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.