Be the moka in my Java

Ohhh yeah baby, watch as I use my machine to bring the beans to peak of flavorocity. I have Sweet sweet maria's "coincidentally perfect" moka java blend feeling the heat and getting all hot. Ooozing dark oil flavanoids that rush the senses, inducing rapture. The wild moka like Ethiopian Kembata is bumping and grinding with the straight laced Java Kujamas seducing her into a wild tango of delisciousness. Ohh baby watch and listen as the dance together for the very first time within the Nesco.

I snuck in and started filming them as they were reaching thier peak. iIf you tune is real hard, you can hear thier combined estatic crack in the first minute of this movie. I think they knew what I was doling there holding up my girlfriends camera, but it was too late. They could not stop their heated union.

hot steamy coffee orgy

Ohh baby, some hot steamy action was happening in my kitchen the other night. My coffee appliances decided to get together and have a little fun. What they did not know was that I was secretly photographing the whole thing....


It started with a steamy three some between a new arrival from Vegas, who was full to the brim with some steaming hot Guatemalan Oriente city plus and two cups from the mountains who wanted part of the action.

Soon the curvy chemex joined the fun along with the always dirty minded Frenchy. Hot steamy coffee started sloshing everywhere and things got even more intense when the kinky Burr man, started to get involved. A full blown coffee orgy was now taken place. Beans were being uniformly ground, then boiled then filtered. Cups were being filled amd messes were being made. Things were really heating up when Stanley the thermos decided to join the fun....




Suffice it to say that things got a little crazy after that. Beans were spilled and handles were broken and I woke up to a mess in my kitchen. But, at least I got some hot pics

For the course of this past summer, I have pretty much been using a Chemex coffeemaker that I got off of E-bay to meet all my at home coffee needs. I got this baby for a steal, paying around thirty bucks (including s+h) for a vintage hand blown glass carafe straight out of the seventies. Brand spanking new, this baby would of cost around triple (92.50 at SM) so I am pretty sure I got a great deal although I did have to replace the orginal leather tie thingie that holds the wood together with a piece of tie from an old moccasin.

Besides being rather pleasing to look at (very art Deco), the Chemex also puts out a damn fine cup of Joe, once you figure out the various ins and outs of it. It took me a while to figure out the right type of grind (not too coarse, not too fine) as well as to get it through my head that it is better to pre-wet the filters before putting the grounds in. Getting the proper hot water to ground ratio was also a bit tricky, but once I got all these things down, I do not think there is a better way to enjoy a cup of coffee.

The Filters...

The filters for the Chemex are a bit, ummm, different from your typical coffee maker filters. When I first got my Chemex, I neglected to purchase filters for it, niavely thinking that I could probably find something comparable at Target. After a half a dozen failed attempts to keep the regular cone filters from collapsing and sliding into the base of the pot, I gave in and bought a pack of a hundred filter squares from Sweet Marias (along with several lbs of green coffee of course). When I picked up the box my first thought was, "what the hell are these? Napkins?" It took a bit of mental manuevering on my part to realize that, yes indeed, a folded square of paper can form a cone. These filters are much thicker than any of their counterparts, think brawny paper towel thick compared to those cheap generic brand towels that fall apart in the commercials. You open the filter with three layers on one side and one layer on the other and put the three layer side towards the spout side of the Chemex, which I think is important in keeping the the water flowing downward to the apex. Rumor has it that these filters are specifically made to leting the good stuff in into the pot while keeping all the bad stuff. like the bitter oils and sediment out.
Watersports...

One thing that you need to do with the filters is to pre-wet them. Since they are so dang thick, these filters can handle a good bit of water before you put the grounds in. Wetting the filters before you brew keeps the filter from sucking up all of the brew before it has a chance to hit the bottom. Before I got around to pre-wetting my filters, I had resorted to squeezing the spent filter into the pot to make sure I got every last drop of my morning go go juice. Now I usually turn the tap on a gentle warm flow and run my Chemex under it until the whole filter is nice and moist, sticking to the glass walls. I then invert the coffeemaker and let the water that has collected flow back out. The filter usually stays in place, but sometimes might slip out- so look out!

It looks like a nipple...

The only real negative about the Chemex is the that it really does not do a good job retaining heat. I bought the optional cover for it, which is kinda cutesy looking, but it only sort of helps keeoping the brew warm for the duration of my morning. I usually end up nuking the last cup in the microwave.

All in all, the chemex makes a damn good cup of coffee and it has become my preferred method of brewing. Watching the coffee bloom and release its aroma is very pleasing and the taste is great. Perhaps I will get tired of the process and move on to something else like a vacuum brewer, but for right now I will continue my little love affair with my Chemex: Best e-bay purchase ever.

burnt Yemeni

I should have paid more attention to what they were telling me on Sweet Maria's website concerning the Nesco roaster. As long as the beans stay hot, they are going to cook. Since the internal temperature of the coffee bean needs to heat up to around 400 degrees before it is officially roasted, coffee roasters are all about heating things up and, sometimes when you play with fire, you end up getting burnt coffee. Not paying attention to how much heat you are putting into the bean can lead to some rather nasty results. Instead of a nice cup of joe, with earthy fruit accents you get a cup of charcoal that may be hard to finish.

The key to a good roast is knowing when to stop and I learned this the hard way the other week. Unlike the fancy schmancy industrial type roasters, that I can only fantasize about, my little Nesco "Professional" roaster does not have a contraption to immediately release the beans from the heat. Instead, it goes through a cooling spin cycle of sorts, that helps slows the cooking of the beans, but does not do enough to stop it. Once the rapid spin cooling cycle finishes, you are supposed to wait another five minutes before you attempt to handle the roasting chamber, despite the convenient handle available. The people at Sweet Marias or, "SM" as they liked to be called tell you to ignore those directions and remove the beans immediately, despite the risks of getting a little scorched.

"Those beans are still cooking in that hot ass chamber!" they exclaim in so many words, and I should have paid heed to the people who seem to know everything there is to know about coffee. But no, instead I let the beans sit in the chamber, and then forgot about them for twenty minutes as a fiddled around on the Web. I had orignally set the roasting time to 25, which will generally give me a nice full city roast, but my lack of due diligence tacked on a few more minutes onto the Yemen Mokha Sharasi, putting it in the full blow Vienna category.

Now some coffee' such as the aged Sumatra and Monsooned Malabar, taste pretty good on the darker, shinier side, but this is defintely not the case with the Yemen. At least, in my opinion its not (the label says otherwise). This overly dark coffee tasted like a cup full of charcoal to me and finishing a cup took some doing. Okay, so I guess I really did not burn all that much, since I did finish the batch, but I was still peeved that I did not get what I was looking for. Next time, I swear I am going to remove the beans as soon as they are done.

Hot steamy Ethiopian DP action

I guess you can say that I have a sort of a thing for Ethiopian grown coffees. To me, they just taste better than anything that comes out of South America. You might also say I have a little thing for dry processed coffee beans. I guess I enjoy the complex underlying flavors that a dry processed coffee has when compared to the clean taste of the wet process. I cannot, however, claim to have any sort of a thing for organically grown coffee. Even though I have tasted some pretty damn spectacular organic coffees, I cannot claim to have a preference for them. I think this has to do with some bland taste experiences I have had with some so-called premium organic coffees some years back. This initial experience turned me off of organic coffee for quite some time, and only now am I willing to once again delve into the big O. So anyway, one of the coffees that I recently obtained from good old Sweet Maria's happens to Ethiopian, dry processed and organic, which totally brings this introductory paragraph together.

The beans of this Ethiopian Organic DP -Dale Yirga Alem, are quite small. They seem to almost look like peaberries as opposed to regular coffee beans. I decided to roast them at my usual 24 minute roast, which is I like to start all the beans out at and then tweak from there. The beans got to a nice full city roast, becoming dark brown with a slight amount of gloss. The next day, I brewed a nice pot of the stuff in my Chemex brewer and was blown away by how good it turned out. It had strong earthy undertones and a pleasant berry aftertaste that left me yearning for more. There is just something about a DP that I love. I guess, I like my coffee a little dirty, in contrast to clean and bright like other people and this Dale Yirga Alem us definitely a little dirty. But, just like my GF, it is dirty in a good way.

This coffee has now become my new favorite coffee in my stash, which is not a surprise since I have a tendency to pick a new favorite coffee every week. When compared to the the Colombian "perros bravos" it comes out as the winner, hands down. The comparison verdict is still out between it and the Yeman Moki, that I still need to explore, by have a feeling that it will remain undefeated until at least next month. After this coffee, I guess a cannot be dissing the organics anymore.

Further notes: The second day pot of the stuff was not as mind blowing as the first day. This is unusual since most coffee tends to get better on the second or thrd day of rest. Perhaps this coffee is an exception and has a flavor peak of just a day. I think I need to look into this a little more before, I render a full verdict.

perros bravos amigos

Yesterday, whilst getting ready to watch the Detroit Lions piss away yet another game, I roasted up a batch of Colombia "Perros Bravos de Huila" so that I might have something to drink today. I almost drank some last night, but stopped myself, since I knew that freshly roasted coffee just does not taste developed after a few hours of roasting and should sit for at least 24 hours unless it happens to be a coffee emergency. After roasting, the beans need time to de-gas and release the co2 that has formed during the roasting process (which is why you should never ever store freahly roasted beans in any type of air tight container for at least 12 hours-ka boom!). I have, on occasion, tried brewing up a cup of java with a new batch of beans just an hour or two out of the roaster and I have never got an good cup out of it. I find that most coffees that I roast reach thier peak of flavortude at around the three day mark of sitting and then rapidly decrease in quality from there. Of course, having a Nesco Professional Roaster, which only roasts around 5 ounces at a time, sometimes makes it hard for me keep my beans around for more than three days unless I roast several batches in a single day.



Ok now, back to the Colombia "Perros Bravos de Huila". Only knowing enough spanish to get myself a burrito "el pastor por favor" from a taco truck I decided to do a little research to try to figure out exactly what "Perros Bravos de Huila" means. After some googling the best translation that I can come up with is: "some fine bitches from Huila". I am not sure if this is a spot on translation but I can live with it (perhaps someone from Sweet Marias has a sense of humor). This batch of beans is actually a collection of beans from various micro lots from around the Huila volcanic region of Columbia. Each farm did not have enough beans to be represented on thier own so Tom over at SM decided to make a sort of blend from all of them. I roasted this batch at 24 minutes (a time in which I like to start off with all my new beans) and got a city plus to almost full city roast. The beans came out a nice cinnamon and a little lighter than what I was expecting from the roast time.

This coffee has pretty much a typical taste of a premium South American varietal. It is clean and smooth and bright: a perfect breakfast coffee. Now, I am not saying that this coffee is boring. It actually plays nicely on the palate with different tastes dancing around the tongue. I sense a nice fruity after taste along the lines of apricot and strawberry and the intitial taste has a nice robust wake up flavor that opens your eyes and makes the day just a little bit easier to face. Still I think I did roast it a bit to light for my taste and made a mental note to tack on a few more minutes on my next batch.

adios muchachos

Tanzanian Blackburn Estate AA

Today, I am drinking up the last of the Tanzanian Blackburn Estate AA that I had roasted last Wednesday and was intending to mail to a friend back and Michigan but was dissuaded by the long line at the post office. After going through the first pound of this stuff last month, I liked it so much that I decided to get myself another two LBS to add to my stash. This Tanzanian coffee is unique in the fact that it tastes just as good if not better cooled off than when it does while warm. When cooled, it has a rich nutty taste that dances around your taste buds making you feel like there is a party in your mouth. Mmm so good.

I roasted this coffee for 24 minutes, up until the beginnings of the second cracks resulting in a nice full city roast. The coffee seems to have reached its peak flavor today on its fourth day of rest, which makes me ponder whether or not I should be letting my coffees sit a little longer before I enjoy them.

I feel a little guilty about not shipping off this batch to my friend, but I will make it up to him as soon as I figure out how to print shipping labels online (the process does not seem that involved). I really need to do this before christmas time, so that I can starting spreading the yuletide cheer in the form of freshly home roasted coffee that I am planning to send to all my various family and friends around the globe. Hopefully, my little Nesco coffee roaster will survive the ordeal. The machine is not meant to raost large bacthes at a time and doing so could overheat the little guy. I am saving up for a Behmor roaster, which supposedly can roast up to a full pound of beans at a time and I hope to some day own a semi-industrial roaster that will allow me to spread my coffee love around the globe. Until then, I will just have to convert people one 5 oz batch at a time.