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.

The full pound

What is the point of having a roaster that can burn a whole LB and then roasting only 8 oz? That is what I said to myself as I dumped a whole bag of Kenya AA Nyeri Nidaro into my drum, slotted into my roaster and cooked it up. I left the setting on P1 figuring that this high grown African Coffee would do better with a straight up roast as opposed to a gradual build up of heat that the ever popular P3 gives.

I had the timer set for 20:30 and let the one pound baby cook as I played a little Mario Galaxy on my Wii (with the sound turned down so I can keep my ears on the roast). The first crack came 15:30 into the roast prompting me to put down my Wii-mote and watch it further. Three minutes later the smell changed and another minutes passed before I heard a low turned rumble that kinda of sounded like a big man's burp. It was a deep bass like crack as opposed to the popcorn like cadence of the first cracks.

"this must be the second crack" I told myself and set my finger on the cool button which I then hit a few seconds later. The beans came out a nice uniform dark brown and smelt great. I immediately stored them in a Food Saver Steamer bag since it was the only thing I had that could hold the 13.6 oz's of beans i just produced. Having some Maui Red Catui to drink, I let this baby sit for a few day before cracking opening the bag. The coffee was great, especially out of the Chemex. It had that nice Kenyan acidity, but was a little more toned down than others. I transferred it to a degassing bag and savored it throughout the week.

Since I bought these beans a month ago, Sweet Maria's is completely wiped out of it. My loss I guess because this was a great coffee I would have loved to add to my stash. Now that this bean is off the map, I kind of regret roasting up the full pound, but Ca Sera Sera to that.

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.

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