I know it’s been a while, getting a new job and finding a new routine as well as sorting other things in my life out, finding new adventures in the coffee world has been the last thing on my mind.
I am about to embark on a new roasting adventure, I’m a little excited about it so finally get to compare roast between machines.
What is it you all ask?
Well you’ll have to wait until tomorrow 🙂
I learnt something new today.
On Crema at present we have a discussion happening about what is the best way to describe our roasts. There are many ways world wide that people describe roasts, from the CS1-12 numbering, the American City, Full City terms, just to name two examples.
During this discussion a few of our professional roasters have weighed in on the debate and have said something that I have never heard about before or considered that was important.
I’ve always thought that the colour on the outside of the bean was the same colour as the inside = WRONG!!!
The colour of the grind is actually more important than anything else to our professional roasters, it really does tell them what the taste will be like.
So from the above I will now be adding photographs of what the grind looks like from my roasts, here is the first one of the Honduras Minas at five days post roast.
Please excuse the photo, I didn’t realise that there was a smudge on the lense, I’ll redo another one and replace it when I drink it next.
Oh and for anyone interested it appears that the Crema members have chosen to go with Light/Medium/Dark and first and second crack times to describe our roasts.
I will still use the CS card in some photographs but will also be stating what depth I think the roast is and as always times.
I’m sure I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again:
There is just nothing like the smell of freshly roasted coffee filling the house 🙂
Today I roasted four beans:
Tanzania TEC
Guatamala Huehuetenango
Costa Rica Finca La Candelilla – 100% Geisha
Honduras Minas de Oro
I’ll put the basic roast profile I follow and photos in the beans section.
They arrived and are gorgeous. AM outdid himself with these 😀
Made from Purple Heart they are divine and have a sheen that has to be seen to be believed.
I’ve only put up a couple of photos to start. I’ll do more when I have a hand to take photos and hold lighting and the handles at the same time 🙂
I haven’t roasted for quite some time, once I do it I realise how much I miss roasting.
My pedantic self making sure I get exact temperatures at exactly the right moment!!!
Thanks to Jeff and his suggestion of a slightly different profile to what I was using I got the following:
This is the Brazil Sweet Collection from Bean Green.
As it got to first crack it was indeed very sweet smelling.
First crack happened at 13:30 at 198 degrees.
Second crack happened at 17:00 at 220 degrees.
I pulled it at 40 seconds past 17 minutes.
I think I pulled it just in time, there is a very slight darkening happening I’d say I pulled it just before I got oil exploding to the outside. I think next time I would only go to 30 seconds past second crack at the most.
Time will tell though once it’s in the cup 😀
I was discussing different beans with Jeff from mycuppa a few weeks ago and he let it be known that he had a wonderful Colombian bean coming and that it had to be one I tried, I’ve only ever had a Colombian bean once before and that was very early on.
Jeff has no let the Crema forum members know what he thinks 🙂
Here is what Jeff had to say about Colombia Excelso La Union USQ
The small part that really said ‘buy it, buy it, buy it’ – It’s a small screen and a medium density bean and would benefit from a darker roast profile to bring in additional soft chocolate and heavy caramel tones, balancing out some of the acidity, but we want it to retain the character of a punchy coffee, especially in milk.
Hopefully I might get to try it out at a darker roasting profile 🙂
Well it’s finally done and the effort was well worth it I think. The first people to do something almost always gets something wrong or runs into problems, fixes them and completes the project, this makes sure that others don’t make the same mistakes, we made them and fixed them along the way so I don’t expect anyone else doing this to take as long as we did 🙂
The write up has it’s own page under BES900.
What I have written may change as I remember more or clarify points as others read it and start asking questions but for the most part it’s correct.
Well something a lot of people have been waiting for 😀
MY BES900 now has a new brass OPV.
It exchanges really easily.
…more to come…
Here I have a clip and photos (just for Kelsey) of the white TK cup.
It is a clip of the BES900 performing a naked shot of Richard’s blend on a grind setting that almost chokes the machine, into a white TK cup.
Photos of the white TK cup before and after coffee.
