Bali Blue Moon

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Just South-East of Vietnam in the Flores Sea comes the Bali Blue Moon.  Highly regulated and hand-washed this bean looked very promising.


While I roasted I noticed that there was very little chaff.  It smoked a little on the initial heat-up and then it did not smoke again until the end of the roast.  I read that this coffee was better when the bean was roasted to a Full-City Roast so I took it in to the Second Crack when the flecking was quite evident.  The beans looked very good and dry except for a couple that showed signs of oiling.


I brewed with the syphon pot which uses a slightly higher than normal grind/water ratio.  The coffee I would say was strong because of this but not so strong that bitterness became a factor.  

On a scale from 1 - 10 I rate this coffee a 9 - Right up there with the Peaberry.  The aroma is fruity like a sweet-and-sour sauce and very pleasing to the nose.  The flavor was solid and smooth as it boasted of a cocoa-bean note as well as a mellow tone.  The brightness of this cup was medium though it was quite complex and deep.  The body of this cup was buttery and weighed on the pallet long enough to let you know it was there and lingered on the tongue like a fond memory.

And the Winner IS?

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It was a great time as I prepared and served the coffee to about 25 guests at a birthday party last night.  The winner of the night was certainly the syphon pots.  Not only was the coffee served a very rare Indian Monsooned Malabar but the guests saw and smelled the beans as they roasted and ground for the brewing pots.  Their eyebrows shot up a half-inch as when they tasted the goodness of God in their cups.


There was one lady in particular who was not necessarily fond of coffee but her husband was.  As I explained the intricacies of the Monsooned bean, how it was seasoned in a particular monsoon season, and how he will never again taste that particular coffee again because the season is passed and so is the crop - she immediately reached over to taste what was certainly a once in a life time experience.  Needless to say she got inked as a result.

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She got inked?  Yes, everyone who became a snob last night got inked.  Tattooed that is.  As every membership has a ritual so does becoming a coffee snob.  So everyone left with a great memory and experience but also with a new tattoo. Don't worry, it was a temp tattoo because I am a coward where needles come into play. ;-)


If you are ever in the need for a once in a lifetime experience for your guests, please be sure to remember that I will provide you with a coffee roasting demonstration.


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Also, if you have not yet seen our press releases - be sure to check them out below.

Coffee Demo for Birthday Party...

Tonight I am doing a coffee demonstration for a wife's (ahem) 29th birthday party.  First I am serving samples of regular Maxwell House coffee so that everyone can be remind of the norm, then I will be brewing up some Moccca Sanani from Yemen with filtered water.  It will be fun to see how high the eye brows fly up on the foreheads of people when they taste the difference.  I will be percolating & French-pressing the Mocca so people will experience the different tastes in brewing.  I will also be French-pressings some Organic Royal Select Decaf from Peru.  

While all of this is going on I will be roasting a Monsooned Malabar from India.  This will be the crowd-pleaser because not only is it an awesome coffee it will be the freshest coffee that the guests have ever had and I will be making it in Syphon pots.  Can you saw fun?


CHANGING SUBJECTS...


There are only a few more days left for people to find the easter egg for September.  If you want to be entered into the drawing for the FREE coffee, take some time on the Anchor Bay Roasts website and find the easter egg.

Coffee with Great-Grandma

Every Monday morning I pick my grandmother up and she accompanies me to work. For those who do not know it, I am a local missionary/minister and I conduct Christian worship services for people who live in nursing care facilities with The Sharing Org.  So anyway, I pick my grandma up on Mondays and she accompanies me to my first 2 morning services.  While I have never told her, I secretly wait for her feedback between the first and second services about how she liked (or disliked) the message. While grandma is not what I would consider a theological-giant or anything, for-better-or-for-worse she is my barometer for how effectively I communicated the Gospel.  Like a little boy I seem to need my G-ma's approval.


This morning my wife and eldest daughter went out of town which left me with my youngest 2 (ages 2.5 and 5.5).  So I decided that after me and the kids ran our errands we would head to their great-grandma's and make her some coffee in my new Syphon brewer.  The kids played with the dog (until the dog molested the 5.5 year old) while we made coffee and I told her all the interesting facts about the Indian Monsooned that I was preparing.


After about 15 minutes the coffee was done and G-ma took her first sip.  She immediately told me how good it was but not in a proud-grandma-let's-not-hurt-Johnny's-feelings sort of way but in a my-golly-my-eyebrows-almost-left-my-forehead-because-they-jacked-so-high-in-delight sort of way.  


You could tell that this cup of single-origin bean tasted incredible to her but what I think really made the difference was that for the first time in her life she was invited to not just drink the coffee but rather to experience it.  When she sipped it she was tasting the weather in India, the monsoon rains that drenched the beans and the monsoon winds that blew the green out of them and left them a bleached-light-tan color.  She tasted the mountain mist of the Malabar territory on the Western shore of India and the nutty taste produced by the earth in which the beans grew.  She recognized that the particular cup of coffee she was drinking was a one-of-a-kind crop never to be repeated again.  As a crop, the Monsooned Malabar grew in a soil in a particular area of the globe, with a particular amount of sun, rain, and temperature.  Then as it was cured for a year it experienced a monsoon season that would not be repeated in the same way again.  The cup that she was drinking had a definite history with a story uniquely its own and all of it was communicated to her in the taste.


As me and the kids left for home she expressed to me how much she enjoyed learning about the coffee that I made her and she looked forward to doing it again some time.  As I left I got that weird feeling inside because I had just gotten my G-Ma's approval.

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.