I want some coffee!

"If you use cream or sugar, you don't like coffee- you like caffeine!" So said one YouTuber that has the same need to have coffee that tastes like it was roasted. So we (the Admiral and I) drink coffee with nothing added. No milk or cream, no sugar. No flavorings. If you like the taste of coffee you need nothing added to the coffee. I think my strident view originated with using Cremora or CoffeeMate in the bad-old-days when I was still working. Disgusting stuff! To my taste, sugar was just as bad. Completely distracts from what you're trying to enjoy. And then there's the roasted coffee that has had a flavoring added. Flavors like hazelnut. Or a Starbucks annual celebration of Fall with pumpkin spice. Sorry guys... no joy here! Just... Ok, now I have to 'fess up. I love Cuban coffee. Cuban coffee is like an over-grown cappuccino made with espresso from coffee grown in Cuba. I ask for a Cuban, dark, three scoops. That means extra espresso (dark) with 3 scoops ...

I made a big deal about brewing our morning cup with water that has been heated to 198°F. There are a few ways to get there including a stove top-heated kettle with a temperature probe in the center of the lid. We use something more extravagant. It's a kettle that can be set to a final temperature at which point it will either shut off or maintain the water at that temperature. I found this bonaVITA automatic kettle at Sweet Maria's that I like. There are any number of kettles for heating water, but kettles with temperature control are more limited.   The bonaVITA automatic kettle has a gooseneck spout which makes it easy to hit a specific place in the coffee when pouring. I have always assumed it was designed for tea drinkers but since I recently became aware of the methods used for pour-over coffee I must admit it lends itself to that method nicely. We use exactly 28 oz water (not precisely; if we were precise I would use a gram scale to measure the amount). Our water is filt...

There's probably nothing among coffee geeks more controversial than how to brew coffee. Each method (pour-over, percolator, Mr. Coffee, #6 Melitta cone filter, et al) has it's faithful following and we are card-carrying members of the #6 Melitta filter cult.   Our preferred method is a #6 Melitta cone filter brewed into a carafe. But what The Admiral and I remember from many years ago is a small departure from the accepted norm- We heat 28 oz of water to 198°F. While that is heating we fold the bonded edges of a #6 Melitta filter (it's a safety precaution so the seam doesn't fail when it gets wet with coffee in the filter, place the dry filter in the cone, then wet the filter (washes off any paper-taste).** Set the filter cone (some call it a filter holder) on the carafe and add the 1/2 C of coffee I ground moments before. When the water is at the right temperature (we use 198°F; SCAA*** suggests 195°F-205°F) pour some of the water over the coffee, say 25-30%, moving th...

This is a piece on getting the job done vs. blowing your retirement savings on snob appeal. Roasting is really just an opening step to my real purpose which is to enjoy s good cup of coffee. That all important intermediate step of brewing is something The Admiral (mostly) and I (a little bit) have worked out and it hasn't varied in years.  I roast the coffee, then we grind a measured amount of beans,  put the ground coffee in a filter basket (a Melitta these days), and  pour directly (for a Melitta) or indirectly (like a Mr Coffee) hot water over the top [don't laugh at the Mr Coffee- if you buy the right model it can brew great coffee! ] Once the beans are roasted it's time to brew and brewing starts with the grinder. And we've used a few over the years. The fanciest grinder we had was a Mazzer Mini we bought from Sweet Maria's for under $365 in 2003 (they cost about $700 today!). It was pretty much a commercial grade espresso grinder with a built-in doser. At the...

Today it was Veracruz Finca la Laja (honey processed) from Mexico. I bought these beans from Coffee Bean Corral and I'm very pleased with what I tasted this morning. What caught my eye was- This honey processed coffee is a blend from two farms: Finca La Laja and Finca El Mirador. After depulping, the coffee was dried slowly on covered raised beds for 20 days. This coffee is supremely sweet with a mild orange citric acidity, chocolate and sugar cane flavor profile, and a big creamy body. It is very clean and consistent. By now it's no surprise that the words 'chocolate' and 'sugar cane' are what grabbed me. And that is also code for a roast that has to be fairly dark since that's what accentuates those flavors. So that was the roast plan: take the roast to above about 440°F which should yield a Full City roast. But I got surprised as the roast progressed. Normally I hit fist crack (1C) at around 395°F-400°F. But with these beans, a recent harvest lot, I was ...

Before Blogger shit-canned my work for the 3rd time, what I wanted to post about is my issue surrounding the runaway loss of heat at the end of the roast. I didn't have to deal with it when I started with the Bullet back in Jan 2019, but it's a familiar quirk these days. I whined to an internet acquaintance about it and Stuart's feedback was phrased in just the right way to make me see what I've changed that needs to be unchanged. He said: As you note, one of the perils of the Bullet with it lacking any significant thermal mass is once you drop off the cliff with thermal momentum, you’re kind of screwed. I had whined that I was already at P9 (the highest power setting on the Bullet) and 'there's nothing left in the tank to get heat into the drum'. This has been happening at the end of the roast as 1C starts. Rate of Rise (RoR; the 1st derivative of Bean Temp) measures how fast temperature in rising in Fahrenheit degrees per minute (F°/min). As long as the ...

Friday I roasted 2.2 kgs of Costa Rica don Oscar Limones and struggled with managing heat toward the end of the roast. I was concerned if all my fussing around had been enough to save the roast. So on Saturday we tried a cup instead of waiting at least 24 hrs to let the coffee 'rest'. To my taste it was totally blah... like having some water using your just-emptied coffee cup without rinsing it. I knew it was coffee but all the things I cherish were watered down. The Admiral (my biggest fan!) said I had no idea what I was talking about. I blamed it on screwing up the brew but that was no more than a WAG. So I was uneasy about this 2nd try on Sunday. Everything was brewed the same- same amount of coffee (I measure the coffee for the morning brew by volume instead of properly using a scale); same amount of water (again, I use volume instead of a scale like I should); the temperature of the water ( a bonaVITA kettle set to 197°F); wet the grinds and wait for the bloom; and last ...

Kind'a out of the blue I received a shipping notice. I had guessed So. Korea was still shut down but there was unreported activity at the December Dripper factory! The 2 drippers arrived in perfect shape and work exactly as advertised. What's unique about their design is that they are throttle-able. You can set the base to expose 3, 2, 1 or 0 drain holes in the base of the dripper. That means the user can control the flow rate and ultimately the amount of extraction time during brewing. My first try was with some decaf which came out so strong I thought I might grow hair on my teeth. Apparently S. Koreans are studly coffee drinkers and have my utmost respect! Using their recommended ratio of 300 gm water to 20 gm coffee (15:1) was more than I could handle. Our usual ratio is 410 gm water to 20 gm coffee (20.5:1). A second try a few days later gave me about what I was accustomed to with better flavor extraction. At first blush I'm very impressed. But the process is complicat...

The Berkey water filter was the catalyst of change. Since the Berkey arrived and I had an epiphany by recalling the original Melitta filter instructions I read back in 1953 or '54, I have changed how I brew using the Melitta. I now use the Melitta similar to the way others use a pour-over filter. And oh-by-the-way, the same method Melitta recommended in the early 1950s: wet the grounds and let it sit till the water passes thru (they call it a bloom), then add the remaining water in a slow steady pour but only in the center of the filter. No more spreading water around all the grounds to get everything wet again while I finish the pour. And no more stirring with a spoon. Not quite a pour-over, which (depending on the 'expert') dictates a pause every 150 mL or so, but the change in flavor was remarkable to me. So, 'in for a penny, in for a pound' . I wanted to experiment by trying a proper pour-over. I found there are dozens of detailed procedures on the 'net...

While I love roasting coffee, my primary interest has always been about drinking coffee. Brewing is just an unavoidable step between my two interests. I learned to brew coffee early-on, long before I became interested in roasting. I learned first (and briefly) using a percolator (hardware stores sold percolators; grocery stores sold groceries). Then a short while later a Melitta came to live with us (from Turner's Hardware, of course). That early training stuck and I didn't vary the method till... C and I discovered RVs in 2009. At that point we shifted to a drip coffee maker just cuz that's what other RVers were using. We bought the cheapest Mr. Coffee Walmart had on sale- it was $19.95 and looked something like this newer model. Conveniently it had a Strong setting like this newer model has. The Strong setting seemed to slow the brewing process a little so there was more time between 'burps' of water than when the Strong light was off. It was very decent coffee ...