Archive for January, 2002

Posted on January 7, 2002 - by deCadmus

Must-see TV…

Must-see TV…
Tonight on FoodTV’s Unwrapped: Coffee. That’s 9pm EST, 8pm CST, etc. etc.

Posted on January 7, 2002 - by deCadmus

Tech TV Tivos MacWorld

TechTV is covering the keynote of Steve Jobs from MacWorld, where the *really big* new thing is to be announced. They just cut to a commercial but assured viewers there was no chance they’d miss the big announcement, because… “We’re Tivo-ing everything in the control room.”

Posted on January 6, 2002 - by deCadmus

Taste, taste, taste

You’d think I would have learned by now…
I build a mental model of the blend I want to create. I know the profiles of the beans that I’m building with — this one’s got body out the wazoo, and a soft, tannic finish; that one’s got a spicy aroma and a bit of a wild side…. I can call up a reasonably accurate taste memory of each of the beans in my arsenal — most at a number of roast styles.

I am, however, unable to construct a mental taste model of the resulting blend that jibes with the real world.

Ever wonder why artisan coffee roasters spend so much time cupping, sipping and sampling? I suspect it’s ’cause you just can’t devise a blend in your head… you’ve got to taste, taste, taste.

Posted on January 6, 2002 - by deCadmus

The Blending Habit

Much of my home-roasted coffee lately finds its way into a blend of one kind or another. That’s not necessarily what I had in mind when I fired up the roaster. I wonder, is blending habit forming? It’s a neat bit of creation, certainly. Coaxing flavors out of the roaster, blending beans with body, beans with aroma, beans with lofty ambitions of citrus and flowers, beans redolent with pepper and clove.

Blending beans is art and craft and luck, inextricably twined. Without them you’re a bizzaro Robin Hood, robbing the rich… and throwing the jewels away. Blend a full-bodied Sumatra with any light bodied bean and you’ll net a medium-bodied brew. Whether it was a fair trade is a matter of what the other bean brought to the cup — zingy high notes? a jazzy midrange? The real question is simple enough… is the blend greater than the sum of its parts?

Posted on January 6, 2002 - by deCadmus

Decaf Roasting Tip…

Decaf Roasting Tip…
If you’ve got to roast decaffeinated coffee [not for yourself, right? it's for somebody else, sure!] you’ve probably learned that it roasts altogether different than a typical green coffee. Decaffeinated beans look half-roasted to begin with, so there’s no way to judge by color. Decaf smells altogether different as it roasts [read, it stinks] so you can’t rely on the usual aroma cues. Finally, it’s a but sluggish in terms of pyrolysis — first crack can sound more like a typical second. And, insult upon injury, all the while that batch of decaf is roasting just a bit more quickly than regular coffee would. What’s a roaster to do?

Try this: simply add a few regular coffee beans to the batch. The caffeine content of three or four regular beans is inconsequential in the cup [you'll still end up with coffee that's better than 97% caffeine free] and these non-decaf beans prove exceptionally useful visual cues — they really stand out in a roaster full of decaf beans. When they don’t stand out anymore you know you’re very close to a completed roast. At that point, when your decaf begins to smell like just any ol’ coffee, quench the roast… it’s done.

Posted on January 3, 2002 - by deCadmus

Like a Kenyan… but pricier.

Over the holidays I had the opportunity to play Santa’s elf, leaving little, beribboned jars of just-roasted beans on neighbors’ doorsteps, ringing the bell and running away.

Consequently the neighbor across the street [another Doug, but we call him Ed, short for Evil Doug... he tends to get me in trouble] dragged me over to share a bottle of wine. Ed is obsessed with wine as I am coffee, and the bottle in question was a 1966 Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou — a super second Bordeaux, and the vintage of my birth year. It was yummy, and a very deep brown, and its flavors varied from flint to spice as it opened up. Not unlike a very good small-farm Kenya bean. But pricier.

Comparisons of wine and specialty coffees are inevitable. And they do share a number of characteristics… grand cru, or “great growth” estates, distinctions comprised of terrain and climate, good years, bad years and all points between. Yet, unlike the vintner — who has complete control over what goes in the bottle — once the coffee leaves the farm there’s no telling what it might go through before it ends up in your cup. Kevin Knox calls this the “broken chain of custody,” and it can be problematic. There’s no guarantee, save for the reputation of the seller, that the coffee you bought actually came from the origin that’s on the label. And even then, poor roasting, poor brewing — even less than optimal transportation — can significantly degrade the potential of the very best beans. Caveat emptor.

Posted on January 2, 2002 - by deCadmus

No flavors for you…

“…there were rumors about some people who flavored coffee with potent liqueurs, but they were socialist hopheads who would ruin this nation with their daddy-os and their bongo drums and tinctured coffee. You want flavored coffee, go to Russia, and you know what? They don’t have any. They’re out. They’re always out. Is that the future you want for America? Didn’t think so.”

We’ll take this as a big “no” vote on the question of flavored coffees.

Posted on January 2, 2002 - by deCadmus

Happy New Year?

“On Jan. 1, 300 million people in 12 countries will start using some funny-looking money they have never seen before. Months later their old familiar bills and coins will buy them nothing. Many of these people will have only a vague idea of what is going on. This could be a lot more fun than all of that overhyped millennium crap.”

Posted on January 1, 2002 - by deCadmus

Happy 2002.

Happy 2002.
I feel almost obligated to post some kind of year in review message. I’ll get over it. All in all, 2001 wasn’t a banner year, though in many ways it was important. I am, myself, far more interested in looking forward….

• New Crop Papua New Guinea and Timor coffees should be reaching our shores any moment… they’re reputed to be exceptional this year.
• New crop Yemen and Kenya coffees are already getting seriously good reviews, though it’ll be a number of weeks before they’re generally available.
• The new coffees from St. Helena are in! You can even order directly from the source, unlike last year’s little shipping fiasco.
• Smith Farms will have a brand new crop of Kona peaberry in the next week or three!

All in all, it’s bound to be a good year. Here’s wishing you and yours the very best.