The Art of Coffee Roasting...

Dancing

As coffee roasts there are two things that happen.

1.  The moisture cooks off

2.  The sugars in the beans caramelize

The art is to cook the beans raw enough to leave the natural God given flavor but cooked well enough that those caramelized sugars do a tango on your tongue.

Did you know that I can make green coffee beans dance?

Roasting Wednesday...

Coffee for Enthusiasts

Recently I have started roasting on Wednesdays only.  This was an economic decision as well as a family welfare decision.  Since I use the family kitchen to roast I recognized that it was not fair to my family to take up the kitchen 3 times a week when with better management I could occupy it only once.  And too many times trying to get a fellow coffee enthusiasts order of $6.00 to them I had to make the hard decision that it is just not economically worth spending the 2 hours needed to process an individual order alone.  So, Wednesdays it is...  Please don't get me wrong, I love $6.00 orders (heck, I love $1.00 orders) but to insure that I don't go out of business in a few months I have to insist that small orders are filled with the larger group of orders.


If you would like to have some coffee roasted, please let me know so I can get your order on the schedule.

February Event - 02/18/2012

My next public demonstration is at the ECCO, a bookstore in New Baltimore.  Heh heh, I really thought that I would have to write a book to get invited to a bookstore venue but I guess books and coffee do go together.

Coffee Demonstration - January 2012

John explaining the functions of the roaster

Today I roasted the Malawi Mapanga Estate - Washed "AAA" for a few guests of a coffee tasting and demonstration.  I explained the processes of bean growth & harvesting, processing, roasting, and tasting.  The guests were invited to help me sample this new bean and to help me decide if it was a good bean for me to stock and sell or not.


While the coffee was roasting I made a pot of Blooming Heart flowering tea for the guests to sample while we talked about coffee.  Even though nobody was real excited about the tea, it went over exceptionally well because it had a splendid flavor and was fun to watch steep.


The coffee took about 40 minutes to roast and cool then I brewed 2 pots of it.  The first pot was in the Siphon Pot and the second was in the French Press.  While people liked both they agreed that the siphon pot made the better brew. It really was good but to be fair to the french press, I muddled the ratio and made the coffee too strong.  Some of the comments about the coffee from the siphon pot was that it was very smooth - clean and neutral.

Sampling and tasting the Malawi Mapanga Estate - Washed "AAA"

Guests observed a chocolate note which had a note of a citrus.  The body was slightly buttery which weighed lightly on the palette. Overall, everyone enjoyed this coffee and approved it as a fine coffee to sell to my coffee enthusiasts.


After the tasting was through and everyone had sampled the coffee everyone was marked as an official coffee snob with the ABR tattoo.  Then, the $25.00 gas-card door prize was given to one of the guests.


After about 2.5 hours the demonstration concluded and everyone went home just a little more joyful than they had come.  Thank you to the guests of this demonstration and thank you for helping me assess the Malawi coffee.

Coffee Demo This Saturday...

There are still a few seats available for this FREE event if you are interested. Also, there is a $25 Gift Card for FREE gas that will be given as a door-prize to one of the attendees.  

Sorry, a reservation is required for a seat.
Please find my contact information on the website.

The Art in Roasting

Indian Monsooned Malabar - Roasted 

Have you ever Googled for images of roasted coffee beans?  If you have then you have seen the many images of coffee beans with a uniform color.  This uniformity is indicative of a mechanical roast which is scientifically heated, timed and cooled.  Not so with my roasts.  My roasts are not uniform because the process I use to roast is not at all scientific - it's artistic.


When you go to Target, Kohl's, K-Mart, or Walmart to buy art, what you are actually getting is a mass produced image of something that may have been art at one time - but no longer.  Real art is what you get when you go to Sotheby's.


Take the image above for example (click the image for a larger version).  Highlighted by the yellow star is a lighter bean.  The lighter beans retain the intrinsic flavor of the bean itself.  In this bean is an awesome flavor that is only found in the soil of the Malabar region of India.  It is wet-processed leaving the fruit of the coffee berry to dry onto the coffee bean itself until it naturally flakes away.  Then, the bean retains the natural flavor of the environment of that region of the world because it has been cured for about a year through the monsoon season which wet and dried and wet and dried and wet and dried this bean.  Yes, it took time but the flavor is wonderful because of it.


Now notice the bean toward the top in the blue star.  This bean is very dark and oily, it has the strong flavor of the roasting process.  The moisture is all gone out of this bean and the sugars caramelized under the heat to create a great roasted flavor.  If you will notice the bean in the purple star, this also is a dark roasted bean and if you will notice a rough patch on the bean, this shows that the bean was taken well into what is called the Second-Crack, a stage of the roasting process that tells me when to stop roasting (any darker and I would begin to make charcoal).


So there you have it, my Monet, my Van Gogh, my Dali!  The piece that you see above is originally mine and it will never be duplicated - it is a one of a kind and this specific one is being shipped to soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.  


Thank you to those who serve! I hope this little piece of art brings you as much joy as I had creating it. 

Flame-Roasted Artisan Coffee...

I am happy to present a new product that I call Flame-Roasted Artisan coffee.  This is a single-origin bean but it is roasted by hand-and-flame only.  There is nothing electrically driven or heated in this roasting process - it is just me versus nature, in the age old way of cooking that our great-grandparents had mastered, attempting to roast a perfect coffee.


I roasted a test batch of the Indian Monsooned Malabar and sampled the product.  WOW!  This roasting method produces a raw and rich coffee as many of the beans roast to perfection while others are less roasted retaining the intrinsic flavor of the bean.  This coffee is certainly roasted just as as our elders used to know, love, and enjoy.


I presently (12/27/2011) have 9-6C packages prepared as samples for people who want to try the brew.  These packages are FREE while they last for anyone who wants to come and pick one up.  The only string is that I want you to tell me your opinion of the product after you have tried it.  These are available to people on a first-come-first-serve basis.  Please shoot me an email if I may expect you.  

Jamaican Blue Mountain

One of my clients who had gotten coffee for Thanksgiving said that one of his friends had some of the coffee and asked if I would roast some Jamaican Blue Moon?  So he asked me to look into it and get back with his friend.  So I did look into it and decided that I could do it for $48.00 a pound.  I called the friend and he ordered 2 pounds without batting an eye.


When the Blue Mountain I ordered came in I first inspected the green beans themselves.  Perrrrffect, absolutely perfect.  Each bean appeared to have been hand chosen and hand washed.  Each was a beautiful shade of light green and each was as clean as freshly washed infant.


When I began to roast the Blue Mountain, many of the beans began to blow out of the machine to the waste bin - Eeeek!!!  At $48.00 a pound I was burning my hands trying to save these most precious and expensive beans.  I told my wife how the price changed in my mind the value of the individual beans themselves.  The fact that many of the beans were blowing out of the machine indicated that the water-content of the beans themselves were much lower than the standard beans that I was used to cooking.  Proving that it was indeed unique.  The chaff was less than normal and they roasted up without any complaint.  I was careful to not roast too much past the first crack in order to retain the natural flavor of the bean.


I would never had paid the price for this coffee but since I had some in the house, and I was selling it to a client,  I decided that I had better brew some and taste it.  I have decided to refrain from an extensive review of this coffee here (lest my praise be deemed not worthy) but I will point out that the flavor of the Jamaican Blue Mountain has the best balance that I have ever tasted in a coffee before.


PS.  If you are still looking for the perfect Christmas gift, I still have Gift Certificates available that I can wrap and drop ship for you.  Email me for details.

Mexican Chiapas

On the Southern most edge of Mexico, just before you get to Guatemala, is Chiapas (chee-ah-pass).  Once there you may ask the locals for a cup of cafe and they will give you a brew from of their home-grown beans.

The Chiapas is a mild cup that sports a dominant fruit-wine flavor.  Roasted just 60-seconds into the second-crack this bean's profile was just slightly Full-City roasted.  Here the flavor of the roast is obvious while the intrinsic flavor of the bean remains present.

While this bean is roasted a strong smoky-nut aroma is revealed making the roaster assume that nut will be present in the flavor however that flavor never materialized.  Only a sweet aroma that had a dry-wine effect was present.  Overall it was a clean cup that nosed sweet and sipped brightly a midst a panorama of floral notes.

Sumatra Tarbarita Peaberry

One of my favorite coffees is the Peaberry.  This coffee has a unique flavor like the added chicory of Louisiana but it is not as dominant and it is natural to this type of bean.

The aroma is very pleasant sporting a mocha scent that is a touch sweet.  The flavor is so good and smooth that it makes me want to cry with delight.  Alright, maybe crying is a little much but it really is a great flavor.  It has a smoothly sweetness that finishes very clean.  We tried it with some 90% chocolate and the sweetness of this brew exploded and brought a generous cacophony of flavor to be delved into by the taster of deep exploration.

I have always been partial to the Peaberry from Papau New Guinea but this Sumnatran ranks right up there with one of the best.