A note on freshness

Like I may have stated in the past I am anything but a coffee snob, I think, much like anything here in America, we can drink whatever type of coffee in whatever format or manifestation we please. Taste is just like everything else, subjective. How can I tell you that what you like is garbage, I am sure some one out there thinks the things I like or do or see or listen to is crap, oh well, I like it and dang it you only live once. The big however though is that I can expose others to what I think is good and why I think it is good and let them make a decision. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, I'll still listen to Lee Morgan, drive the speed limit and continue not to shave my soul patch. With that said, I saw an advertisement last night for Folgers flavor seal can, it pictured an average middle aged work-a-day business man who is stopped on the street to taste coffee for flavor, he is blind folded and begins drinking the coffee just opened from a flavor seal can. To sum it up he ends up getting to the bottom of the can, after what I would image would be about 50 cups of coffee, I mean first of all wouldn't your judgment be a little skewed after 50 cups, well maybe not, not sure who I'm talking to here. Anyways, the moral is that the first cup tasted the same as the last cup over what was a simulated length of one can ownership, supposedly a week or something. The idea? That the coffee tastes the same "freshness" from the first time you open it to the last. My point, yes it does taste the same, the ad is not false advertising. Why you ask? Because it was flat, lifeless and stale from the beginning. Coffee is a living entity, from the moment you roast it, the clock is ticking, its best consumed 24-48 hours after roasting, the flavor holds pretty good in whole bean form, sealed in a degassing valve bag for about 3 months or a little more. Once a bag is opened and the beans are still whole bean and stored in an air tight container you've got a few weeks. But start grinding the beans and storing them and the volatile flavor components escape faster than Michael Shumacher at Monaco. Granted this description is a bit bleak and its not like the coffee immediately becomes unconsumable, like "this bean will self-destruct in 25 seconds..." What happens is the flavor degrades, over time most of the flavor compounds are gone and the cup will taste flat and lifeless. My point then is to think about the manufacturing, stocking and sitting that happens in a large retail situation. Simply, its a long time, for canned ground coffee, even if its sealed, it means it most likely arrives at the store already stale. I hope I didn't anger anyone who really loves those brands, I didn't mean for it to be a anti-canned coffee rant, because like my Mom who really knows coffee only as tasting like that wouldn't have it any other way, even when I brew her something I just pulled from the roaster, she politely says "Wow this is great" and ultimately I find it on the window sill later with just a few sips gone. So drink on, anything you want. But know that it might not be as fresh as the can boasts.

for more info on choosing grocery store coffee's check out this fabulous review of Grocery Brands:
http://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?ID=128

The Grind

I thought I would write about the Grind today, and not the MTV show hosted by the Real World season one NYC star Eric Neise, rather the act of grinding coffee. It struck me today as I was, ironic enough, grinding coffee this morning that there is a lot to know about grinding. Also, I was reading the other night about calibrating my BUNN airpot brewer that the act of grinding is a great way to improve your home brewed coffee. BUNN explains that there is a correlation between the degree of grind and the amount of solubles in the end cup, this is important because it is a balance, to few solubles or not enough time the water is in contact with the grounds and its weak, thin and bitter, too much and its to strong and bitter. Where the balance comes is the matching the degree of grind with the length of time your drip brewer takes to brew a pot. As I have read and found from brewing countless pots of coffee is that the best flavor solubles are extracted at the beginning of the cycle, more importantly, the longer the water is in contact with the coffee grounds, the more it picks up unfavorable elements in those grounds. So the object is to have the water roll through the coffee in a short enough time to not over brew and the coffee needs to be ground fine enough that the relatively rapid moving water flow absorbs as much of the good flavor solubles that it can to provide the perfect cup. Make sense?

A good brew cycle is around 3 minutes, you can time your machine if you want but you can do it by taste as well, if it seems like your not getting the flavor you want and want to start adjusting variables, start with the grind, knowing what we just discussed try grinding finer and see if it lowers your brew time and makes your cup taste better.

I'll talk more on grind methods next time, same bat time, same bat blog.

Getting Started in Home Roasting

I remember the day a good friend of mine told me that I could roast coffee at home, my thoughts initially were, "wow that's cool, for people who either are insomniacs or who have plenty of time on their hands." I have always been in to coffee, mostly in trying to make the perfect cup at home, I was interested in the art of brewing and of tasting but always thought that roasting was done in factories by technicians, after all I have never seen or heard of anyone toiling in home roasting. Who knows what to do let alone where to get raw coffee, it all just seemed way too esoteric and I didn't have time.
After a few weeks of enduring a little whisper in the back of my mind, like a little devil on my shoulder saying roast, roast, roast....I gave in and consulted my local library to find out more. Well in this modern day I consulted the Internet, I mean I love the library but what can't you find on the web. A search for "home coffee roasting" turned up everything I ever wanted to know, including getting hipped to a little book by Kenneth Davids called "Home Roasting, Romance and Revival" or better known as the bible of home roasting. I went out the next day and bought it at Borders, I couldn't believe they had it, right there in the cooking section, nestled between One Pot Creations and the New Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade masterpiece. Anyways, that was my first start and a necessity for anyone interested in burning some beans. The book has everything, from a concise breakdown of single origin coffees, a great history of roasting and a thorough survey of all the methods spanning the most rudimentary to the wildly elaborate.

Where did I start:

I started out buying a iRoast because I found a store online that had a set-up to purchase the machine and they included 3 pounds of greenies with it. I figured what the heck, the research I found on the iRoast was that it was a foolproof way of getting started in the whole operation. I admit I went the easy way, machines are nice but in retrospect I maybe should have started with one of the more hands on method, I quickly became bored with the fact that I didn't really want automation, the machine was loud and I could see the transformation and do a smidge of programing but for someone who was totally new to the process the iRoast method of roasting was hard to understand, I needed something more linear that could teach me about the actual process. With that said, the iRoast was great, the pre-programed modes produced great coffee and you do have some control, but I wanted to really learn about the process. So I say with that, the iRoast or i believe the iRoast2 now is great for an automated roasting machine, it produces great roasts but less control. I have seen modifications of the machine with a thermo-probe to chart chamber temperatures which could prove to be really cool, so if you go the iRoast route don't hesitate to research that.
I kept that machine for about six months when I traded up to the HotTop drum roaster, more capacity, more linear roasting, a better learning tool I thought. And I loved it, used it for a long long time, still use it for sampling sometimes.
I have since moved on to a Deidrich IR-12 and to a full fledged roasting operation ( a bit extreme I know, but once I get on to something, I'm crazy, I love doing it and am so glad I found this) but I have been researching the whirly-pop set up for stove top home roasting, I love the idea and plan to, in the next few weeks, purchase and modify my own of which I will document and share with everyone. The whirly-pop is the popcorn popper that is a pan with a rudder on the inside that is turned via a crank on the handle, it's main function is to constantly move the popcorn kernels as the heat up and pop, its the same principle as roasting, keep the beans moving in a closed chamber as they are slowly heated. You can modify it with a thermometer as to chart the roast. It all sounds very cool and a great grass roots way to roast at home.