caught sippin

That's right baby,

The Fox likes the coffee.

Here she is all dressed down with a big steamy cup of the java juice grasped firmly within her hot little hands. She probably got it to counteract the little wake and bake session she had before going to the set of her latest film which has her playing Queen Elizabeth at the height of her powers. Okay, she is really playing a gun toting southern call girl, or a angel winged circus freak or something, but there can be no doubt about it....

Megan Fox likes her coffee.

She has about a billion pics of her floating around cyberspace and and seems about half of them show her holding a cup of the ol' jazzy juice. Of course, further research might be needed to find out whether she drinks the real shit or she prefers some froo froo latte drink. The fact that she is not seen walking around with one of those giant starbucks slurpee cups is a good sign that she indeed may be one of us.

Speaking of the Fox

The girlfriend and I finally got around to watching Transformers 2 "the rise of the Machines" or whatever. What a boring piece of crap that turned out to be. Sure Megan got to look sexy in some scenes but the movie was just two and half hours of predictable plot twists and hard to follow Micheal Bay action sequences. I really do not understand how this was the biggest movie of the summer. Thats the viewing public for you, easily suckered by a gimmick. Just look at Avatar. District 9 has my vote for the best new action film to come out this past year. It was a clever original story that still delivered heaping helpings of action and gore.

look next time

I was doing my best to roast a bunch of coffee up for my folks and send it to them for christmas. I already had a 12 oz batch of the RGN and some decaf for the ol man prepared when I decided to roast some Tanzanian Blackburn Estate PB as well.

I got it all set up and let er crank.

A minute passed by, and I noticed a peculiar smell emanating from the Behmor. It smelt a little on the asphalt side. My hand hovered on the off button as I looked inside, even opening the door for a better peek. Nothing seemed wrong so I let it go. Perhaps I just needed to clean the thing better, or maybe some rogue burlap strings had somehow snuck their way in, whatever the reason, I figured "wait and see" was the best policy. So I let the puppy run its cycle and made a note about the funny rope burning smell in my roast log.

The smell got worse.

I thought about shutting it down but looking at the beans again, everything seemed fine. Then, the smell of the roasting coffee began to overtake the funky chemical burning smell as it started pop its way to a finish. I saw this as a sign that everything was all honky dory.

The cooling cycle kicked in and the the funky chemical smell once again returned as the Behmor Coffee Roaster pumped out the rest of the heat through its catalytic converter. "Interesting,"I thought. I let the coffee cool as I washed some clothes then came back to pull the beans and stick em in a food saver bag for shipment to the UP eh?(My folks happen to live in Northern Michigan)

That was when i discovered the brush sitting on the bottom of the roasting chamber. It seems that I had forgotten to take it out before roasting. I do know why I would have even left the sucker in the roast chamber in the first place, but there it was,sitting at the bottom of the behmor, still smoldering.

The brush had actually stood up well to the 400 plus degree roasting temperatures, only singeing about 1/3 of the way through. The coffee seemed fine too, probably because the brush was lying right next to the exhaust vent. It did leave a nasty tar stain on the bottom of the roaster and who knows what damage it did to the filter.

Anyway, I still use the brush, but now I am sure to double check before roasting just in case i decide for some reason to leave the chaff brush on the bottom again.

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

Geico gecko coffee

Here I was looking at this little coffee plant growing on a Maui Plantation when this little green fellow showed up and asked me what type of auto insurance I currently had.

Little geckos apparently like to sunbathe on the big green rubbery leaves of the coffee plant.This prominent position also allows then to spot tourists on which to deliver their "save money with Geico" spiel in their cute little Australian accents. While not to keen on the soliciting, the owners of the plantation tolerate the little green guys since they also eat a lot of the pests that may harm the various crops.

this little fellow happily licked his eye when I told him thst I already have Geiceo auto insurance and then what about his business.

Fire in the hole

So the other month I decided to go a little crazy and roast up a a full pound of Maui Red Catuai and Brazilian Mogiana (what I call my Maui Mogiana Blend) in my trusty old Behmor. I had roasted up a full pound of beans in my Behmor before, but this one was special. Mainly because I managed to set my machine on fire.

I do not know if it was because I had just a smidgen over 16 oz in the roaster if I just happened to let this beast of a blend coast on P3 a little too long (23:30) or if there was just a build up of crud inside the machine. All I know is, that I noticed a dark haze hovering over my Behmor and when I went in for a closer look, I saw sparks.

I probably would have ignored all this, if my Landlord had not recently installed a new smoke alarm that went off and forced me to look at what was going on. Of course, the Behmor has the tendency to set off smoke alarms all the time (which is why I always pull the battery out of them.) But since, this one was new, the battery was still attached, and it went off like the dickens ans when I went to wank the battery to shut it up, that when I noticed all the smoke and said to myself "now that doesn't look right."

Thankfully, I remembered my training from Behmor Boot camp and did the right thing. I immediately unplugged the machine (it was on the cooling cycle anyway) and hauled it outdoors so that all my neighbors might be able to smell what burnt Maui Mogiana is all about. Thanks to my overly callused hands that can handle hot metal things, I was actually able to save the beans which were with sizzling and popping within the wire drum. I got them out and poured them into one of those big silver bowls that you use for salads and such. I then transferred them to another bowl and them finally to a big wok, where I stirred them with a wooden spoon, like a saw a lady doing in one of the pics on the Sweet Marias Website.

The coffee actually turned out to be pretty good, a nice full, full city which makes me suspect that the whole incident was a chaff fire.

On a separate note, the maui mogiana blend really makes me pee a lot. Something I found out when I went to watch 2012. Thankfully i did not miss any important plot points the 4 or 5 times I had to get up and go pee.

coffee and your sex drive

Super Mario, the face of Nintendo recently reported that he uses coffee to keep things on the up and up between him and the Princess.

"Ima Super Mar-io, I am da best!"

Super Mario exclaimed after he revealed that he has been using coffee bean e to help him deal with his occasional bouts of erectile dysfunction. Recent research into coffee as revealed that people who drink more coffee are hornier than those who do not. This clinical study was performed both of geriatric lab animals as well as actual live senior citizens. Upon dissection, it was revealed that testosterone levels had increased after being injected with an official Starbucks espresso syringe. Field studies also indicate that granpas who drink coffee shag more grannies. This field study also lead to the development of the Grannysgettingiton.com.

"oh thank you Mario." Was the Princess' reaction after finding out that the famous monster stomping plumber was using coffee to help lil Mario stay erect.

Coffee related tooth decay

Tis the season to cash in on my dental benefits and get as much dental work as I can stand before the end of the year. So, I squeezed in a cleaning the other day and spent a morning getting my teeth washed with a high pressure water gun or something like that.

I should stuck to two cups of the Mogiana Maui Blend that i was testing out, but dentists make me nervous and I drank the whole giant load that I had made in my Chemex that morning. Something about the drone of the drill triggered something down there and I found myself running to the bathroom several times during the process.

This spurred me to ask the dental hygenist if coffee was bad for your teeth.

"NO" she said as she lowered her weilder's mask and climbed into my mouth.

"But," She continued, " It does cause bad breath, and stains your teeth."

With my mouth full of dentists and their blunt instruments, I could only roll my eyes in relief.

I was prepared to get dentures though