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.

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. ;-)

Kimel Peaberry

This is still my favorite coffee. It is smooth, it is strong, and it is characteristic beyond measure. Really, I sit here with my eyes wet with tears sipping this batch that I roasted this afternoon and I swear that there must be a Thanks Giving meal in this cup. I think if it were a dietary supplement that it would make you thin, if were a make-up it would make you beautiful, if it were a hair gel it would grow new hair, and if it were a little blue pill like Viagra it would - well, you know.

Anyway, I really believe that this is the best coffee in the world...

It's Official!

That's what he told me after he drank the last pot of liquid heaven that I roasted for him. "You have officially now become my coffee provider."

Our pastor at church is a budding coffee snob. Many months ago I gave him a gift of roasted coffee and now that's all he wants. Also, I have been asked to roast the coffee for the church so the VOX can have the freshest and best coffee for their guests. So, I've been learning about the legal side of roasting coffee as a business - you know, getting the food inspector involved and everything. But as intimidating as it was to get the Michigan Department of Agriculture involved, the most daunting task has been figuring out how to price the stuff. Without going into all the details I have landed on a position. What I provide is unique in that the coffee that I sell is #1 - Fresh and #2 - Small-batch/hand-roasted.

When I say that what I sell is fresh, what this means is that every batch that I sell just came from the roaster. Coffee stales two-weeks after roasting so this means that the coffee that you buy from the store is most likely already stale. People never really notice this because they have never had fresh before. And when I say that I hand-roast a small-batch I mean that when the large stale-coffee providers roast coffee they will dump a 50# bag of green beans into a computer-controlled-commercial roaster where I only roast 2/3 of a cup of green beans at a time. Roasting good coffee is more of an art rather than a science and coffee is finished cooking when the beans declare it - not when the timer dings. Each cup of blessed nectar is (and should be) it's own spiritual experience.

So now, it is official. Under the rules of the great State of Michigan's Cottage Food Law I have begun selling my fresh roasted coffee to my friends and family for $.875 per ounce which equates to just $14.00 a pound. I compared this to the coffee that is for sale in the local grocery store and I saw a 12oz. bag of char-bucks for almost $10.00 which equates to about $.833 per ounce. Is there cheaper coffee to buy than mine - yep. Is there better coffee than mine? Maybe, but my pastor and the people of VOX Church will be hard pressed to locate it.

There is a God!

I just spent 6 nights with my family travelling to and from Dubuque, IA. I've had coffee in hotel rooms, lobbies, and restaurants during that whole time and now that I am home I have just roasted the last of my Salimba from Zimbabwe and brewed a very fresh cup..... Yes, my friends, if you have ever contemplated the existence of God allow me to assure you that he does truly exist. How do I know? Because He has put goodness in my cup, it overflows, and my face is wet with tears of sheer joy from the overwhelming urge to worship.

It saddens me that so many people still do not roast there own coffee beans.

Well Done...

I have not posted in like forever, however, I have nothing to write about. So rather than bore you with a bunch of drivel that sounds like a preacher trying to stretch an inane 20 minute sermon into a 45 minute time slot I just don't write anything.

However, today a friend of mine sent me a link for a video that was very well done about the caffeine that is contained in coffee. Did you know that caffeine is actually a poisonous? Ahh but we love it so don't we? Sort of like LSD. Well not really LSD because I don't love it but you get the point right?

Enjoy!

Peet's Coffee

It has been quite a while since I have posted - I've been roasting but I have had nothing new to report so I have been silent. However, a few minutes ago I opened a bag of Major Dickason's Blend coffee from Peet's Coffee & Tea company. I have to admit that as biased as I am against store bought coffee this is a very good cup of Joe. It is smooth, rich, well balanced, and most of all it tastes good - very good.

While nothing beats the freshness and flavor of a self roasted coffee, this is a very good bean to have on hand for those rare days that you do not have any beans roasted.

Sulawesi

Kalossi

I just roasted the very last of my Sulawesi. What I discovered was that I like this bean roasted to just into the Second Crack. I have been roasting it very dark as I prefer a French Roasted coffee but this bean seems to exhibit a flavor not noticeable when dark roasted.

When roasted just into the Second Crack this coffee smells rich when ground and its flavor possess a hint of sweet-wine flavor. Have fun with your own roasting experiences and let me know how they turn out.

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?