I want some coffee!

... and it was a good thing too. The Admiral had gotten us some Starbucks Verona (our old favorite) which did not live up to our recollection of 'favorite'.  So on 20 November I managed to do 6 roasts of 1# each in the bag. 'In the bag'? Green beans lose about 17% of their weight during the roast so I have to roast more green beans in order to end up with 1# 'in the bag'.  I was relieved it came out great and we both were pleased to have the Chiapas from Mexico back in our morning cup. I'm the only one that cares about the nerdy side of roasting but since it's my blog I'll include the roast graph... I was really pleased with the shape of the curves so I translated this last roast of the day into a Recipe. The Recipe is a set of instructions used in RoasTime software (supplied by Aillio at no charge) that does the button-pushing for you. Hopefully I will be able to replicate this roast for this particular variety of beans.

I'm still among the living. Visited the San Pedro Clinic on Friday and Sean says the chest X-rays came back fine. No surprises hidden away. And the blood work is better than I've ever seen. Wow! Guess the Admiral is doing everything right to keep me going. My plan was to get a few roasts done today but emergency repairs got in the way. My poor old chair has been wobbling for the past year and threatens to unseat me each time I try to sit. [ Mmm... kinda contradicts 'emergency' doesn't it? ]  So after the morning walk (wow! 6 days in a row!) I stopped at Ace and bought some glue, made a proper mess of smearing it in all the wrong places and set the errant leg out in the sun. But the recommendation is to wait 24 hrs before messing with the joint so it looks like tomorrow before I can put the chair back together. Of course I forgot to get the 'before' but here's the 'after'. The lower threaded insert (on the left in the photo) had backed out and wa...

 I had wanted to say in the previous post that a persistent cough has taken its toll of coffee roasting. In fact I'm about a day away from opening a bag of Starbucks Verona- the first we've had to buy in years. Verona is not penance by any means. I recall enjoying Verona a lot. It's a dark roast which has been consistent over the years. And we have always been able to find it wherever we travel in the US. But the Admiral and I have become very attached to our morning cup of Chiapas from Mexico. I have a recent purchase from Coffee Bean Corral so I'm good to go for maybe 15 or more roasts. The issue has been my persistent dry cough. I wasn't sure what that was about so I went to the PA (physician's assistant) at San Pedro Clinic. He ordered some chest X-rays and blood work. I'll see him Friday and see what he thinks. I think the answer is going to be 'you've got the bug that's been going around' but at this point who knows? If I do in fact hav...

 ... it's not over.  Fall has been something of an oddity this year as it slides day-by-day in a gradual decline of daily high temp from 90s to 80s and now the 70s with 60s in the forecast for next week. It has been a fall like no other we've experienced over our roughly 13 years here in San Pedro Valley and specifically Benson. Something that hasn't changed is the irritating nature of healthcare in Benson. When we first arrived in Benson there was a clinic on 4th street called San Pedro Family Care. The clinic is still here but the 2 doctors that ran the place, Carter and Andy Mayberry, have sold the practice to the local hospital. But neither brother is willing to work for the hospital and have instead gone to Chiricahua Clinic across from the hospital.   San Pedro Clinic in Benson So the issue is there are no doctors at San Pedro clinic. They currently have a PA (physician's assistant) and 3 nurse practitioners. They had a doctor but she left Arizona to travel to Flo...

I've whined about the heat here in Southeast AZ since about March. Now it's the 11th of October and we just got our first freeze warning. Since March we've had100's, 90's and 80's (but thankfully nothing over 110 this year!).  Now we get 2 days in the 70s and an overnight freeze. Be careful what you wish for! This will be me headed up to check the mail. Well... maybe a golf cart instead of a horse but this image from Tyler Stableford clearly expresses my feelings about the weather change! To celebrate the weather change I roasted my last 2 batches of Chiapas (last of the lot from Coffee Bean Corral, but another 25# arrived this evening) plus 2 batches of Cerro Brujo don Sergio (it's from Chiapas, Mexico) that I got from Sweet Maria's. A batch for me is 550 gm of greens which yields about a pound. I've roasted a lot of Chiapas greens over the last several months and it has been consistently good. The don Sergio , however, is new to me so I'm not ...

We both have been layed low by a bug of some sort which gets in the way of getting back on the road. In the interim I applied some aluminum wheel polish to try to protect the new wheels (it’s my impression aluminum wheels have a more fragile finish than chromed steel) plus applied some ‘dressing’ onto the sidewalls of our new Michelin tires. Buoyed by having gone 6 hours without an urgent trip to the bathroom and sorta-protected tires we opted for a Sunday drive on Saturday afternoon. I’m still totally lost why the new tires seem to have done everything I had expected only from a properly done wheel alignment. I can only assume there was an internal issue with the right front or with the right rear duals. All those old tires were properly inflated and had seemed to have near-new tread depth. So it would have to be internal to those Firestone Transforce HT casings. Whatever the issue, it wasn’t visible while the tires were on the RV. So off we went at about 2pm to the town of Safford, A...

True to his word, Shannon got the wheels & tires (early I should add!). The Vegas is now whole again: The ALCOA wheels look fine as do the 'hub caps' that cover the hubs. Oddly the hub caps are held in place by the chamfered rim of the lug bolts. I'd been quoted 'about $4,500' for everything which was a little vague. I suspected the final price might grow a little. Instead of growing it was almost $400 less. And the wheels look great with all valves accessible using a 'truckers tire gauge'... the one with an additional valve that's angled at 45° to the rear. Oddly my complaint about the steering pulling strongly to the right has disappeared. Not sure how that's possible but I'll take it. The Admiral would probably say it's because I was an altar boy for a couple years but I have a hunch that ship already sailed!