Popcorn

Due to a complete misunderstanding involving a Tijuana Transgendered Hooker and a Mule, I have lying low at a friend’s house until things blow over and Univision finds some other story to follow. I had not planned far enough ahead to pack my Behmor Roaster, but thankfully my friend is a fellow coffee roasting enthusiast. Upon my arrival he presented me with a cooler full of beans that he never got around to roasting along with an old Whirly Pop Stovetop popcorn machine.

“Here, this shit will keep you out of trouble,” He said, “And maybe help payoff the bribe money I had to give to those crooked Tijuana Cops.”

I tried to tell that I had been set up that the whole thing had been the mule’s idea, but he did not really want to hear it. He did not care. All he knew was that I owed him big time and I was going to have to work it off by roasting up an assload of coffee beans with a Whirly Pop.

Talk about low tech

.

This method of roasting beans is as primitive as you can get. No fancy ass roasting cycles, no automatic cool downs, no chaff collectors, no catalytic converters. No nothing. Just something to cook the beans in along with a little crank you need to constantly turn in order to keep the roast even. The only luxury that was afforded was a candy thermometer that my friend had managed to rig to it using a drill and a few well placed pieces of tinfoil.

“So get to roasting!” He demanded.

After drinking some of the swill that passed for coffee around the area, I understood my friend’s desperate circumstances. Even though the stash was almost two years old, it was still going to taste a lot fresher than the crap that was passing for coffees from the local Beanery. My own Fresh Roast  stash had run out too, so I was starting to get the itch.

Also, I was kind of curious what sort of roasts this rather primitive contraption was capable of putting out.

So I spent some time figuring out the exhaust, than began picking out the beans. I decided on a mix of Rwandan and Yemen beans for a Moka-Java like blend to start off with.  There was about 4oz left of each bean, so the expected yield was around 8 oz, enough to keep me in my friend rolling in beans for a day or two. I let the Whirly Pop warm up for a few minutes and then dumped the beans in and began to crank. I kept the flame at medium and began to crank. 24 minutes and a sore wrist later the roast was done. One of the beans took longer to crack than the other so the roast was uneven, but it was still okay.

Shit, it was still better than anything found on the outside.     

Jazz Junky

"Yeah, this guy definitely is a roaster, " Agent RonaldShamansky said as he examined the perps counter top.

It had all the telltale paraphenalia of a serious jazz junkie. The converted rotisserie oven. The handmaid wire roasting drums. The "postal scale". The roast log. the big fucking bag of high grade coffee beans from Rwanda. Very illegal stuff, probably secretly smuggled into the country up the ass of some poor drug mule.

"Yah, Yah Think he is big time?" Mac, replied his smug Canadian Counterpart. The roaster was big enough to burn up a whole pound of beans at time and the guy apparently had enough of stash to get the whole goddam High Scool Hopped up.

"NO," Shamansky said, " He got a lot of stuff, but it is some of the best shit I heard of." He looked the the bags, all carefully labeled. He saw a five pound baggy labeled "Tanzanian Estate Pea Berry" and a small cloth bag with "Brazilian Yellow Caterra" stenciled on it. Some of the stuff he had never even heard of in his ten years in CLEAN.

"Good shit eh?' Mac said as he ruminated upon this fact, " think he is just a connoisseur huh?"

"Yup" Agent Ron conceded. Everyone knew that if you were going to make dirt, you use the cheap beans like the Vietnamese Shwag, or the cheap Brazilian Robusta. While some high class dirt heads professed to a better buzz when their shit was made with primo beans, any chemist could tell that the source of the various chemicals to make dirt did not really matter.

"Just a poor fella on the jazz juice?" Mac asked

"Yup" Ron said as he put a marijuana cigarette to his lips and lit up.

"Still, " He continued after he took a long slow pull. "He might know something." Anybody who can get shit this good, had to know somebody worth finding out about. "Lets make sure to have him properly processed."

"As soon as we catch the fella.." Mac replied as he reached outside the doorway and came back with giant can of gasoline.

"Even though we got em with his pants down, the fella managed to get away". He said as began to slosh the gasoline all over the roaster and beans.

"MMrmmm," Agent Shamansky replied as he puffed on his cigarette and watched Mac douse the room. They had busted the guy when he was in the middle of screwing the Landlady's daughter. Even, with the his pants down his ankles, the guy had managed to wrestle free of the local authorities and escape down the fire escape. He was now at large, with a APB out for a tall, half naked pervert hopped up on jazz juice.

"I am sure that it will only be a matter of time." Shamansky said as he finished his joint and flicked the red hot roach into the gasoline soaked pile of coffee stuff.

my little pleasure dome

tucked away in the furthest recess of my kitchen lies my little lab of pleasure, where I craft and cook, measure, and vacuum suck. I keep my victims tucked away in a secret panel to the left, where they wait in darkness until I take them out and slowly savor them. 

Some go fast, their essence absorbed by me and my kin, while others linger, slowly being metered out for whatever reason their cruel master seems fit. Some just bore me and sit in the darkness until I have nothing else to derive pleasure from.  Others... 

Well,

Others I am slowly savoring, not knowing when another blue moon may arise, and such succulent seductive goodness may be once again available. 

ebony hotties

My photographer, Pierre Van Bundy, had a difficult time getting a good shot of these four ebony beauties that I happened to spot on my countertop. My feelings are that he probably should of had better equipment than a crappy cell phone camera, but then again he was the pro and his portfolio was pretty damn impressive. He  had me hold these four found hotties in my hand and quickly  snapped a photo, then messaged the photo to me. I like the positioning that he did because if you look at it long enough you can see both a penis and a vagina. It was Definitely worth the bottle of expired pills that I gave Pierre for it. 

The three beauty's to the left are from Columbia (Huila Valencia 1 Star). While they can be a bit plain, they can help pass a morning. The one on the left, I believe  is a maudlin island girl from Java (Organic Kajumas) who is a little darker than usual ( although the lighting does not really show it well) but she could also be a wild tasting Ethiopian, since those two are found together like sugar and spice. Judging from her size though, I think she is a mild Java girl.   

Got me a young one

Take a look at that sweet, nubile little thing. So green and full of potential. My hot ass girlfriend who likes to indulge my passion over all things coffee, purchased this sweet young thing for me and surprised me with it.

When I walked in, there she was, on the couch with my gf. Resting on her lap. I had trouble hiding my excitement as I went up to both of them. It was not long before some serious planting was being done.


Sure it is going be challenge, and I am am going have to be patient. She won't be giving up any cherry for four years. But I am a patient man. When she is ride, I will take her cherry and then brew some serious homebrew. Until then I will just watch and wait.

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.