I want some coffee!

Not the freeing experience I'd anticipated to have gotten the 2nd COVID vaccination. With the second shot on the score card (as of 19 Feb) we still have to act like we haven't had the vaccine since we will need to continue with wearing our masks, washing hands and acting in all regards like we haven't had the vaccination. But that apparently is what it takes for us (all!) to defeat this disease. On the plus side my favorite crazy nurse was on hand to poke holes in our arms. This time we learned that Teri and her husband raise alpacas over in Chochise. They harvest alpaca wool in April otherwise the local temps will be so high it will kill them... these critters want high elevation and cold temps! Teri says these guys come in 14 different colors- 14 shades of brown! Wonder if they all look as happy this guy. With a goof ball like this, what's not to love?! But getting #2 out of the way has prompted us to plan a trip to our favorite restaurant: Mi Casa here in Benson. Fi...

I've chastised myself over and over for waiting so many years to try coffee from Mexico. The only excuse is the opportunity never dropped into my lap. Of course about 12 seconds with Google could have resolved that issue but I just had no idea what I was missing. Granted not all coffee from Mexico is as good as this Organic Chiapas greens I've been buying from Coffee Bean Corral . I tried something they call La Laja Honey Process from Veracruz and it just isn't as good. The Chiapas Turquesa sample I bought is pretty good but doesn't yield the same great cup. So this love affair with this coffee from Chiapas, Mexico continues. It's a dark roast but not so dark it bleeds oil when the beans are dropped into the cooling tray. A few oily spots is all I see. After perhaps 10 days of rest the oil starts to appear on the surface of the roasted beans. That's when the good stuff happens in the brew. I found that it's best to follow my own dictum of keeping the secon...

In the end it was our friend Linda that made it happen. She hounded the Admiral mercilessly till C called Benson Hospital and inquired about the COVID-19 vaccine. Yes, they were giving vaccinations. Yes, we can schedule you. But first you have to get on a waiting list.  3 days later they called and told us we could be scheduled to be vaccinated at 1100 & 1115 on 22 Jan.  The Admiral signed us up without hesitation. Even with the appointment I stewed about it for the entire week. I was concerned that this would give us the first dose but that there might not be sufficient vaccine to schedule the 2nd dose.  We arrived at the hospital 1/2 hr early on the 22nd thinking it would take awhile to get checked in. Our cloth masks had to be removed and a proper hospital-supplied N95 paper mask put on (that meant ear loops which tangle with my hearing aids). A few minutes later we were at the receptionist's desk and blew thru registration with time to kill before the first schedu...

Matt-the-Code-Warrior has been gone... holidays, family business, whatever. So in the interim I've fallen prey to my lazy ways. Oops. I did get in some roasting each week to keep friends supplied with the primary ingredient for their morning cup. Several batches of Mexican organic Chiapas (still our favorite), a batch of Ethiopian organic Yigacheffe, and several tries at some decaf. I keep hoping I'm going to find the pot at the end of the decaf-rainbow but so far that pot has turned out to be definitely not gold. Don't get me wrong- the product has been a very drinkable decaf roast. But vendor claims to the contrary they have not contained the chocolate bomb I keep hoping for. And while this has been fun experimenting with decaf roasts the pandemic continues to rage... and in Arizona that's not an exaggeration. We were #1 in the US for about a week or two. The vaccine for COVID-19 has arrived in some limited quantity but distribution appears hit or miss. A neighbor in ...

I feel like I ought to be roasting more coffee but apparently no one is ready yet. For months I've been on a roll roasting 2 or even 3 times per week as part of software development for the roaster manufacturer ( Aillio- they're based in Taiwan ). But the lead programmer (Matt-the-Code-Warrior up in Idaho) has taken a couple weeks off for the year-end holidays. And that leaves nothing in the pipeline requiring testing. That said I realized over the morning cup that I have been jumping on every opportunity to roast. I've been relentlessly chasing a flavor in the Chiapas beans that has evaded me of late. The first of this lot I roasted had a chocolate bomb tucked away inside the wall of the bean. And I nailed it immediately with the first roast. I'd assumed all I had to do is follow that same roast profile and all would be unlocked. Well, Mrs. Bowman's little boy found nothing but disappointment after about the 10th batch! That incredible chocolate bomb just went into...

... and thought it would make a good blog entry so I don't forget what I was thinking at the time. Good morning Art- Uh-oh. You may end up regretting you hit the Play button!! 😀 [This will be] Way more than you ever wanted to hear I’m afraid. Anything I have to say about roasting is strictly personal opinion. I’m nothing more than a self-taught amateur. Yeah, I read a lot, but my reading is usually focused on resolving a specific issue and not understanding the universe of roasting for all applications and all bean varieties. There’s a lot of coffee out there that just doesn’t appeal to me. Thompson Owen of Sweet Maria’s has been a good source thru his articles . Takes a lot of digging cuz the Sweet Maria’s search engine leaves something to be desired. And I’ve gotten a few things from Scott Rao even though it may seem I’m a skeptic. Mostly I’m enough of a contrarian that I resist the urge to rigorously follow anyone’s process blindly. “There are a lot of ways to skin t...

I found two different decaf offerings at Coffee Bean Corral. The first decaf is from Costa Rica- from the Tres Rios region and is decaffeinated using the SWP (Swiss Water Process). I mentioned it in the last post. The other sample I bought from Coffee Bean Corral was a Brazil decaf they called Sul de Minas . It's from the area of Sul de Minas - literally "the south of Minas " - in the state of Minas Gerais . The state is just north of Rio and Sao Paulo (you may be able to see them in the map below).   Decaffeination was done using Royal Select's MWP (Mountain Water Process). MWP is a competing technology for the patented Swiss Water Process caffeine removal. MWP leaves the greens so dark they appear to be already roasted. But the results are comparable to SWP-processed beans. The only apparent difference is the very dark color of the unroasted beans making the start of the roast a little tricky- that's when the beans start to dry and I expect to see specific c...