Roasted by: Rich Helms
I presented a two hour talk called “How to Make a Great Cup of Coffee.”
Here is the slide deck I used. I also published it for the attendees as a chapbook.How to Make a Great Cup of Coffee
The talk focused on basics:
Matias from Down to Earth coffee in Costa Rica posted some nice images of his coffee trees in full bloom.
A Magical Time at the farm. This is our second wave of blooming in the last three weeks and everything indicates that we will have a healthy, plentiful harvest starting in late December.
Matias
Matias Zeledon of Down to Earth Coffee in Costa Rica posted an interesting picture of coffee beans with different sizes on the branch. This is an example of why you have to hand pick coffee to only get the ripe cherries. Here is Matias’ description:
Happy to see the coffee healthy and developing well in the Providencia highlands farm. The different sizes of the green beans are produced by the different waves of blooming, which generate the different stages in the harvest. The big differences in size comes from the fact that this year we had rain on Feb 9th so the first blooming came early and that is why the beans look so well developed compared to the others. This also means that we are going to be harvesting coffee in early November, a sizable bunch and not just a few.
In February the coffee trees flower in Costa Rica. Here are shot by Matias Zeledon of Down to Earth Coffee in Providencia, Costa Rica. The air is sweet with the smell of jasmine.
On a fun note, here is a picture of my coffee tree growing in my house entrance way for about 8 months now.
In Coffee Smoothie ONE I showed how to make a coffee smoothie with freshly ground coffee. Since writing that post I have probably made a hundred of them and have perfected the recipe.
First I purchased a few bottles of Lorina Lemonade at the grocery store. The drink is amazing but what I really wanted was the resealable bottles.
The bottles are strong and the seal is both interesting and functional.
Cold Brewed Coffee Syrup
Next rather than making small batches of coffee syrup I moved to a 12 cup French Press. I put in 150 grams of coffee and fill with water. After sitting 24 hours in the fridge I get a full bottle of syrup. This is basically triple strength.
The other bottle is sugar syrup. I tried cocoa rather than Quik and really liked the result. You have to change the amount of sugar syrup as cocoa has no sugar or sweetener in it.
The last change was adding a banana. One issue with the original recipe is the drink tends to separate into the ice on top and the fluid below. The banana adds a pulp that keeps the drink from separating. It also is more creamy.
Here is the revised recipe.
Iced Coffee Smoothie
1/2 cup Cold Brewed Coffee Syrup
1/4 cup cold Sugar Syrup
1 tbsp cocoa
1 peeled banana
1 1/4 cup cold milk
1 1/2 cup ice cubes
Then I found an article on making strong coffee base with a french press and cold brewing. Normal hot coffee uses 10-15 grams to a cup of water so this is 2 to 3 times stronger. Cold brewing also reduces bitterness. I have been working on this recipe for months and here is my result. It is interesting how the type of coffee bean and roast changes the taste. A full city roast of Sumatra is one of my favorites.
Since releasing the recipe I had found an improvement. By adding two tablespoons of powered milk the smoothie stays creamier longer and tastes more milk shake like.
For some of my coffee roasting experiments I wanted a scale I could connect to a PC or Mac. I looked at many scales and the Ohaus Scout® Pro Balance series was a nice blend of capability vs price. This series is designed for educational applications. RS232 (part 71147376) and USB (part 71147377) interfaces are available. This article documents the use of the USB interface. I assume the RS232 is identical as the user manuals appear identical except for how to connect to the computer.
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Product Data Sheet (PDF) |
Continue reading “Computer Controlling the Ohaus SPE2001 Scout Pro”
The Artisan software package I write the documentation for made the Wall Street Journal this week.
To view the article go to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358804578016320333033266.html
then click on slideshow in the left column.
Artisan is slide 8/9
Caffeine is released during roasting. Some of this caffeine crystalizes on the outside as the smoke escapes.
This is a HotTop roaster. The yellow devices on top are temperature probes. As the roast progresses, smoke escapes from the probe holder. Over time, amazingly intricate white crystal structures appear. These caffeine crystals are know as angel hair in coffee jargon.
These are microscope shots of the crystals after removed from the probe.
Same cluster under higher power.
The degassing experiment three was drawing to a close. To recap 100 grams of dark roasted beans were put in one flask, 100 grams of the same beans but ground were put in the other flask. After 24 hours 294 mls of CO2 were released from the ground coffee. Even after 3 days the ground coffee maxed out at 300 mls supporting the literature (1) that ground coffee degasses in 12-24 hours depending on grind.
The whole beans were a different story. The 130 ml of day one grew to 290 mls in nine days. The literature said about 7 days for most degassing. I was getting ready to clean up the experiment when I had an idea. Just for “shits and giggles” why not grind the nine day old beans. They had stopped releasing CO2 but was there any inside that grinding would release? Using the same grinder settings as previous experiments I ground the 100 grams and quickly returned to the flask and stoppered. I was surprised to see gas released with a similar curve to freshly roasted coffee.
In one day 112 mls of CO2 were released. Like fresh roast beans almost all of the release was in the first 24 hours. While only 38% of what a fresh roast grind release, the total release was 406 mls versus 296 for fresh ground.
I have not found any literature on CO2 degassing in older coffee. I am going to continue other degassing experiments to open up the parameters of cause/effect.
My color spectrometer has not arrived yet. Really looking forward to experimenting with it.
References: