Archive for August, 2001

Posted on August 28, 2001 - by deCadmus

Gourmet vs. Freshroast, Part II of II

Compared to the Freshbeans Freshroast, the Hearthware Gourmet is, by just about any measure, a cut above. Its larger capacity, its method of roasting, and its chaff collection system are superior. So why have I found it so onerous to get good results?

The Gourmet’s roast chamber is a glass globe mated to a perforated, Teflon-coated metal plate. The hot air jetted through these perforations propels the roasting coffee beans in a swirling, counter-clockwise rotation around the bottom of the roast chamber. This cyclonic action causes the roasting beans to fluidly move around the base plate, creating real roast consistency from bean to bean. The still swirling jet of air then carries the chaff that blows off the roasting beans to a stainless chaff-collector mounted to the top of the globe.

The Gourmet has a comfortably linear roast temperature profile, moving smoothly from room temperature to roasting range, and then continuing to build slowly as the bean mass heats. Unlike the Freshroast, the roast chamber temperature never drops, so roast momentum is maintained, and its power is more than adequate to bring the hardest, most dense beans to second crack and far beyond with little effort.

That power comes at a price, however… and in this case, the cost is noise. It takes a lot of wind to loft a half cup of beans, and an apparently industrial-type blower, with accompanying industrial-type volume levels. It’s a two-stage blower — the second, more powerful stage cycles in at roasting temperatures, whirling even the most stubborn beans around the globe in pulses that last about two seconds. This second stage also aids the cooling cycle, dropping the temperature of the bean mass and roast chamber in nearly the same amount of time as the Freshroast, which has far less mass to cool.

All that remains, then, is the question of why I’ve found it so challenging to achieve roasts that I like –especially those bright, full-flavored City roasts– with the Gourmet? The only answer I can offer is that my experience roasting with the Freshroast colored my expectations. I had become accustomed to the smell of the roast on the cusp of second, the color of the beans, and in particular I grew accustomed to the Freshroast’s comparatively slow conversion during first crack –as much as three minutes– and tried to apply that to the Gourmet. The smell of the roasting beans in the Gourmet is uniformly different, however, and a given bean seems to roast a bit darker [perhaps both due to the comparatively large metal base-plate].

It was only when I added a thermometer to the roasting process that I was able to better discern what was happening in each roast chamber –in particular, to note that the Gourmet’s first crack conversion takes no more than one minute, and often significantly less– and then to adjust my methods accordingly. I still try to judge as much as I can by nose, but increasingly I appreciate being able to verify by both time and temperature.

To tell the truth, the Freshroast still sits on my kitchen counter, side by side with the Gourmet. On especially tricky beans [Moka, Harar and other dry-processed, spendy African beans] I still rely on the smaller roaster — and my nose.

Posted on August 27, 2001 - by deCadmus

Gourmet vs. Freshroast, Part I of II

I really enjoy the consistency the Hearthware Gourmet coffee roaster affords to darker roasts — those that live somewhere on the other side of second crack. I have, however, been underwhelmed by its performance on the lighter side of the roast spectrum — time and again my City roasts –more specifically, everything on the near side of second crack — have cupped with muted flavors, even the brightest of coffees [yeah, even Kenyans] show very little liveliness in the cup, especially when compared to the very bright flavors brought out by the Freshroast roaster.

These two roasters, the Hearthware Gourmet and the Freshbeans Freshroast, each go about their business in a decidedly different manner. Sure, they’re both hot-air roasters. But their methods are very different. Today we’ll examine the Freshbeans Freshroast in some depth…

The Freshroast employs a fairly simple glass cylinder as a roast chamber. Hot air is jetted up from the bottom of the chamber, and the green coffee burbles up and tumbles down inside that narrow glass chimney. As any given bean roasts it becomes drier, and lighter, and so it rises up the column while greener and more dense beans fall.

This method has some inherent issues. The roast chamber is far warmer at the bottom, where the air jets in. It’s possible for beans to become trapped at the bottom of the cylinder –exposed to direct heat– so the temperature has to be strictly managed… especially given the very small roast chamber. Perhaps to compensate, the Freshroast is designed to shut off its heating element at 450 degrees F, restoring the heat again only when the temperature falls below 425 degrees F.

This results in a rather odd-looking temperature profile: a fairly linear temperature progression from room-temperature to 450 degrees F, and then a wavy line that can swell as much as 50 degrees between 400 F and 450 F, depending on the temperature of the bean mass itself. This, as you might imagine, can play havoc with your coffee beans. Those beans just on the cusp of releasing their heat energy in the burst that signals first crack suddenly lose momentum –they won’t go exothermic until the next upswing in the temperature.

The net effect: first crack [and second, for that matter] is inconsistent, both in terms of onset and duration — it may begin as soon as 90 seconds into the roast, and may continue for another three minutes!

Happily enough, it works. And it may be precisely because of the peculiar manner in which it works that coffee roasted in the Freshroast finishes with a particularly complex flavor — a single roast yields a wide range of individually roasted beans, from those that just hit first crack, to those that are nearing second.

Stay tuned… we’ll look at the Gourmet next.

Posted on August 20, 2001 - by deCadmus

Yippity Yemeni! Yemen Mokha Sana’ani, 2001 Crop

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Since my first sip I’ve always sought out Yemen Mokha. It was always difficult to find one that lived up to my expectations… and now that I’m more familiar with the Yemeni landscape I’ve begun to discover why.

Mokha [or Mocha, or Moka] is not a growing region. Mokha is a port city on the Arabian peninsula, and it’s served as a hub for coffee transport since the sixth century. [Yemen itself is the first place outside of Ethiopia where coffee was cultivated.] As the Mokha mark has historically been given to *any* coffee that claimed this port as its own, a lot of non-Yemeni coffees have found their way here–often trekked great distances over land–as the prized Mokha mark would add significantly to the price their coffee would fetch. (more…)

Posted on August 14, 2001 - by deCadmus

Black Bear Roastery

These days it seems I rarely find a commercial roaster that roasts coffee like I do — just to the peak [hopefully] of its flavor, rather than far, far into second crack. But I found just such a roaster, so I wanted to share. I’d come upon Black Bear Micro Roastery after hearing that they were being sued by Starbucks. Everybody loves an underdog, so I placed an order to help out in my own small way.

The happy news is that the coffee blends I sampled –Kenya Safari, Country French and Florentine Espresso– were each quite good. And *very* fresh. Black Bear publishes their roast schedule, and the week I ordered the infamous Charbucks blend wasn’t on the list… drat.

The Kenya Safari is a very mild blend of African and Central American coffees that is predominately Kenya AA, but the Kenya’s brightness is rounded off a bit with the milder Centrals, I’d guess some Colombian and Brazilian hard beans.

The Country French blend is –for a dark-roast– pleasingly mild, and not all that dark… more a deep Full City roast. Given the Central origins, I’d have hoped for more aroma in the cup, but still not bad.

The greatest surprise was the Florentine Espresso, which is absolutely true to its claim of being a Northern Italian style espresso roast. The beans are roasted quite light — there is no sign of oil on the beans. None at all. While that helps contribute to crema production [if all the oil is still in the bean, it's all there to be extracted when you pull the shot] the significantly different roast style requires some serious recalibration of your grinder to find the sweet spot for these beans.

Of these blends, I like the Kenya Safari most… it’s a sneaky way to introduce those “strictly Colombian” coffee drinkers to the world of African coffees. Not that I’d do that, of course.

Posted on August 9, 2001 - by deCadmus

Before the cup…

It’s something of a stretch for the coffee pages, but if –like me– you’ve ever considered making your living as a professional chef, you owe it to yourself to read The Soul Of A Chef, by Michael Ruhlman. Chock-full of equal parts insight and inspiration, I found it to be a real page-turner… and I now have far more appreciation for classical cooking [a la Escoffier] than I ever would have imagined.

Posted on August 9, 2001 - by deCadmus

A visit to PT’s Coffee

I had the opportunity to revisit PT’s Coffee Co. on Monday evening, and confirmed for myself that they do indeed pull a fine espresso. The evening was made better yet by the company of Barry Jarret of Riley’s Coffee. I’ve known Barry for some months now as a valued contributor to the alt.coffee newsgroup, and as a talented roaster and blender of beans. I learned on Monday that he’s also a fine storyteller, generous with his knowledge, modest almost to a fault, and generally a fun guy to hang around with. Go ahead, ask him how he got his start in the coffee business… but take a potty break first.

Posted on August 8, 2001 - by deCadmus

Irrational Weight Loss

After years of wielding a stopwatch as a weapon in the battle to streamline client web sites, I’ve noted an alarming trend to shed page weight at any cost — a good heuristic gone bad.

The latest web page diet fad includes dropping wayfinding hints, icons and images and replacing them with drop-down menus. While this may suit for a more experienced user [and can, in fact, be used to good effect to speed more experienced folk along their way to click efficiency] it too often makes wayfinding far more difficult for new or inexperienced web site consumers.

The subtle cues we use to help users sniff out relevance are important. Far too important to simply eliminate in order to shave a few bytes, or even kilobytes, of download efficiency. At best, our user may take a moment or two longer to ponder the site’s navigation… an exchange of Net bandwidth for the brain bandwidth required to ferret out which drop-down list item is most promising. At worst, our unfortunate user chooses wrong, and must back-track, reload the home page, and start over again. Where’s the efficiency in that?

It’s rarely enough to provide lists of links. At the very least, it’s important that we provide context for those links. Even better, we’ll provide link descriptions and titles, so that our readers can determine what they’ll find on the other end of the hyperlink before they click, thus giving them the power to choose.

Any attempt to cure web page woes should subscribe to the cardinal rule of interaction design… don’t make your user feel stupid.

Posted on August 8, 2001 - by deCadmus

All the news that’s fit to..

well, fit around its new ad format. The New York Times has hopped on the bulging bandwagon of sites that plop large, obtrusive ads smack in the middle of its pages’ content space. Also noteworthy [if not newsworthy] is the fact that they’re using the meta refresh tag to reload pages in client browsers after 900 seconds [that's 15 minutes to you and me]. Is this an altruistic measure to ensure their readers get the very latest news? Or are they artificially inflating page views to boost their ad rates?

Posted on August 3, 2001 - by deCadmus

Thumbing its nose at the Goliath

Thumbing its nose at the Goliath, Black Bear Micro Roastery, a mom and pop roaster in New Hampshire, has decided to continue to sell its Charbucks blend of particularly dark-roasted coffee, despite a lawsuit brought against them by the specialty coffee giant, Starbucks.

Starbucks’ lawyers argue two points. First, the “Inclusion of the term char as part of the Charbucks name immediately creates, in the minds of many consumers, the image of charred coffee beans, which has obvious negative connotations among potential coffee purchasers of coffee products.” And, further, that “Charbucks is so similar to Starbucks that consumers who hear or read the Charbucks name will instantly think of Starbucks.” The legal team appears to dance a very fine line, suggesting –without actually saying outright– that Starbucks has built its brand on charred coffee beans.

Black Bear, run by Annie and Jim Clark, is for all appearances a roaster dedicated to great coffee. The shop’s approach to roasting is exacting, and leans heavily on technology to produce consistent results. They roast and ship on a schedule designed to make sure their customers get fresh beans. They are serious about their craft.

While I’d think a tiff like this should lie below the threshold of a corporate juggernaut like Starbucks, I’d also expect a serious independent roaster to pick its battles more carefully. What do you think?

Posted on August 1, 2001 - by deCadmus

Cupping Fair Trade Coffees

While I’ve cupped one Fair Trade coffee [and I have a few more in the wings] Ken Davids has just posted reviews of thirty-one coffees. The results? A mixed bag, due in part to the current scope of the Fair Trade program — and in part to some coffees that simply disappointed.