Merry Christmas and Chappy Chanukkah!
Hi, everybody! I guess I didn't need to say Happy Chanukkah because I only have one reader AFAIK, and he's Christian. Oh well, the show must go on.
First things first, how do you like my video on the sidebar? Is it annoying? Sweet? Questions? Well it better be good because I spent forever finding an mov to wmv converter that worked without giving me a 2fps framerate. I ended up converting to mpeg2 using Xilisoft, then converting from that to wmv and chopping out the proper sections of the video using Ulead, then compiling it all using Windows Movie Maker. THEN I blew the dust off of my html and put it to work, adjusted to size, and I was done!
In other news, I just tried a blend today which was 3 or 4 days out of roast (hell no I don't remember, I'm on "non-denominational time of celebration but chanukkah does not count break"). Here is the blend for those who want a good backbone for a blend that requires a ridiculous amount of coffees.
Full City + (in one batch)
25% Organic Fair Trade Sumatra Gayo Mountain
12.5% Ethiopia Longberry Harar Horse
12.5% Yemen Mokha Ismaili
Full City (in another batch)
16% Brazil Daterra Villa Borghesi
10% Uganda Bugisu AA
12% Monsooned Malabar
12% Galapagos
Okay, now before you start passing judgement on this blend, keep the following in mind:
An unnamed roaster has an espresso blend, which I'd bet would be approved by 99% of coffeegeeks who make espresso, that has contained 8 beans in the bast, and from what I gather usually contains at least 5. Furthermore, the sumatra gayo maountain, although semi-washed, is not as acidic as even I expected, but it lended some really nice flavours to the blend and the body was amazingly syrupy and stringy.
This blend is just stellar. The crema is very weird. It is elastic and will "repair itself" with ease. However, it seems to have the monsooned malabar effect of having perfectly flat crema in the cup taht looks like somebody took a picture of a great shot, printed it on matte finish paper, and put it in the cup. However, when you tilt the cup to drink the shot, you find that it is very flexible despite that appearance. Also, when making a cappuccino, it poured really funny. It was easy to get art on it for starters. Second, the crema showed one of its lifeless rigid cardboard traits. When I poured the milk, it went through the crema, but the rest of the crema did not react at all. It was like one of those Sealy non-motion-transferring mattresses. The milk marked the surface just fine, but the crema seemed to be overlapped by the milk, but not moved by it. It was strange. I guess I'll post some pictures later when I've gathered 2 or 3 readers. I'm out, and MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY CHANUKKAH!
posted by The Artist Formerly Known As JakeTheCoffeeLover at 12:57 PM
10 Comments:
sweet! thanks, geir! Check out what I did to the video now. I made it less annoying by turning off the autoplay and putting on somewhat of an intro image. I plan to add more. Nice seeing you too, Geir! Maybe I'll find a way to use that sightglass afterall! :-D
12:27 AM
It got good reviews :P
I don't have the time or resources to cup most of my coffees before making a blend. I just make random blends and do some analysis later. If all my blends with sumatra gayo were thick and syrupy, I'll trust that it is thick and syrupy. JoeP seemed to like the galapagos and cpl593h told me not to use it... because it's such a treasure as french press. I had a lot of extra on top of what I could do with 2 iRoast batches, so I used it in a couple of blends.
1:49 PM
nice site you started. nice video.
i concur with jim seven. i have not been pleased with galapagos the couple times i've cupped it, for the same reasons: too woody, green, grassy, robusta-ish. at the time i couldn't decide if this was due to roaster negligence/inexperience or bean quality. maybe i'm just not a fan of that taste profile.
but huge props to you for puttin' it in there. gutsy. way to go.
i think a many-beaned espblend is very cool and very tricky. what happens if next year's crops (of each/all those beans) are markedly different, or, worse, not up to quality demands?
like i said...gutsy. but hey, no guts no glory, right?
good luck on the blog.
9:37 AM
I've never stayed with a blend for long enough to notice any decline. I sway in an out of espresso and french press, this blending style and that one, etc. I think that the taste you describe seems similar to a nice cedar taste I noticed in the cup, which I really liked. My second roasting of it didn't go very well, however. The shots were thin for some reason. I think it may have been a factor of the roast profile getting messed up in the FIRST roast. Oh what a newbie I am.
3:04 PM
how do you like your iroast? i had one for a while and loved it. only beef i had with it is that it would lose programmed roasts when unplugged. i've heard they've fixed that now...
3:32 PM
Twice I have hit the cool button while moving the roaster. That is disastrous. Once it cut out for no good reason. Another time, it just overheated out of NOWHERE. I went from City to French in about 3 minutes. I think I did a bit of permanent damage, but haven't noticed anything yet.
I will be upgrading eventually (may be building a roaster), but that's for a later post... after I post about the grinder that I will definitely be building. My other option is to PID a Hottop. The basic idea I had for a roaster is an insulated drum with sightglass and an element above the coffee. As the drum rotates, the element stays at the top since it is not attached to the drum itself, allowing hte drum to spin independantly of the element. This way, airflow can be manuall controlled by means of something as small as a fan. I recently found out from John Sanders how important airflow is to a good roast! Obviously, temperature will be controlled by a PID.
5:14 PM
as heat rises, couldn't you find a more efficient use of heat if you put the element below the drum? you could be more temp stable and use less energy. just a thought.
4:45 PM
If the element is inside the drum, it would definitely be more efficient than having the element below it. Having the element below would require lots of insulation to become equal in efficiency. I just need to figure out how powerful of an element I need. I'm very open to design changes as I'm mainly working on the grinder design right now. I may or may not be thinking of designing a commercial machine because I see some major issues that need fixing and I think it might be a good way to gain some experience and possibly make $ while doing it... or not. :-)
8:36 PM
you may be right on the design and placement of the pid on the hottop. i guess i heard "drum" and thought of a larger (1-5kilo) type setup instead of prosumer home type deal. even then, i am still only stabbing. a technical guru i am not.
hey, while i'm thinking about technical guru stuff, i heard the place you work is getting a clover for demo use?
10:52 AM
I'm not sure about demo, but since you mentioned it, sure... we may or may not be. We got a Synesso for demo use for sure... It'll be hard waving goodbye to that baby and welcoming in the PID'd (or not PID'd) Linea.
8:18 PM
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