happy new year

Just a little note for those who like to read my other site: homecoffeeroasters.today.com, Apparently the Today company decided to fuck around with their site and I can no longer access my blog control panel. Then again, no big loss, I was personally kind of sick of all their rules regarding advertisements and self promotion. From now on, it will be all coffeeporn all the time baby. I may not make any scratch from the ads, but at least I will have total control as to what i put on here.

And as for self promotion...

I am currently still kind of working on my other site coffeelocity.com that I purchased from GoDaddy. I am still not sure what to do with it, but for now I think I will just make it a sort of coffee fact emporium. I am hoping someday to sell freshly roasted coffee through it, but I still need to work out the logistics. My attempt to roast everyone coffee for the holidays made me realize that the whole using the behmor as a commercial roaster is not really feasible. But, someday I may have enough money to invest in something a little bigger. So until then, I think I will just stick to writing about roasting coffee and not try to sell it for the moment anyway.

Speaking about writing about coffee

I recently roasted up some good stuff from Sweet Marias including El Salvador Finca Kilimanjaro (which i am drinking at this moment) and a Brazil Daterra Farms Sweet Yellow. The Finca Killa turned out to be great, with a brewing smell that is a bit reminiscent of the India Ahnoki. It even gave off a fragrant smoke while roasting. I roasted my first 1lb batch for 23:30 on a p3 setting, and then tried it 24:00 at a P4. I think the latter turned out a little bit better. The Sweet yellow, really grabbed my attention and made me go "damn! this is a great cup of coffee." I regret only buying a pound and hope that there is still some left when I go back to SM for a refill. I am glad that I chose to roast the Yellow in 8 oz batches since the taste seems to rapidly degrade after 3 or 4 days.

Pounding them out

While the behmor is capable of roasting a whole elbow at time, which is great when you are putting together gifts or roasting for the full week, it does tend to smoke you out of house and home a bit. In fact, I haven't even bothered to put the battery back in my smoke detector in my living room since i will just need to rip it out again next time I roast. It is also harder to store a full pound of beans as opposed to a smaller batch. I have a bunch of half pound degassing bags that I use, and it turns out to be a hassle to try to divide everything up. I also have a tendency to spill beans all over the place. The Food Saver freeze and steam bags work great but they cost a bit and are not reusable.

Well, that is all I have to say about coffee today. Have a good 2010