Bloggle

After 240 years of absolute monarchy, Nepal has ousted its royal autocrat and declared itself a republic, thus condemning themselves to an altogether new sort of political strife: shifty-eyed scoundrels who’ve been elected to their highest office, rather than merely inheriting it.

Good on them.

Some words of advice as the Nepali people draw up a new constitution:

• Habeus Corpus is a Good Idea.
• Executive Orders are a Bad Idea.
• Ban lobbyists from the get go. Trust me on this.

To mark the occasion, I’ve roasted up some Nepali coffee that I picked up at the recent SCAA expo. This is the first Himalayan coffee I’ve sampled, and I found some surprises along the way…

The Coffee

This green sample comes from Himalayan Java, and is described as organic, shade-grown on farms above 1100 meters, and fully wash-processed. I suspect at least two of these claims are overstated. The beans appear to be semi-washed, which isn’t a problem, really, nor is it unexpected; Nepal does not have a long history of wash processed coffee, and this may be about as washed as this coffee gets.

Further, the roast characteristics of the coffee really don’t jive with the 1100 meter claim. Mind you, I don’t doubt that there’s plenty of high ground to be found where the coffee’s sourced (c’mon, it’s in the frickin’ Himalayas!) but this just doesn’t roast-up like an especially dense bean, nor does it cup like one. (More on that in a moment.) I suspect the coffee is an amalgam of a number of farms, from a number of elevations, some likely quite high up, others much less so.

Perhaps most remarkable attribute of this coffee is its fragrance. Unroasted, the green coffee effuses jasmine and sweet tobacco notes. (Stunningly so. I actually stepped away from the roaster to track down my better half, and thrust a mess of green coffee in her face saying, “Here… smell this!” After being assured this wasn’t some kind of “pull my finger” trick she acquiesced, and agreed that the fragrance was qute remarkable, and would I mind if she might now finish the dishes, thank-you-very-much.)

Much of this aroma remains through the roast, muted somewhat, and muddied, too, by some subtle ashy notes, despite my applying the heat rather gingerly. In the cup were notes of chocolate, subtle spice (cardamom, in particular) and some rustic fruit and earth flavors, all wrapped in a fairly mild body, and with virtually no acidity at all (which — rightly or wrongly — I take to be another sign that this coffee wasn’t grown at particularly great altitude.) It cups, in short, much like an Indian Mysore, as much as any origin I’ve tasted.

All in all, an interesting bean, with some distinctive attributes (that aroma!) that with some nurturing, some winnowing and some care might make a name for itself some day.

Much like Nepal, itself, this coffee’s story is still being written.

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Apparently Howard Schultz is in a buying mood. Close on the heels of Starbucks’ buyout of Coffee Equipment Company, maker of the Clover single-cup coffee brewer, the Seattle coffee giant announced its next step in coffee roasting technology and its next acquisition, also a Pacific Northwest technology venture: the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Ranier, Oregon.

“This baby’s hot,” says Schultz with characteristic zeal, “and it’s going to help us differentiate Starbucks from everyone else that is attempting to be in the coffee business.” Howard Schultz paces the length of the counter at the Starbucks coffee house at Seattle’s Starbucks Support Center. Clearly, he’s catching his stride.

“We’re talking zero carbon footprint, roasts coffee quicker than one of our espresso pours, and –wow!– can it spread that great coffee aroma!”

Howard pauses; he looks momentarily soulful. “We want to have the courage to do the things that support our core purpose, our reason for being. This is all about our core.”

“And besides,” adds Schultz, “who else has a nuke?”

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• Transporting Coffee by Bike
• Cold Weather Coffee Roasting
• Why I Love Writing in Coffee Shops
• The Dandelion

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After a bit of a hiatus I’m back at the roaster in the garage. Why the break? It’s been chilly lately — it’s winter in Vermont, after all — and besides, my roaster doesn’t perform so well when the ambient temperature is anything less than 40 degrees. Neither do I fare all too well hanging around waiting for it to get its heat on. Oh sure, I know there’s hard-core roasters who don their parkas and mittens to roast outdoors all times of the year. That kind of insane and slavish devotion I save for barbecue alone, thanks.

I haven’t ordered any new green coffee of late (see the bit about it being cold) and so what I have left is really remnants of seasons past… in some cases, several seasons past. Some Ethiopian coffees from the last eCafe competition, Guatemalan greens from the spring before, and some Sumatra from — gosh, I really can’t be sure — maybe two years ago?

And so I roasted some of just about everything.

The Ethiopian coffee is quite decent, really. For a day or two, anyway; and then the cup just sort of… winds down. Aromatics are fleeting, flavors fading. It’s not a tragic thing, really. It’s just tired.

The Guatemalan beans have a similar tale to tell. Notably, they roast dry and hot — they’ve apparently lost a lot of moisture — and the cup quality is not only faded, but also bitter. Very much so.

The Sumatran beans — the oldest of the lot — well they’re something of a different story. They roast well within parameters I might expect of new crop beans. Fresh from the roaster the cup is quite nice (if a bit sharp.) In a day or two, they’re still quite good; caramel and cocoa aromas, turf and bittersweet chocolate flavors, long and mellow finish. And enough so that I suspect they could keep this up a week more (though I don’t know that they’ll last that long… herselfis a big fan of the coffees of Sumatra.)

Is it something about how Sumatran coffees are processed at the mill that lends them more staying power? Not necessarily… the eCafe Ethopian I sampled was a dry-process (or natural) too.

Was there perhaps more moisture in these beans to begin with, so that they’ve retained more over time? I don’t know… but if there was *that* much moisture I’d wonder that there hadn’t been something icky growing in the bag with them. And besides — they’re more than twice as old as the other beans I’d roasted of late.

Is it something about Sumatra? After all, there’s lots of beans that are marketed as Aged Sumatra… how many other origins actively market aged beans? On purpose? Um… I’m thinking. And coming up empty.

Maybe it’s really about the characteristics the coffee started with. The Ethiopian and Guatemalan beans were both bright, acidy, fruit-forward cups; the Sumatran earthy and dark-toned even when it was young. Perhaps fruit and floral esters are more delicate, more prone to age, while dusky chocolate just gets… mellow.

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It’ll never happen to you, right?

Annabell Ramirez said it all started with a small fire in a coffee-bean roaster. She said she tried to put it out, but the glass shattered and the fire spread quickly.

“Before I knew it, flames were coming out of the window…”

Whether you’ve got the latest in commercially-available coffee roasters, or your own, custom-built rig, it’s important to remember that when you’re roasting coffee, you’re playing with fire. Every professional roaster I know has a story to tell about either a full-on roaster fire, or a damn close call. Every. Single. One. It’s only a matter of time.

Here’s my top five tips for home-roasting fire safety.

• 1) Get a fire extinguisher. Even if you never roasted coffee, a fire extinguisher is the best insurance you can buy for less than 20 bucks. If you’re a coffee roaster, it may just be your best friend. Choose a fire extinguisher intended for kitchen or garage use… more specifically, a dry chemical model that’s rated for oil, electrical and wood fires.
• 2) Mount that extinguisher near your roaster. Note that I don’t say *above* your roaster, but *near* it. You’ll want to be able to grab that extinguisher without having to reach over a burning roaster. Better still, get two, and place one near, and one on the other side of the room. (While I’m not exactly paranoid, I have three extinguishers strategically located in my garage where I do most of my roasting.)
• 3) Never leave your coffee roasting unattended. Never — ever! — walk away with a roast in progress. I’ll admit it… I used to have a laissez faire attitude toward roasting. I’d start a roast and wander off to do other things for 10 or 15 minutes while the roast progressed. I got an attitude adjustment one day when roasting a batch of Yemen coffee — a batch that had some odd-sized and curiously-shaped beans — some of which wedged between the seams and completely jammed up the drum in my roaster. I was lucky. I was just the other side of the garage when I heard the jam occur. If I hadn’t been on the scene it may have been only a matter of moments before those beans — no longer happily tumbling — burst into flame.
• 4) A clean roaster is a happy roaster. Not only does a clean coffee roaster do it’s job more efficiently, it’s also far, far safer. No matter what kind of roaster you have, regularly clean-up the chaff — the papery skin that’s released by roasting coffee beans. I clean chaff from my roaster between each and every roast. Bonus tip: Don’t vacuum chaff out of a hot roaster! Smoldering bits of chaff that would probably be of no consequence at all left in your roaster until it cools could ignite in dramatic fashion should you fuel them with a lot of wind. While your roaster can probably take the heat, chances are your shop-vac won’t.
• 5) Don’t disable your home smoke-alarm just because your coffee roasting sets it off. Get better ventilation, roast outdoors, or just learn to enjoy the occasional test of your smoke alarm. That way you can rest assured it’ll be there if you need it.

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