2 Huge Truths About Coffee Flavor – And 1 Giant Lie (Part 3 of 3)

2 Huge Truths About Coffee Flavor – And 1 Giant Lie (Part 1 of 3)

2 Huge Truths About Coffee Flavor – And 1 Giant Lie (Part 2 of 3)

If you have been reading all of the posts in this series (see links above) then you know already that coffee shouldn’t taste the same when it’s grown in different areas – it is just not likely.  Coffee from different locations will necessarily taste different because there are too many variables (such as soil, water, mulching, climate, and sun) for two crops from two different locations to ever taste the same.  If you can taste any coffee and tell which of the national chain roasters has roasted and distributed it, then you taste a branded flavor that they have added – and not the pure coffee itself.  Sorry, that’s just how it goes.  People who drink their coffee black should be able to easily recognize the coffee that they are drinking as coming from this chain or that one.  If you travel across the country and get a black coffee from your favorite brewer and it tastes like it did a thousand miles back home then you have to wonder – How is this possible?  Well, the reality is that it is not likely – unless some sort of signature flavor has been added to the beans.

This then is the Giant Lie of Coffee:  what you think is simply plain black coffee is often just the cheapest bean at the market flavored with the coffee roaster’s branded signature flavor.  For a purist like me, this matters.  Does this make me mad?  No.  Do I still get my coffee from my favorite chain while I am on the road?  Yes.  So why then do I bring it up?  Because I want you to love your coffee for just the coffee itself, and this can be hard to do unless you get fresh-roasted, single-origin coffee with nothing added – not even raosting oils that accidently flavor the beans.

So the next time you have coffee (maybe even now as you read this), I invite you consider how pure and natural the coffee is that you are drinking.  If it matters to you, then I invite you to join me, and together we can seek to experience the most perfect natural-tasting coffees from around the world.

Gene Cafe'

A week ago I did two coffee roasting demos and I featured the Bali Blue Moon.  I used the professional Gene Café roaster and the coffee turned out much different from my first experience roasting in the popcorn poppers.  In my opinion the coffee was under-roasted in the first demo and over-roasted in the second.  Both seemed a touch bitter to me but my guests were gracious enough to tell me that the coffee was good – at least better than the Maxwell House they had just drank.  So I decided that I need to roast a couple batches and get to know what was going on.

The first batch that I roasted was called a "High-Roast" (464 deg. F: 15 min.) in the Gene Café.  It was on the under-roasted side and left the bean rawer than it was roasted.  When I ground it and brewed it we (me and my wife) sampled it and found it to be true to its description of very fruity in flavor.  My wife commented that it reminded her of an Orange Zinger tea.  Indeed we could identify that this bean was actually grown between tangerine and orange trees.  However, my wife and I not being fans of Orange Zinger tea ended up dumping the pot and moving on to roast #2.

This second batch I moved up a notch on the roasting scale to "City-Roast" (482 deg. F: 17 min.) which was enough more to take the coffee from under-roasted to almost perfectly roasted (I say almost perfectly roasted because I don't know what perfect is in the world of coffee).  This coffee tasted balanced with only undertones of the fruitiness (like seeing something in the periphery) from the previous roast.  The natural nuttiness of this bean blended with the fruit dominance and made the fruit as though it were just a memory and an ever so slight chocolate note on the finish and after taste.   

What is the difference between roasting with the popcorn poppers and the fancy Gene Café?  There are two main ones as I see it.  First, roasting with the popcorn poppers is more of an art form as the result is singularly dependent upon a human to listen, look, and determine when the beans have been roasted enough.  When roasting with the Gene Café the human need only set the controls for the result they desire and then they are free to push start to begin the automatic process.  And second, I consider the two roasting methods best described as the "Petal-to-the-Metal Roasting" versus the "Oh-Dear-Heaven-I-Think-My-Grandma-is-Behind-the-Wheel Roasting" methods.  With the PttM method, the heat is full and furious and takes about 7 minutes to roast a batch of green beans and the ODHITMGiBtW method is well, about 30-35 minutes from start to finish per batch.  Granted, the ODHITMGiBtW method makes about twice what the PttM method does per batch but since I am the type of person who would rather drive 50 miles out of my way to avoid 5 minutes of stop-and-go traffic can you guess which method I prefer?

So, as it turns out, I have tried the Bali Blue Moon three or four different ways now and the result has always been a different.  Coffee is truly like wine tasting in that there is much to be explored in each cup if only we will take the time to go spelunking.  Please, the next time you have a cup of coffee consider exploring your cup and be determined to experience it fully.

A New Experience

Please do not worry, I am now and will always be a coffee drinker, but I need to discover a fun experience for my non-coffee drinking clients.  Today, I made a pot of tea with something called a "flowering" tea.  This is a hand-stitched bunch of teas that are sewn into a ball and when boiling water is added it slowly absorbed the water and blooms into a beautiful flower. After 4-5 minutes the tea is ready to be drank.

This was a fun experience for the whole family because the kids liked watching it bloom as well as tasting the result.  The tea seems to me to be what tea should be but the experience made it something that I would have loved to have done on a first-date. ;-)

On another note.  There is still time to visit www.anchorbayroasts.com (the landing page) and find the easter egg to be put in the drawing for the free coffee.  Good luck!

I was a Beauty Queen Doing a Pee-Pee Dance!

I saw the UPS truck across the way and I think I was literally experiencing shortness of breath in anticipation.  I am waiting for my new coffee roaster to be delivered and I feel like a contender waiting to be crowned Miss America.  As I stood watching the UPS truck driving around I was rocking from foot to foot in a little anticipatory dance.  When it arrived it brought something else - not the roaster - but happy I was to get my new packaging stuff to make individual packets of coffee.

BTW.  Anchor Bay Roasts now has its own website - www.anchorbayroasts.com!  While it is still very much a work in progress (Dreamweaver is giving me some fits) I'll be adding more content as time goes on.  I also have a new email - john@ that domain name.

Syphon Brewer

Today I received a new coffee making apparatus. It is most commonly referred to as the "vacuum" method of brewing coffee but it is technically called a "Coffee Syphon."

I waited like an anxious little child who was anticipating his birthday presents for this coffee maker to come today. You would think I was more mature than that - I'm not. I received the package by UPS around 5pm and I was tasting my first brew at 5:40pm.

There are 5 major pieces to this system: The bottom carafe, the infusion chamber, the filter, the infusion chamber holder, and a big old coffee measure/spoon. The photo to the left shows that there is a black top on the infusion chamber but I took this picture before I read the directions and learned that the top is actually a stand to hold the infusion chamber (as seen in the photo below).

I made the first pot of coffee and it was fun to watch and experience. I saw how the "vacuum" actually worked. We made this one of our home-school science experiments and we had an impromptu science class.

I was not sure how to make the coffee so I stuck with the way that I use to make coffee in the French-Press. That is, I used a ratio of 1:0.042 liquid ounce of water to ground roasted coffee. When the coffee was finished it was noticeably weak but it tasted fine for someone who likes their coffee weak.

I then made a second pot using the suggested amounts on the side of the box which is 1:0.1. This made a stronger cup and it was indeed flavorful but still too weak for my pallet. However, this was still a very good and solid cup of coffee.

The process what pretty straight forward. The water is put in the bottom carafe and the infusion chamber with the filter is seated on top. As the water is heated it rises up through a tube into the cooler infusion chamber. 60 seconds after all the water has transferred into the infusion chamber the heat is turned off and the bottom carafe gradually becomes cooler than the upper infusion chamber which means that the carafe now has a void that wants to be filled and draws the coffee from the infusion chamber back down through the filter into the carafe. Once this process is complete the upper infusion chamber is then unseated from the carafe and placed to cool in the stand (that I thought was a top). The whole process takes about 10 to 15 minutes.

While the coffee was not (as I already stated) as good to me as my French Press coffee, it was, however, still a good cup of coffee. It tasted to me like coffee made in the percolator but because the experience was more fun I think I prefer the taste of this coffee better. However, I will have to have a side-by-side comparison - but that is another post.

Tonight I have a bunch of coffee in a glass pitcher in the fridge that I will be microwaving and drinking tomorrow. Yes, I might be a coffee-snob but I am still too cheap to dump good coffee.

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.

An Experience Experiment - Pt. 3

An Experience Experiment - Pt. 1
An Experience Experiment - Pt. 2

RESULTS:
Each method of coffee brewing was evaluated by our two evaluators (again, the scientifically challenged wife and me) for six different attributes. Since there were just 4 brews, each one was evaluated against the other on a 1-4 scale (1 being first or best & 4 being least or worst)

• It is worthy of note that my wife (always the girl) thought that the Perk had the best flavor and that shows the subjective nature of this study. The girl liked the tea-like nature of the coffee produced by the Perk and I preferred the heartier flavor of the Press. My wife's reaction to the flavor of the Turk was (and I quote) "Eeeww, yuck!" and I kind of liked its stout-beer like quality. My wife claimed that the Turk was "chewy" but I thought it had a very enjoyable "full" body and flavor.

So what is my highly scientific conclusion? I conclude that my original hypothesis was indeed correct and it has now been proven as a fact. It is my opinion that the original hypothesis should now be restated as the Theory of Coffee-Brewology. I name it, I claim it, therefor it must be forever so... "THE SAME EXACT COFFEE BREWED BY DIFFERENT BREWING METHODS DOES PRODUCE DIFFERENT RESULTS."

And oh yeah Van, it tastes different too.

Thanks for reading...

An Experience Experiment - Pt. 2

An Experience Experiment - Pt. 1

THE VARIABLES:

There are a few variables in this experiment which likely effects the outcome. These are how the coffee was actually brewed, the grounds used in each brewing method, and the very subjective nature of our testing group's (me and my wife) perspective.

While this subjectivity is not scientific it is the best that I could do.

BREWING PROCESSES:

1. Drip
2. French Press
3. Percolator
4. Turkish Boil

DRIP:

The drip coffee maker is the standard way that people make coffee in our country. My drip coffee maker is standard but it has a coned screen filter which allows the oils to be released with the brewed coffee.

An oversight in this experiment is that I did not include a drip coffee maker with a paper filter. Ah well, I will have to remedy this for another day and another post.

FRENCH PRESS:
The French Press is a very popular method for brewing coffee among coffee enthusiasts. I like mine simply because it will brew a single cup of coffee without leaving me with left overs to microwave for two days. I know that true coffee snobs will never, ever, drink microwaved coffee but this proves that I am more of a cheapskate than a real snob.

PERCOLATOR:
I bought this percolator just for this experiment. I have not had much experience with the Perk but I am looking forward to doing coffee for company with it. It looks quite elegant and it reminds me of my grandmother's from the 1970's. All I need is a lime green table cloth and people will call me Carrol Brady.

TURKISH BOIL:
Although I could not make a genuine Turkish coffee (because I could not find my Cezve) I did use a sauce pan to slow brew the coffee to make a Turkish style brew. It turned out pretty good and I think it accomplished the mission of the experiment.

When I re-run the experiment with the paper filters (in a drip coffee maker) I will also use a cezve for a genuine Turkish Coffee.

THE GRIND:
The grind was an unavoidable variable. Each brewing method requires a certain grind in order to make the coffee that it produces "good".

The Drip Method requires a moderate grind (not too fine and not too course) to make the optimum coffee. From 1 being the finest grind and 17 being the most coarse - the Drip was ground at a 6.
The Press Method does not require a very fine ground as it steeps the grounds in hot water for 4 minutes. I ground the beans for the Press at the coarsest 17 setting.
The Percolator Method washes the grounds continuously with hot water and does not need a fine ground. So I also ground this at a 17.
The Turkish Method uses a very fine ground as to get every last bit of goodness out of the bean. I used the finest grinding setting - #1.

I am sure that the different grinds effected the resultant brews but I felt that I had to use the grounds that the individual brewing methods methods required.

THE TESTERS:
Me and my wife are the last of the variables. It was our job to taste and evaluate each brew against all the rest. It was quite difficult at times to decide between a couple of them but in the end we did our best. The fact that my wife and I did not come to the same conclusions indicate that this whole experiment is really about our individual experiences rather than a scientific conclusion.

Please return as tomorrow I will detail the results of the experiment...

An Experience Experiment - Pt. 1

The next couple of posts come about because of a reader's request. Van (the reader) wanted to know what happened to the flavor of coffee based upon the brewing method. So, I put my 7th. grade science class thinking cap on and devised the following science experiment. (I hope you are reading Mr. Kawalski)

• HYPOTHESIS: The same exact coffee brewed by different brewing methods produces differing results. (Mr. Kawalski should be proud)

THE STANDARD METRIC:

1. COFFEE: Bolivean - CIAPEC (100% Organic)
2. ROASTED: Full-City+
3. WATER/COFFEE RATIO: 5 oz. (liquid) : 1 Tbsp. (ground)
4. WATER: Filtered by Brita

TOOLS:

• Green Beans
• Popcorn Air-Popper (coffee roaster)
• Coffee Grinder
  
• Weight Scale
• Pyrex Liquid Measure
  
• 1/2 Cup Measuring Cup
• 1 Tbsp. Teaspoon
  
• Knife
• Sauce Pan
• French Coffee Press
• Drip Coffee Maker
• Percolator Coffee Maker
• 4 - Coffee Cups
• Filtered Water
  

Tomorrow I will begin to describe the variables of the experiment. Stay Tuned...