points. I attribute this to it having the best Aroma and only being one point below the rest in Flavor. So there you have it, if you are ever at the coffee shop and the person behind the counter ever asks you what type of Peaberry you would like, look then straigt in the eye and proudly proclaim that you would like a cup od Kigoma Peaberry... (snort) I'm only kidding, none of the coffee shops around you are sophisticated enough to actually serve anything but the swill that you are used to. (snort, snort)

Moving on... Upon completion of the testing I simply blended all three types of the Peaberry together and made a super tasting brew with an awesome body. When blending coffees it will ussually combine the good and the bad and the resultant coffee is either one or the other but since none of these three was ever bad the result of the blend is that the strengths of each Peaberry strengthened the experience of the whole cup.

Until next time - Happy Roasting!!!

You know? If I were to start a coffee shop I would sell coffees by individual type, roast the green beans while you wait, grind it in a fancy-shmantcy Burr grinder, and serve it to you in a one cup French Press as you sit in an over-stuffed chair with your favorite book. Aww, who'm I kidding? That sort of coffee shop would be too expensive to own and operate. Oh well, one can dream can't he?

Salimba

Zimbabwe

As I sit here, my face is wet with tears for I weep at how good this coffee is.

I French-Roasted this batch and this Salimba is as good as anything that I have ever tasted. Its flavor is traditional yet not at all typical. Uh oh, I feel the bubblings of artistic expression rising in my soul.......

Hath not doth my soul to praise,
Your glory for I am made,
Creation cries out for salvation
And with Christ (and I believe coffee) you did save.

Phew, that needed to come out.

Anyway, if I were to start a coffee supply company, I am confident that this would be my number one seller and I am pretty sure that you would be a loyal customer.

Sulawesi

Kalossi

This coffee is not the Backwoods Chocolate Smothered dessert at the end of the meal it is more like the wake-up at the crack of dawn and watch the sun rise over the lake while the camp fire brews your first cup of morning glory. It does not make you glad for taste buds but rather this coffee roasted to a very dark French Roast wipes the cobwebs away and makes you aware that God did a good thing when he created them in the first place.

If you roast you own beans, this is a bean well worth getting. If you don't then all I can say is that I am very sorry for you.

I sure am sad that I am not in the business of selling coffee.

Kigoma Peaberry

Tanzania

My wife suggested that I roast this batch well past the second crack but just before charcoal. She said that the peaberry always seem to have a green taste and she wanted to know if French roasting the beans would knock the green out of it. It did -and how.

This roast was so good that I thought I had a professional roaster make these beans. The only thing missing was the snobbish barista, the calming brown colors, and the college beatnik sitting in the corner trying to look cool with his Oxford Dictionary of Modern Poetry. Had Little Orphan Annie's Daddy WarBucks tasted this brew he would have commissioned me to full-time employment in the making of coffee beans.

This bean makes roasting easy and encourages the lowly roaster to have great aspirations of hope among a world that is too easily tricked into drinking bad coffee because of the cream, sugar, and flavors galore.

If I were in the business of roasting beans, I would sell this coffee at a premium - and you would buy it.

Pluma - Don Edwardo

Mexico

You smell the lilacs in the late spring and you know that the world is alive... Yeah, this Pluma is sort of like that. However, it is the flavor of this brew that awakens the senses - not necessarily the aroma. The flavor invites you to life and blankets your taste-buds with a shawl that wards of the south wind that sometimes threatens a world of summer.

Oh how I wish I was in the business of roasting coffee, because this coffee would make you happy you were alive for another season of life.

Marcala (Organic)

Honduras

When the first rays of sunlight caress your face and you smell nature before any deer have awoke to take the day's first drink from the lake - you will only then most intimately know this coffee. It's aroma can only be described by feeling and its flavor can only be realized with the methodical rhythm of Argent's Hold Your Head Up. This is a coffee that demands to be experienced and begs to be beheld.

I sure wish I sold this stuff so that you too could experience the very best of God's glorious creation.

Mocca Matari - 5

Yemen

Like school kids in the lunch-line on pizza day - this coffee made me happy.

The aroma was rich, thick, and warm like an evening fire. It was robust with nostalgia and made you say "wow". The flavor was as committed as Little Ann was committed to Old Dan. Thick and solid this coffee did not let you down, chasing down the ring tails of satisfaction.

That said, the Mocca Matari is a demanding mutt - as fickle as a cat. Some beans you can roast without too much attention and still brew a cup that contains the flavor that you expected. However, the Mocca in this bean will not be realized until it has been roasted quite dark - well into the second crack. Though the flavor is good at the cinnamon level the potential will still be in the bean waiting for the maturity that comes only with a fuller roast.