Halloween Chili

As much as I love coffee,there are some things that it does not go with. Chili and taco bell are too good examples. I do not know how many times I have done the latter to myself and have suffered the dire consequences of out of control bladder explosions. Thankfully, my seven years of working two blocks away from a Starbucks and Taco Bell (7 fucking years now, really?) have made me a bit immune to the old taco buck cha cha's.

Chili is another story. Especially my special Halloween chili, which is a bubbly oozing mass of beans, meat, spices, and five different peppers, including the ultra rare scary pepper that comes from deep within the jungles of a whole other continent somewhere. Too much of the scary pepper can make you shit yourself, like you just saw a ghost, hence its name. I only add one or two of these bad boys to a whole pot.

I know better than to ever mix my coffee obsession with a bowl of my Halloween chili. I know that if I do, I might end up looking like my friend Pierre here. Pierre just did not want to listen to me. I told not to mix the two, but the motherfucker was too lazy to cook up some eggs and toast. It had been a crazy night of trick or treating and sacrificing virgins to the goat god, and Pierre might have been just a little hung over to realize the danger he was getting himself into. He should have fucking listened to me.

I guess i could have gotten off the couch and swatted the bowl of bubbling death and liquid acid out of his hands, but I was also a bit wrecked from a evening of overindulging in the big batch I had brought over to the sacrifical rites pot luck that our neighborhood was having. The cup of El Salvadorian Wet Process I had brewed up in my Chemex was doing a number on my guts, and it had taken several bong hits to calm it. Still, I should have done something other than yell, "Pierre, what the fuck are you doing? That combination is going to make your guts explode dude," without barely looking away from the Wii game that I was halfassedly playing.

I will have to live with that forever.

I will also have to live with Pierre for a while. His exploding bits got all over my kitchen and it is going to be a nightmare to clean it all up. I might even have to move now. I just hope the cops do not ask me about the hefty trash bags I left on the curb.

Happy Halloween everyone.

On Gays in the military

I was sitting here, sipping on my Rwanda FTD India Robusta blend, checking out the latest news and shit when I came across a blurb about Gays in the military. While I did not actually read the story, nor do I remember what exactly the little news flash said, I must say that I am in full support of Gays in the military. I think that anyone who has big enough balls (that applies to both genders in a metaphorical sense) to put their life on the line for this country has the right to be whoever they are.

Besides, nothing is hotter than two chicks, armed to the teeth, making out in the the middle of hostile territory. I saw a movie like that once, it was called GI Janes or something. Or maybe I just imagined it. Anyway, those chicks were not only hot, but they kicked some major ass.

Whats that?

Oh...

Well, that kind of make sense too, with the nice uniforms, the whole dress code and "neat" thing. Yeah, i can see that. Well, thats great too, although I do not want to imagine what that movie would be like (GI Joes, or perhaps Joe's GI tract?).

Anyway, about the coffee....

I had about 8 oz left of the Rwanda FT Dukunde Kawa Musasa and I was torn as what to do with it.I thought briefly about just roasting up the 8 oz on the Behmor's half pound setting, but decided against it because thanks to the crappy power in my building. I had difficulty getting even 6 oz just dark enough for my taste. I really did not want to make a small batch that would leave me hanging by Monday, and I did not want to try to cheat and roast the 8oz on a full pound setting (10 is as low as I allow myself to go).

I figured that maybe I should do a little blending experiment. After fishing around in my cabinet, I found some India Robusta that I had laying around. Dark, dense, chalky and chocolaty, I thought it just might go well with the flowery Rwandan FTD, so I threw in 3 oz of it and burned up the first and only batch of the " Robo Rwandan". I say first and only, because this mixture was pretty much a failed experiment. The Robusta ratio is way to big giving the coffee to dark of a overtone that made drinking the full batch these past couple of days a bit of a challenge.

This morning however, as I was gazing at this hot pic and thinking about gays in the military, this blend actually tasted better then the previous pots. Perhaps, because I had made it very strong, almost espresso like, or maybe the five days of sitting in the bag finally mellowed it out enough to allow the two beans to mingle.

Speaking of Mingling Beans

Perhaps time has finally mellowed this nation's ass backwards stance on who is and is not worthy of serving and protecting their country.

Guinea pig

Go Green!

Go White!

Sorry had to say that. It is looking like a big year for Sparty. Of course, retail being my other gig, I have only gotten to watch one game of theirs. It was the classic against Notre Dame, and I nearly shit my pants on that final play. It would have been nice to see them stomp on their little BLUE sister's throat. But, gloating about it is just as good. Still the upcoming battle against Iowa, is almost enough to make me consider getting one of those case of the Mondays to casual Fridays jobs that the rest of my fellow MSU alum have gotten.

So anyhow, here I am, up in the wee Sunday Morning Hours, sipping on some El Salvador Manzano Process Experiment Wet and quietly watching whatever Michigan State football porn that I can get my hands on. This week's game was against the lowly Illini, and all the sports sites are jerkin each other off about the way Bucky the Badger cornholed the Buckeyes to say anything about Sparty. Still, I will take what I can get.

As for the coffee...

Being a sucker for learning and shit, I decided that I could not pass up on this opportunity to taste the same coffee processed three different ways. You see, just like tuna and kittens, there is more than just one way to process coffee and each process brings its own flavor profile to the bean....yada yada yada...

So anyway, this past Wednesday, I roasted up three separate 6 oz batches of Manzano Wet, Dry and Pulp Natural and have been giving each a initial swirl around my old taste buds. The last of the Wet that I am drinking this morning as I look for Sparty action, tastes better on four days rest than it did the second day. It is clean and bright and lemony, a good Sunday morning cup. Since the crack did not come until the very last allowed minute of the P1 roast cycle, I was worried that this one was be to green tasting for me. But it tastes just fine today.

My favorite ended up being the Natural Dry Process, which I got to a bit darker roast with a bit of tweaking with the Behmor. This one was so good that I ended up swilling it down in two days, while letting the other two "rest". I will have to make sure to ration out the next batch, so I have some for next Sunday, when I get up early to catch some more college football porn when Sparty takes on a Wildcat.

expletive good

Sip,

FUCK, that is Good.Now, I remember why I prefer fresh roasted coffee over that other crap.

I am sipping on some Rwanda, dunder blunder mother jumucker, or whatever Sweet Marias likes to call it.

Hang on, let me go check out their site and get its full legal name, now do a little copy and paste action: Rwanda FT Dukunde Kawa Musasa. Yeah, thats the stuff. While, it makes blogging about it a bit of a pain in the ass, I kind of like how the folks at SM like to give all of their beans very specific names, it really makes you feel like you are drinking something that is really mother fucking special. Of course this comes from a guy who named his dog Brisco Horseshoe Tiberius. And this Rwanda FT Donkey Karat Massuga is very mother fucking special indeed. It tastes so fucking good, that all I can do right now is silently swear to myself and talk about how mother fucking good it really is.

I roasted12 OZs of this Rwanda FTD (which is what I call it in my log) in my Behmor on the P3 level for 20:45. This got me a nice Full City roast. Tom from SM ranted on about how great this one fucking tasted at the lightest levels, but I am too afraid of having them come out overly assy grassy not to cook them a bit longer into the first crack. To me, there is nothing worse than grassy tasting coffee. Since it is a Behmor I be roasting with, even the darkest roasts that I can manage are nothing even close to French or Vienna, so I am pretty sure that the end result was still light enough to bring out the "sweet accents" of the roast.

In fact, I think Rwanda FTD is a pretty good fucking name for it, since it does have a flowery mouth feel to it. When I swish it in my mouth and let it roll over all of me taste buds, I am transported to a Japanese tea garden, one with beautiful smelling flowers, little bonzai trees, koi ponds and shit. I do not know why this coffee makes me think about sitting in a garden and writing haikus about flowers all day long, but it does.

So Fucking good.