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.

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

Tanzanian Blackburn Estate AA

Today, I am drinking up the last of the Tanzanian Blackburn Estate AA that I had roasted last Wednesday and was intending to mail to a friend back and Michigan but was dissuaded by the long line at the post office. After going through the first pound of this stuff last month, I liked it so much that I decided to get myself another two LBS to add to my stash. This Tanzanian coffee is unique in the fact that it tastes just as good if not better cooled off than when it does while warm. When cooled, it has a rich nutty taste that dances around your taste buds making you feel like there is a party in your mouth. Mmm so good.

I roasted this coffee for 24 minutes, up until the beginnings of the second cracks resulting in a nice full city roast. The coffee seems to have reached its peak flavor today on its fourth day of rest, which makes me ponder whether or not I should be letting my coffees sit a little longer before I enjoy them.

I feel a little guilty about not shipping off this batch to my friend, but I will make it up to him as soon as I figure out how to print shipping labels online (the process does not seem that involved). I really need to do this before christmas time, so that I can starting spreading the yuletide cheer in the form of freshly home roasted coffee that I am planning to send to all my various family and friends around the globe. Hopefully, my little Nesco coffee roaster will survive the ordeal. The machine is not meant to raost large bacthes at a time and doing so could overheat the little guy. I am saving up for a Behmor roaster, which supposedly can roast up to a full pound of beans at a time and I hope to some day own a semi-industrial roaster that will allow me to spread my coffee love around the globe. Until then, I will just have to convert people one 5 oz batch at a time.