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Compak K3 Elite and K3 Touch

After a few months of testing various mills (honestly, we started about the time of the SCAA conference and just finished a week ago), we have found an espresso mill we really like - the Compak K3 Elite and K3 Touch.

Dolok Sanggul, Lake Toba, Sumatra

Green unripe coffee cherry from Dolok Sanggul area of Lintong,

Sweet Maria's Home Roasters' Dream Camp

Today we are announcing our first ever Sweet Maria's Home Roasters' Dream Camp! The session will be held Saturday July 25th from Noon to 3 pm at our warehouse on East 21st Street in Oakland. This is not a class, but a gathering of home roasters, an occasion to compare roasts done on different machines, a chance to try out some new (or...er...

Central America and Ethiopia Updates: June 30th

The Centrals: It's June 30 and the Centrals are starting to come in en masse. You have already seen the Costa Rica micro-mill lots arriving, kicked off with the AMAZING wet-process Cafetalera Herbazu. Small lots of La Guaca Bourbon, La Yunta Organic and the award-winning Sin Limites have made for a full list of offerings right now. And more are on their tail, including the CoE winning Genesis.

Clever Coffee Dripper: Our new "Full Immersion" brewer...

I am really excited about this little filtercone, the Clever Coffee Dripper. It greatly improves the quality of the coffee you brew. It is a simple #4 cone with a drip-stop mechanism. You let the coffee and water infuse for whatever length of time you want, place the filter on a cup or other vessel and let the filtered coffee drain down.

Sumatra and some new Decafs!

We have 3 new coffees, here they are with a brief description from the review: Mexico Oaxaca Pluma WP Decaf, everyone's favorite region Oaxaca, only available in decaf but a nice balanced Oax profile. Colombia WP Decaf -Huila Excelso, a great Huila offering that rivals its caffeinated version! Last, we have a properly caffeinated Sumatra Sidikalang, akin to a less herbal version of a sweet Lintong type Indonesian. See our "New Coffee RSS" for direct links ... over there yonder in the right column...

New crop Costa Rica Herbazu & the last Kona

Two arrivals mark a first and a last. The first of many new crop Costa Rica lots is here from Cafetalera Herbazu, a fully washed coffee with prickly acidity, so bright and lively it might inspire an aria or two.. And the last Kona of the year, another excellent lot from Kowali Farm in Honaunau area of the Kona coast has arrived and is cupping very, very well. -Tom

Central America Travelogues, Coffee Cultivar Photoset

Coffea Liberica Coffee Cultivars: Here is a collection of images from my travels of many different types of varietals. I thought it would be interesting to pull all these together into one page ...

the SM Forum is up

We are launching our new Sweet Maria's Home Coffee Roasting Forum in advance of the long weekend. It is meant to supplement the email home roast list and to preserve the good discussions we have on focused topics - discussions that are useful for the new roaster and the experienced roaster alike. Please take a look at the forum, sign up so you can secure your username, and let us know what you think! -Tom

Dropping the Kenya coffee bomb ... new crop is here.

It's a fantastic day ... the day I get to announce that new crop Kenya coffees have arrived. And we are dropping this Kenya bomb to maximum effect: THREE new auction lot peaberry coffees all at once, heralding in what I think is an epic year of great Kenya coffees. Kenya Nyeri Peaberry -Mutwewathi Factory, a floral cup with apple-apricot compote and pink-grapefruit flavors.

Coffee Cultivar Conversation in Panama

At the Best of Panama competition, a very interesting conversation about coffee varietals ... and a lousy looking video. Sorry about the lameness - I was more engrossed in the conversation than making it look good.

Los resultados ... Best of Panama 2009

So we finished the Best of Panama competition this afternoon with an unusual twist: re-roasting and re-cupping the top 8 coffees. There was enough concern on the jury about variations in the roast levels that some felt they could not judge the coffee fairly. One was quite light, several a bit dark. But the fact is, these were a very difficult set of samples to roast. A pacamara, 2-3 geisha, some miel coffees, and one really weird low grown lot.

a nice time in costa rica, off to panama...

after a week in el salvador i flew over to costa rica to meet up with maria and ben - a rare family coffee trip in one of the best countries for such a thing! we are headed to panama in the morning, and i will be cupping in the competition. the 4 barrel-ers are here too, jeremy, his wife laura and son rogan, along with phil anacker and we will all head to panama, with our friend francisco mena. the past few days here have been nice. the rains have definitely started which helps trigger the coffee flowers to bloom.

Two new oddball t-shirts!

We have our own ideas when it comes to tshirts. We like the art we find when traveling to coffee origins, folksy stuff. The green shirt shown above is from beauty shop (they call them "Saloons" there) Tom took near the town of Karatina, Kenya.

my last scaa post, i swear...

I am off to the El Salvador Cup of Excellence for a week, then on to Costa Rica and Panama (Ben and Maria are joining me for the later two!). But here is a video of little clips from the SCAA show.
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