I want some coffee!

The search has been an on-going struggle. I limit myself to one 12 oz. cup of coffee and that's in the morning. I'd really like to have a second cup but the caffeine seems to interfere with my sleep. Decaf would be an option after I hit my daily limit, but finding a decaf I actually like as much as my morning cup of Chiapas has been a lost cause. And finding nothing has been disappointing as I've tried a number of decaffeinated greens- The Sumatra Aceh Farmers decaf above was pretty good but I can't say that about the other 9 decafs. And that roast went pretty well...   So... why the sudden interest in finding a great tasting decaf? Well my neighbor Will offered me some decaf he buys from Peet's ( Mokha-Java darkroast decaf) for his wife Patty. That was downright good and it didn't need any qualifiers like "pretty good for decaf". We felt the same in past years when we were buying Starbucks Verona decaf . But I just haven't been able to compete a...

As I've posted previously, I've been having great success roasting some organic beans from Chiapas. They are beans I bought from Coffee Bean Corral. Probably at or near the very top of our list of all-time favorites. When I saw similar organic beans available from the same vendor and sourced from neighboring state of Oaxaca, I couldn't help but place an order. Well, in hindsight... this is why they offer 'sample orders'. But the eternal optimist in me said "don't worry... it'll be great!". Yeah, right. Not bad is the best I can say. The roast profile (below) is a little odd with a repeatable double hump at the start (?) and the end of the roast is pretty much what I expect. The taste was quite different (this is very frustrating to not have the training to describe what I specifically tasted! 😡 ). The body (which I've come to realize is important to us) was good but the flavors were quite different. And the roasted & bagged beans didn'...

Matt-the-Code-Warrior has been keeping me busy with changes to version 3 of the RoasTime software for our Aillio Bullet coffee roaster. This most recent release was a major step in promised features that have been years coming. The model V2 roaster which I have contains infrared temperature measurement of the drum (during the pre-heating period before beans are added) and of the beans during the roast as they fly past the view port of the IR sensor. The roaster has an infrared sensor mounted in the front panel which is aimed at the beans as they tumble in the drum. Since the beans are being heated by the drum they absorb that heat which in turn causes them to radiate in the (not visible to the human eye) infrared spectrum. Anyone who has had their temperature taken as part of the current COVID pandemic has most likely had that measurement done using an infrared thermometer (preferred measurement because there's no contact). The device has a space age ring to it but the reality was ...