2 Huge Truths about Coffee Flavor - And One Giant Lie (Part 2 of 3)

(Click here for Part 1 of 3)

Roasting...

There is a whole range of possible coffee roasts, from green to charcoal.  The possibilities are just about endless.  Every kind of coffee bean responds best to a particular variety of roasts in order for the best natural flavor to be released, and like with wine tasting, the fun is in tasting them all to determine what we like best.  For now though, I want to tell you how roasting affects the flavor and caffeine content of your coffee.

When coffee beans are green they possess all the flavor qualities that God has grown into them(see part 1 of this blog series).  As the green beans are roasted, the natural flavor is cooked out and traded for the flavor of the roast.  This trade-off is good, because a weakly roasted bean is often a bit bitter and sour, and the roasting process corrects this and brings about a very good brew.  This is where the Roast Master needs to become well-versed in his coffee types, because there is a point where a single-origin coffee bean is roasted so much that all anyone can taste is the roast and not any natural flavor of the bean– so any old bean would have worked.  The Roast Master becomes worth his salt when he learns which bean needs to be roasted to which level in order to bring about the best flavor.

There is another important facet to the level of roasting, and that is the caffeine content.  As a coffee bean is roasted, its caffeine content begins to diminish.  So, the darker the roast, the less the caffeine.  This means that people who get espresso coffee for the caffeine kick are actually getting less caffeine than what is in a regular cup of lightly-roasted coffee.

I don’t know why, but most of us assume that when a coffee is roasted darker, it has more flavor and more caffeine, but this is not the case.  I guess it is like a Filet Mignon steak.  If you really want the steak to melt in your mouth and have the best flavor, you need to have it cooked rare to medium-rare.

In the next part of this blog post, I want to bring out the lie of all lies for those of us who love coffee, so check back in a day or two.

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.

Honestly...

The coffee that I roast is not for everyone - It is expensive and it is not at all convenient.  I know it, you know, and even my 7 year old knows it.


But then again, a Lexus or BMW is expensive and those companies are bold enough to expect their owners to go through the inconvenience of firing uncle Wilbur's Backyard Auto Care service so that they might have their cars properly maintained in their further expensive Service Centers.


As I think about it, I do individually roast single-origin coffee fresh per customer, I do package each order in proper ratio to each customer's specific brewing style, and I do spend a bunch of time roasting each small batch order because I will not make or sell in bulk.  So I guess that while my coffee is more expensive than the stale stuff in the grocery store and more inconvenient than simply tossing a bag into your cart, at the end of the day there are still quite a few people who prefer to drive a Lexus or BMW.


So no, the coffee that I roast is not for everyone.

anchorbayroasts.com

Coffeeeeeeeeee!

I just received 18 pounds of coffee - green beans today. Can you say "Excited"! I had a long talk with the UPS guy about coffee and how to become an official coffee snob. He did not want to put the time into roasting his own and I forgot to tell him that he could simply buy it from me. Oh well, I'll catch him on the next trip. ;-)

A Conspiracy Theory About Coffee

Today I dumped out the last of the Harar Horse (just too floral - needs to be in a blend) and I opened a pound of Starbucks' Zambia Kasama. The roast was slightly oiled, roasted Full-City, and it smelled good. I grounded it between fine and coarse and brewed a pot. What struck me was that it tasted like a Starbucks' coffee does.

Now I have been roasting my own beans for a few months now and I cannot seem to get this level of consistency in my own roasts. I fully understand that Starbucks' roasts with large industrial roasters (with all the computer aids they afford) but when the Kasama possesses the flavor of all the other Starbucks' coffees I automatically become suspicious. I cannot help but wonder if the large coffee companies, like Starbucks', Tim Horten's, Java General, and the many others, use a special flavoring to make the coffees that they serve all taste the same?

I used to think that the larger roasters just over roasted coffee beans in order to get consistency of flavor but the fact is that not all beans taste the same - no matter how they are roasted. I have often wondered if they just had a special blend that made their flavor consistent, but since my Starbucks' Kasama tastes the same as all the rest I cannot call say that it is the blending that makes it consistent. No, it has to be something else and my suspicion is that they add flavoring to their coffee to make it taste a certain way.

I know that this idea is a bit conspiratorial of me but what am I to think? Now that I know how to roast coffee and that each coffee bean actually possesses its own unique attributes, I wonder all the more about the consistent flavoring of the large roasting companies.

Nirvana? Have I Arrived?

I think I have made a break through. Today I went into the local Salvation Army store to look for a bread maker to convert into a coffee roaster (see left) but instead of finding a bread maker I found a popcorn popper for $2.50! So I bought it.

This evening I made a 1/3 cup of Mandehling and the results were much better than I had hoped for or even expected. I could hear the First Crack but the transition between the First and the Second was more difficult to hear. Between the noise of the popper's fan and my kids yelling and playing behind me, I was mostly flying by sight (ie. the chaff and the color of the beans).

The image to the right illustrates two batches of beans side by side. On the left are the beans from stove top roasted in a standard aluminum pot and the beans on the right are the ones roasted in the popcorn popper (Click the image to get a closer look). The beans done on the stove top are less uniform in color, some beans look under roasted while some shine with the oils of a dark roast. The beans from the popper are uniform in color and roast - These are a City to Full-City roast.

I made an 11-cup pot of coffee with 1.75 oz. of these beans. I set the grinder to a coarseness of 10 from Fine and the brew was great! I will admit that this was not the best cup of coffee that I had ever had but it was close. Now that I have the popper to roast my beans in I am looking forward to retrying my coffees and experiencing them uniformly roasted. I will keep you posted.