BINGO! I Call It "Manna" (Blend #5)

Have you ever wondered how some flavors were developed? I suppose much of it is just like it happens in the commercial where one idiot is walking down the street eating a chocolate bar while some other fool is walking down an adjoining street eating peanut butter from the jar, both so engrossed in their snacks that "POW" they run into each other and the chocolate accidentally got into the peanut butter and the Peanut Butter Cup emerges. OR... Some chemical engineer needs to come up with a new flavor to save his hide from the unemployment line and starts mixing all sorts of wacky flavors until "BINGO" they invent a winner.

Well I, like the chemical engineer, keep putting coffee beans together in the hopes of finding a Bingo. Yesterday I found a winner and I call it "Manna"

1 oz. Zimbabwe Salimba
1 oz. Kenyan Gichi Kiambu
1 oz. Sumatran Aceh Gold

I roasted this batch to a Full-City+ removing the heat just as the second crack was starting. I brewed it in the french press which created a very full body cup but not (as my wife commonly refers to it) chewy. And the aroma was mildly sweet and fragrant with no hint of a rogue acidity.

The flavor was full, deep and rich - free of free floating background taste-nuances and bitters. This cup was so good that my wife suggested that I make this for her tea-party this Saturday. Even though my wife is developing a taste for good coffee, this is a huge compliment to the flavor of this blend.

I am going to blend this again to make sure that I get a consistent cup and when I do I think I will take on Timmy Horton's.

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.