Some very pretty Columbian

One of my new favorites from Sweet Maria's Columbia Vereda Pedregal.

a slightly rounded 1/3 cup and 62 g raw it weighs out at 52 g after roasting.

My typical brew these days is 50 g of roasted beans and 24 ounces of water.

Sometimes with stronger tasting beans I might add 4 ounces of hot water to the pot before I brew it.

For example the Bolivian roasted up a beautiful big bean and was very strong tasting but after a little extra water in the pot tasted perfect.

I have seen the promised land

Since I was going to be in San Francisco I decided that I had to go visit Sweet Maria's homebase and so I placed an order for 12 pounds of coffee that I could pick up shipping free. I will write more later as the iPhone app for bloggers seems to be a little less robust.

VARIETY PACK!

Nothin' like a little ordering blindly to find something new and exciting!  I've been roasting my 4lb sampler beans from Sweet Maria's.  I really like the Brazilian and the El Salvador.  The Sumatran has a crazy flavor that someday's i don't like and other days i love! 

Notice how much bigger the Sumatran beans are!

I'm still on the fence about the Ehtiopian, it roasts funny.  The beans are all different sizes and the chaff doesn't all come off (the yellowish stuff above).  A work in progress!

Banished!

Here I am, outdoors in the cruel Colorado winter. Trying to roast my beans.

Okay, maybe just mildly perturbed Colorado winter. Anyways, everyone doesn't find the smoke from roasting coffee beans as aromatically pleasing as the finished product so I am banished to the back porch. The problem I face is the effect of ambient temperature on my Air Crazy Popper/Roaster. Currently the temperature is 42, about average for Longmont in December. Since the popper sucks air in from the bottom vents and passes it over heating coils, starting with air that cold would make for a long slow roasting process.

The daring, brilliant, maybe crazy solution I arrived at is an igloo.
An Igloo Ice Cube cooler that is.  Although in this case it functions as a warmer.

That is my colander for cooling the beans and a box of wine behind the cooler for refreshment. I also use a large heavy duty rimmed cookie sheet which works great in 40 degree weather. The Igloo also nicely contains the husks that fly off the roasting beans. This did present a problem in my original configuration.

The intake on the bottom of the roaster began to get clogged by the husks that collected at the bottom of the cooler. So the next design improvement was a cardboard box to keep the vents above the fray. Et Voila! A toasty fast roast regardless of the outside temperature. If it gets really cold, I just close the lid. So far, nothing has melted, burned, or exploded.

The Postman Cometh!

After a long wait...thanks H.Sandy!  My four pound of green beans from Sweet Maria's has arrived!

One of these things is not like the others.... If you look at the lower right you'll see a much darker, almost brown, bean.  That's the Sumatra Lake Toba 19+ Screen.  Should be interesting!  The others are El Salvador Finca Siberia Bourbon; Brazil Fazenda do Sertao Catuai; Ethiopia Sidama Deri Kochoha.

I've done a batch of the Ethiopian, rather, i've Overdone a batch....sigh. Live and learn!  I'm going to make a batch of each tonight so that i can do a flight of coffee's tomorrow!

First crack, second crack, Ah, now I get it!

I didn't want to waste any of my two Gesha varieties doing an over roasting test and I only had less than 1/3 of a cup of my "cheap" beans. Then I had an idea; I could pan roast the coffee on our gas stove! If I had been a little more clever I would have taken some more process shots or maybe even recorded video. Oh well, next time.

 The first crack was more of a pop. I actually flinched as I half expected coffee shrapnel to put my eye out. The second crack was more crackle than pop. Like the sound tinder makes as it catches fire. It was fun seeing the roast happen right there in front of me and it was much easier to hear what was going on without the fan motor whirring but I won't be abandoning my air popper any time soon.

I used a non-stick wok-like pan with a flat bottom. I agitated the pan and stirred them almost continuously but still, as I expected, the roast was very uneven.

I didn't even try to cool the beans (didn't think that far ahead) so you can see a lot of scorching. I still would like to try this with my air popper. maybe I will get a pound of beans that can stand up to full city+. I can always stand outside Charbucks and give them to someone who is into dark roast ;-}

INSTRUCTION....I DON'T NEED NO STINKING INSTRUCTION....

Oh, yeah, except when it comes to roasting coffee!  I failed to follow the instructions from the very nice woman at Mystic Coffee Roasters in Medford, MA.  She very Cleary said "take them out the as soon as you hear the second crack, because they go very fast".  Hence, this uneven roast (eh, ok, half burnt) roast.

Then I did what she told me to .....

and what do you know, it came out great!  My tastiest batch of home roast yet! Mostly even roast.  FYI, the coffee itself is really fabulous with a nice almost floral aroma and just plain tasty!  I'd like to go when Mystic is brewing some of this to see how theirs is.  

The folks at Mystic were very cool about answering my questions, but i'll have to pace myself lest i should annoy the crap out of them!