Cold Brewed Coffee

I made my first batch of cold brewed coffee today.  It was good but to be honest I want to play with the ratio more and use a different coffee so that I have something to compare it with - stay tuned.

I used my 8 cup French Press coffee maker and filled it with 1-Cup of coffee grounds.  Then I filled the rest with room temp filtered water and let soak for 24 hours.  I stirred it once at 12 hours because the grounds made a sort of crust on the top and I wanted to make sure that all the grounds were being steeped by the water.  After I stirred the grounds they did not form a crust again but rather sank to the bottom and steeped fully for the last 12.

I used an initial 1 to 3 concentrate to hot water ratio to make the coffee but then I landed on a 2 to 3 ratio.  It was good coffee.  There was no bitter and the acidity seemed non-existent.  In the morning I am going to try a 1 to 1 ratio and see how that works out - I am expecting great things.  I liked that the coffee was immediately drinkable as the hot water mixed with the cool concentrate made it nice.  i suspect that tomorrow's 1 to 1 ratio will make the coffee too cold as the concentrate is in the fridge tonight so it will be cold rather than room temp and the 1 to 1 ratio will make there be more cold in comparison to the hot.  If I like the flavor better using a 1 to 1 ratio then I will have to make a more dense concentrate and go from there.  Again, stay tuned.

Funeral for a Friend

I'm just heart broken, I have been using this 3cup French Press for a couple of years now.  I have made many hundreds if not thousands of cups of coffee with it.  And last night while washing it I whacked it on the faucet and shattered it.  It's silly to be so fond of a dumb $10 Meijer item but trying to replace it seems to be problematic.


Just the other day I found and purchased a 3cup coffee maker on eBay because the dumb things are sort of rare - and thus expensive.  So it came in and it looked decent enough but I chose to just keep my old one and sell the new one as part of my business.  Low and behold not a week later I destroy this one but luckily I had the new one on hand so I broke it out and used it.  Yikes!  It is terrible.  The glass beaker is about 5mm larger in diameter and so it the screen.  This caused the screen to buckle in a spot rather than seal and thus I have grounds in my coffee.  I actually got it work with the parts from my old friend so I guess a part of it is still with me.


On the bright side.  It was good that I actually used the new one and learned that it is poorly engineered.  I was planning to buy 10 more and sell them at my demonstrations but now - no way!  I don't want to get into the customer service and returns business.

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.

Indian Monsooned Malabar

Like the fallen leaves on an autumn day, I loved this cup as much as I love the fall smells and colors.

This was the first time that I tried the Monsooned Malabar. I roasted it just until the second-crack began in order to keep more of the original flavor of the bean than infusing the flavor of roast.

What I noticed as I roasted was that the beans smoked pretty good but then the smoke seem to diminish and the chaff was very limited. This Monsooned worked its way through the expected roasting stages without complaint. After about 8 minutes it was finished and I started it to cooling.

I roasted 3oz of the green bean for a 2.5oz yield of roast (16.7% shrinkage). I placed 1oz of whole beans in 750ml glass container, topped off with water, corked the bottle and sat it in the sun for the day. I am attempting to make sun-coffee. I will let the beans soak in the sun day-after-day until all of the beans have sunk to the bottom of the bottle. I'll post again after I have sampled the brew.

Then I brewed a cup of the coffee in a French Press. I ground the beans medium and added a 1/2 ounce (by wieght) to 12 ounces of boiling filtered water. When I added the water to the grounds the grounds frothed with freshness and there I left it to steep for 4 minutes. I then poured 2 - 6oz cups and me and the wife sampled the brew.

As I smelled the aroma I noticed a very cocoa note where my wife said it smelled like a casserole but she could not name the casserole. In any respect, the aroma was different - but in a good way smelling very distinctly of a rich character. As we tasted the coffee my first thought was that it was very smooth to the pallet and she mentioned that it was very mild to the taste. It was both of those with a very homey-type flavor that made me wish that I were in the woods enjoying the songs of birds, the sight of the fallen leaves from trees, and the smells of a damp-autumn and sun-shiny day. All in all this was a very good roast with a great character worthy of being one of God's great creations.

Oh, I almost forgot, I ordered a syphon brewer today - I'm as excited as a young maiden lying in wait for the ball with the prince. I'll post about this in a few days.

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?

Coffee Froth

When I make and pour a coffee with the French Press I get a froth that settles on top of my cup. I don't know why but I like it. Somehow it says "This is a great cup of coffee."

I know that my liking the stuff is irrational. It has no extraordinary flavor, it does not add to the body of the cup, and it does not clean the lid of the garbage can. It serves no identifiable purpose. But like the foam on top of a pint of Guinness, it is still somehow comforting and expected. If it were not there I would look away ashamed as if my mother came over in just her knickers.

So, I love the stuff - that much is true and only my psycho-therapist might begin to know why. But what really boggles my understanding of the world is that I don't know what to call it beside "Coffee Froth." Calling it "Coffee Froth" is as disrespectful to me as if I called my wife "Hey You!" The stuff needs a name and I shall not rest until I have come up with the perfect name. You can help too! Leave me your suggestions and together we can right this wrong and I can stop call my wife "Whatsername."

Bold And Clean

I had some left over grounds that I used to make Turkish coffee the other day - Very fine. So I added 2 Tbsp. to my French Press and poured boiling water on them. After a minute or two I pressed and poured.

The coffee is quite good. It seems to taste less aggressive than the Turkish boil but yet it has a ruggedness that would make John Wayne proud. The coffee is strong with a good body. The grounds are from the Bolivian CIAPEC bean which was roasted to Full-City+. Although there is nothing wrong with the CIAPEC I think this would be an excellent brew with another, more interesting bean.

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...

Washed Bourbon - 2

Rwanda

I roasted this bean for the second time using the Popcorn Popper. This was a City Roast being removed from the heat just after the First Crack finished.

I made two cups using two methods. The first was with the French Press and the second was with a very coarse ground and my wife's tea infuser. Both cups turned out well. The flavor was highly floral / fruity and very mild.

It seems to me that this is a good coffee if I ever figure out how to make it well. I will keep you posted when I figure it out.

El Conquistador Tarrazu - 2

Costa Rica

I presented this Tarrazu at a coffee demonstration the other day - it was a hit roasted at City. With this batch I roasted it Full-City+ to Espresso when the second crack was in full force and the beans displaying a beautiful oily sheen. I've been grinding just two cups of beans (very coarse) and soaking them in boiling water in the French Press.

This coffee is strong, straightforward, and possesses a flavor that is in full-swing. It is a very enjoyable cup when the temp cools a bit and it has a great body. It is unique in that it burps bacon (please forgive the unsophistication of this description but it seemed the best way to communicate it).

I am learning that there is a happy point with coffee. Too many grounds to water ratio and your coffee is too much like a bully forcing its flavor upon you but too little grounds and you have a cup of hot brown water that desires to be good coffee when it grows-up.

Sumatra - Mandehling Gr. 1 - 4

Indonesia

I made this cup using the one-cup french press. The grounds were a mix of popcorn and stove-top roasted beans. I set the burr grinder to 15 for a coarse ground and only ground 2 cups of grinds.

The taste is strong but yet very smooth and pleasing. The flavor of the Mandehling is classic which makes me think it would be a great base for a blend with the right bean which has a sweeter attribute.

As this cup cooled the body became quite dominant and a woodsy flavor emerged. I really began to appreciate the deep simplicity of this cup. I suspect that I have to grind this bean a little finer for the 12 cup coffee maker and add enough grounds to make it stronger.