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 ...

  Amazon delivered the mostly portable swamp cooler (after letting the order sit unfilled for 5 days; thanks a lot guys!). My favorite UPS driver, Frank, delivered it Friday night and it was my plan to fire it up today and see how well the plan worked. No joy. I think I mentioned that swamp coolers work well in a dry climate. 2 days ago we had a heavy monsoon T-storm with nearly an inch of rain (a lot for us). The rain stopped and the clouds disappeared. But in its wake is humidity over 60%. Trying to use a swamp cooler in climatic conditions like that would lead to death by drowning. So I spent Friday morning doing some maintenance on the roaster (while sweating profusely!). I have everything ready for whenever the humidity drops down to normal. To be continued. And btw, here's an Amazon whine (it's very seldom they cause me to whine about anything). Apparently the previous buyer - the one who returned the new-looking cooler - didn't bother to get all the water out of the ...

 ... was a foundation built on sand. I'm still struggling with a plan to manage heat at the end of the roast. What I thought I knew, now that I did a chart-by-chart review of over 300 roasts, turns out to be a bunch of roasts with poorly managed heat. I've had this issue from the beginning and apparently just excused the error with "I'll do better next time" with no real plan how. Back to the drawing board.

In the last post I was wool-gathering about heat management at the end of the roast. A little research has helped plug a few holes in my memory.  I reviewed some of the early roasts I did 17 to 20 months ago. I was certain I did things better 'in the good ol' days'. But the evidence was undeniable- I had convinced myself about the good ol' days, but they existed only in myth. As Merle Haggard reminded us, "things were exactly as I choose to recall". What I saw in the charts, however, was the same collapse in RoR starting at about 1C. Exactly what I'm whining about today it's just that I wasn't conscious of the issue. I also looked more closely at the greatest difference between a recently cleaned Drum Temp sensor (IR) and the Bean Temp probe (thermocouple). These days I see about 45F° max difference, but over a year ago that max difference was about 65F°. I had speculated that the difference (65F° vs. 45F°) had to do with using higher Preheat, but ...

... but you can be happy if you've a mind to. Words of wisdom from Roger Miller. I can't say this post makes me happy, but I do feel a little better not demanding to roller skate in the buffalo herd of Blogger Editor. This is the 4th time I've written this post about running out of heat at the end of a roast. Sadly the Blogger staff decided auto-save is no longer necessary. Simultaneously they removed the Save button from the Blogger Editor post editor page and buried it under the Preview icon. Come on guys... you're not supposed to act like amateurs! So I guess I'll just pub this bitch-post and try again using a new post.

The hot weather makes it both uncomfortable to roast and introduces the risk of damage to the roaster from excessive temperature when it's running. And that means the heat is getting in the way of having coffee on hand for the morning brew. But if I had some Cuban coffee on hand, this ad suggests I might be able to get the roasting done before the Bullet died! [Thanks to conchscooter of Key West Diaries for the image!] We got hooked on Cuban coffee back when we moved on our Gemini catamaran to Key West in mid-2002. You can find a decent cup of Cuban at pretty much any place that caters to tourists with offerings of snacks/food/groceries, but there are a couple that we favored- Five Brothers either in-town or up on Ramrod Key at MM-26 El Mocho which is a working-dude's cafe on Stock Island (where our marina was) If you're a 3rd wave coffee snob (I really hope I'm not!), you might find Cuban coffee a little on the rough side thanks to the robusta varietal coffee bea...

... by the time the temperature drops enough to roast. The weather is so hot I'm reluctant to fire up the roaster. What a bummer (haven't heard *that* word in about 50 years, right?). The forecast is for about 105°F tomorrow (Saturday) and about 107°F on Sunday. The tiny shop where I roast is like an oven when the temperatures rise so I find excuses to put off my chores. Monday is supposed to havee a high down into the upper 90s so I'll give it a try then. Early. And whoever said 'but it's a dry heat' likely made that observation from their air conditioned office.