New Toy

I picked up a new toy for myself last night, as mentioned earlier. Eager to give it a try I pulled out the only coffee I have in the house right now that isn't green. My stand by West Coast Dark Roast from superstore. I ground it as fine as I could with my grinder and packed this puppy as full as I could.

This was my first time ever trying espresso from a machine like this. I've heard nothing but good things so I had pretty high expectations. Let me tell you, they were met or surpassed. Even with regular coffee. What a strong espresso. Full of flavor, not too bitter. No crema though but that could be because of the beans. Eager to try some choco in here or even some President's Choice espresso. This is a neat gadget to add to your collection and for 10 bucks you can't go wrong. Even if you use it 5 or 6 times it pays for itself.

Sumatra Updates

It has been a couple of days since I last updated the blog. Not much to report right now.

The Sumatra that I roasted on Saturday afternoon (7:15) turned out to be really great. I think it was the best roast I've done on Sumatra. It was strong and tasted like a nice dark roast coffee. It didn't have strong after taste or bitterness. It had good flavor. I will be restocking this bean and I think it will be a regular roast for me.

Last night I found a stove top espresso machine, finally. I wanted a small one that only made a little bit. Sarah does not like it and rarely is there anyone around who would want to partake in some either. On top of the size requirement I didn't want to spend much money. Luckily I was able to find the perfect one at Kitchen Stuff Plus. It says '3 cup' which I am assuming is 3 x 2oz. Cost was $10. I hope that I can give it a try later today. Need some espresso first.

Sumatra: Roast/Brew #1

Roasting notes:
1st crack 2:30
2nd crack 5:00
end 6:30

Looks like a nice full city roast. Smells a tiny bit burned , approaching dark roast.

Let this one sit about 18 hours as well. Grinding brought on a really great smell. Sweet/candy like coffee smell.

The brew came out great. The coffee has a certain earthy/spicey flavor to it. Not too strong but its there. Makes for a really nice after taste. Each sip gets progressively better. My first sip I thought, this came out OK. By the end of the cup I was left thinking that this was awesome.

I've got a good baseline down for this bean. Next time around I may roast 15-20 seconds longer just to test the results. I may also do one roast a little lighter just out of curiousity.

Costa Rican Tarrazu: Round 2

After pretty decent success with my first attempt with the Costa Rican Tarrazu I was eager to give it another shot. As mentioned in my last post I thought I would roast for a shorter time. Here are the roasting stats:

1st crack 4:05
2nd crack 4:45
end: 5:20

The beans showed a nice chocolate brown color. The smell was nice / sweet.

I let the beans sit for about 18 hours before brewing.

Upon grind the coffee smelled excellent. I made half a pot so I had 2 nice mugs of this coffee. In all honesty both these cups were the best coffee I've had in recent memory. I would have to call this roast a great success, my best results so far. I will for sure be using this timeline as a guideline for how long to roast the remainder of my Tarrazu beans.

Brew Number 5

Failure...

This is the biggest failure since Nighthawk and Dragon wrecked their dad's boat while making the first music video for Prestige Worldwide.

I ground the coffee and it had a light milk chocolate type color to the grind, similar to batch 2. Unfortunately when I brewed in the french press the color did not change much. The flavor was mild, weak which is disappointing because the smell of the beans was good. The taste is kind of what would be expected from the smell except much more watery.

From my estimation what happened here is that warming up the machine for 2 minutes caused the beans to roast on the outside quicker than normal and the inside suffered for this leaving me with an incomplete roast.

Trial and error is what its all about. Looking forward to getting some more beans and continuing with this.

For anyone who is reading my blog - yes its true. I've gone off the deep end. I am spending far too much time, energy at this new found hobby. Feel free to laugh at me and mock me. It's all good.