I want some coffee!

I've posted that my sure-fire pick of organic Oaxaca was a definite miss. Just didn't taste very good. Then a couple months went by and I replaced the exhaust fan motor. Rather than use our favorite Chiapas beans to see if the motor replacement helped anything I used the Oaxaca beans. But I wasn't bothering to taste them... they just piled up in the fridge. We ran out of roasted Chiapas when nearby neighbor, Larry Ayers - he and his family own Ohori Coffee in Santa Fe, NM - dropped off a bag of their Santa Fe Blend from his Santa Fe roastery as a thank you for a pound of coffee I'd given him last year. That was a wonderful sample of very dark roasted coffee and we enjoyed every drop! (Thank you Larry!!) As the rules of supply & demand dictate, we ran out of coffee and I thought 'what the hell- might as well try some of the Oaxaca'. I had some on the counter from months ago and I brewed a pot with that. And it wasn't too bad. So it appears it definitely n...

What should have been a minimal task to replace the exhaust fan motor turned into a medusa that left me frozen no matter which way I turned. And the issue wasn't really the fan motor, it was the firmware. I think. Mmmm... I suspect. Or not. The fan arrived on a Friday sans mounting screws so I lost another week waiting for the missing parts. Replacing the motor eventually took less than 5 minutes (no exaggeration) and the roaster started up without issue. Well... except I had updated the firmware (the machine level instructions that make the roaster operate properly; I abbreviate it as f/w). Basically I was frustrated by waiting for parts and realized I had been ignoring an update for a few weeks. So I ran the RoasTime software which contains the f/w update routine. Other Bullet owners have had an issue updating the f/w but my early copy of RT3 (3.1.8.0) apparently has a fix for that so I buzzed thru it without issue. I had thought what I d/l'ed was f/w venison 572. When the f...

... and now it's installed. But not without the usual 2-steps-forward-and-1-step-back dance routined to keep the sedentary in the crowd (that would be me) from dozing. The fan and a couple other items arrived after a 3 day trip from Oakland to Benson. I had carefully preserved the old screws so I would have no problem installing the new motor. For all the good *that* did! The old screws were for cutting a thread in soft plastic and the new motor required a a machine screw of undetermined size. This was on a Friday (of course!) so it was Monday before I could voice my whine. Plus 3 days delivery (again). The package actually arrived on time on Wednesday but Wednesday was a drive-to-Tucson-and-pick-up-your-new-glasses day. So was late Wednesday afternoon before the motor went into it's new home and I was only able to run the fan calibration routine... no time for roasting. The motor mount is different because this motor has been changed to what the newer V2 roaster uses. Since I ...

Those were the first words out of my beloved's mouth when I gave her the news. The unthinkable happened sometime in the last few weeks: the roaster broke and I didn't realize it. The source of all things good here in Benson had a problem. I'm not completely sure when it happened but I think it might have been a while ago. The roaster has a drum that rotates and an induction heating system to get it to roast temperature. There's a speed control for the drum and a fan for drawing in air to move chaff to the chaff collector and to remove excess heat. That later device, the fan, is the culprit. The rear of the roaster is devoted to the chaff collector. It's basically half of a tub-like piece. One hole on the collector lines up with a transfer tube that carries the chaff-laden air from the drum to the collector and another hole in the chaff collector lines up with the impeller of a fan. The collector itself contains a cup-shaped wire screen that serves as the filter for ...

I still need to get our decaf "needs" resolved, but in the meantime Sweet Maria's threw us a curve ball.  My neighbor Will buys an espresso blend from them called Liquid Amber. They've been selling it for years so it came as a surprise when they announced to Will that they were "out of stock". When he asked the when-question he was told "we don't know when we'll be able to buy all the components of the blend". So that means we're back to the drawing board. I bought samples of 3 different espresso blends (he uses it to brew his pour-over)- "Espresso Monkey blend" from Sweet maria's "New Classic Espresso blend" from Sweet Maria's "Ferdelance Espresso blend" from Coffee Bean Corral I got the first roast of the Espresso Monkey done but I wasn't happy with how things went, so I reworked the profile thru changes to the "Recipe" (the way the roaster software automates a roast) and gave it ano...

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'...