Today we see the return of a number of favorite coffees: the Tanzania Mbinga Ruvuma Flatbean is a classic Tanzania, with acidity more muted than a Kenya, but with intense and rather creamy body. The Sumatra Blue Batak Tarbarita is a bit brighter and more lively than most Sumatras, but with the thick body, molasses and spice notes that are characteristic of this origin. El Salvador Finca Kilimanjaro is back again this year, and it remains a great example of what really high grown Central coffees can be. It is an intense fruity, winey coffee, a special preparation produced by Aida Batlle. This farm is planted with 80% Kenya cultivar, and it shows in the cup. Also from Aida’s farm, we have El Salvador Cascara Coffee Tea, a coffee husk tea – called qishr in the Middle East but cascara in Central America. It makes a fruity tea, with hibiscus and jasmine aromas. Great as iced tea with a little sweetner.
Who would have imagined five years ago that a coffee wonk who announced proudly “I make coffee in a French Press!” (or perhaps even more so, a “Cafetiere” or “Melior”) would be so unfashionable these days. With SF coffeehouses all switching en masse from French Press brewing to pour-over techniques, who would think the method you use for making a good cup of coffee would be so trendy? Maybe next you will need to consider whether your apparel matches your brewer.
I have always had some reservations about the french press; namely, it can be tough to get the right grind to avoid the gritty “fines” in the cup, and the long steep times generally means you see a steep temperature drop while brewing. The fact that cafes would brew in French Press and then dump into a big commercial Pump Pot (that draws coffee from the bottom, where the sediment accumulates) always seemed ill-conceived.
But the fact is, French Press didn’t suddenly become a bad way to brew coffee, and it’s still the method that guarantees “full immersion,” a complete 4 minutes, or 6 minutes, or whatever, of coffee soaking in water. The problem there is temperature drop; you don’t get full flavor extraction if the brew is too cool. You can pre-heat your press with hot water as a small measure. You can wrap the press in a towel. A few even come with a jacket. Better yet, you can use an insulated French press. These come in both all stainless, which are beautiful and unbreakable, but you can’t see the brew. You can also opt for a glass double-wall French press, more spendy than the single wall, and definitely breakable, but it turns out great results but I wouldn’t count on either of these to keep your coffee hot. If you like coffee hot, I say, drink fast.
I think the best results in a press can be with longer steep times and slightly coarser grinds. It takes some experimentation, but I have achieved the best extraction levels at 6 minutes in an insulated press. To deal with fines and avoid grit in the cup, I plunge slowly, then wait an additional 3 minutes and pour cups slowly and gently. That extra 3 minute wait allows particles suspended in the brew to settle out. The bottom third of the press is going to always be a little nasty. Just make sure the person who creams their coffee gets it.
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-Tom
Tom returned from his trip to Sulawesi and Java, a couple of very special coffee origins. Coffee picking, processing, cupping, funerals, spelunking, surfing…. something for everyone. We have a new way to showcase photos from Tom’s trips, essentially using a database instead of static html pages. We will will be migrating past trips to this format so we can tag images and make them more easily accessible.So you will notice Tom posted photos from a Costa Rica trip he took in early 2010 too.
I come back to this thought very often, the difference between tasting or cupping coffee and drinking it. I spend most of my time cupping, really thinking about what I am tasting, holding the coffee in my mouth and thinking about what makes it unique. Sometimes, rarely, I just drink it. That is probably the opposite of what most folks do! I thought I would post a link to this You Tube video again – Drinking Coffee vs. Tasting Coffee I made and posted that video over a year ago – but it is a crucial point that I think of over and over again. - Tom
When we first started selling the Fresh Roast SR 300 and SR 500, we recommended a certain technique for an even roast; namely, to remove the chaff collector and stir the coffee during the initial stages of the roast when the beans are heaviest. It turns out that this results in an inordinate amount of chaff getting sucked back into the base of the roaster (because the fan is drawing in air to cool the roaster) and over time it chokes the unit. Eventually the unit will no longer get hot and the chaff in the base presents a fire hazard.
So we have modified our recommendation and suggest you do what Tim Skaling of Fresh Beans does to get an even roast: Run the machine for 1 minute with beans, then hit the COOL button for 30 seconds. Then turn the machine back on to finish the roast. With very dense beans, use the COOL cycle twice during the roast sequence. If you do remove the chaff collector during the roast, be sure to replace it as soon as possible. You might also want to open the base of the unit from time to time and vacuum out any chaff that has found its way inside (sort of a good idea with any machine). We have updated the annotations on the YouTube videos too on our Fresh Roast Details page.
We have a very limited quantity of both of these unique South American coffees to add for the weekend: Brazil Daterra Farms – Sweet Blue, and Ecuador El Guabo -Teofilo Jimenez Microlot. Brazil Daterra Farms – Sweet Blue is a new offering (from a familiar farm) for Sweet Maria’s, a tad sweeter than the Sweet Yellow with wonderful bittering notes balancing a mild blueberry. Limit 2 lbs. Ecuador El Guabo – Teofilo Jimenez Microlot is one of the most amazing Ecuador lots we’ve come across, hopefully a sign of things to come in the future as we continue to work with small producers in this country. This lot features true “Typica” character with floral sweetness and ripe orange notes–limit 1 lb. Have a great weekend!
It is probably no surprise that we have an internal debate here : the Website Minimalists vs the Website Maximalists. The Minimalists want the website to be streamlined and easy to navigate; the Maximalists want to keep tons of information, even if it pertains to a product that has been discontinued. Most of you can likely guess which side Tom comes down on (hint: this is the person who comes home from a two-week origin trip with 800 photos!). But even Tom and I have to admit that articles and photos have piled up over the years in a disorganized way, or more disorganized than even we want. So we re-vamped the Coffee Library page to make information easier to access. More changes will be underway in terms of how we manage the travelogues and make the Tiny Joy back issues available. No purging, just rearranging the furniture. Hope you enjoy it. – Maria
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