busybee

I finally tried out a roast I’d been looking forward to, a medium-light roast of Burman Colombian Las Montanas, an EA-decaf natural process coffee. This is one of those coffees that tasted so good I just had to record my notes for later.

I used the following roast profile on the Popper*:

1. 6:00 at 980 watts
2. 1:00 at 1140 watts (at which it barely reached first crack)
3. 3:00 cooling cycle

And then it rested for 8 days. The overall mass loss was 10.3%, classifying it as “first crack” according to Sweet Maria’s chart.

The resulting espresso shot was flavorful with a nice level of acid, fruity flavor, a slightly syrupy texture, and a bit of natural sweetness.

As much as I was enjoying my cheap home-roasting setup, the coffee I was getting out of it was a bit one-note, especially when doing processes which were easily-replicable. The best coffee I’d gotten was when I didn’t know what I was doing and was trying all sorts of random things.

After reading up a bunch more about what I was doing wrong, all conclusions were that having the popper going at full-blast from the beginning was really limiting my ability to get good, consistent, developed roasts, and after considering adding a PID controller to my popper or other means of temperature control, I decided the easiest next step would be to buy a Popper¹.

Usual regular infodump about activities and such.

Just a few random updates about the stuff going on right now.

As much as I appreciated my Sette 270, there were a few things I didn’t like about it:

• The fine adjustment mechanism is weird and unpredictable (due to the dual-ring thing)
• It is incredibly loud
• Grinding for espresso usually took 3-4 cycles due to popcorning
• The dang felt pretty huge (relative to my tiny kitchen)
• It’s built for keeping stuff in the hopper rather than single-dosing

I was considering a number of other grinders (most notably the Option-O Lagom Mini) but then in April, Timemore announced the Timemore Sculptor series, in a number of sizes and grind profiles. And the requisite Kickstarter had it on a pretty deep discount.

So anyway, I backed the 064s (64mm stepless variant) and expected to wait.

And wait I did! But the lovely new grinder arrived today.

I figure it’s been a little while since my last random-updates update thing, so here’s what’s going on in my life. Because I guess some folks like knowing this stuff? Weird. Anyway.

I love the flavor of coffee, but don’t really care much for caffeine. Unfortunately, finding good roasters that treat decaffeinated coffee with respect is difficult, and the ones which are out there tend to either default to a dark roast, or cost enormous amounts.

But with a $20 popcorn air popper you can roast your own coffee at home, and save a lot of money doing it!

I’ve been doing it.

I recently bought some Colombian EA decaf from S&W Craft Roasting, as well as their sampler pack and a bag of cascara tea. The order shipped immediately and got to me within just a few days, and I am pretty happy with the decaf.

But let’s talk about the cascara!

Today all of the work was happening off-site, with the fabrication of my countertops. But! The new fan controller arrived, and I took the initiative to (partially) install it myself, to get it tested. It works, and it means that now there’s a path forward to update the outlet by the stove as well.