Roast note: Burman Colombian Las Montanas EA Natural Process

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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.

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Coffee soda, revisited

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I’ve been experimenting with coffee-based sodas again. Unlike last time, I decided to experiment based on the espresso kola idea.

What I’ve found to work really nicely is to take 1 liter of cola (such as Sodastream’s generic cola flavor, which has a nice blend of sucrose and ace K/sucralose), four pumps of vanilla syrup (such as Torani), and a purposefully-overextracted shot of espresso.

For my most recent batch I did an ultra-long shot, with 18 grams in, 60 grams out, specifically to get as many of the bitter oils out as I could, which helped the coffee flavor really stand up against the sweetness of the cola.

One thing to keep in mind when doing this is that espresso is full of surfactants and particulate, which both conspire to make the soda very “angry,” so caution is advised, especially when opening the bottle for the first time. It’s a good idea to let it rest in the refrigerator for a few hours and then open it carefully in the sink.

An even better idea is to use a much larger bottle than the volume of soda you’re making, so for example a half-liter of cola, and two pumps of vanilla syrup. I’d still do an 18:60 espresso shot with that, though, for even more delicious coffee flavor.

Anyway, now to mop my floor…

Popper Is A Coffee Roaster

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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.

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What, another grinder?! Timemore Sculptor 064s

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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.

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Roasting coffee at home

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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.

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Breville/Sage Bambino Plus

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When I first started on my home espresso journey, I had an ancient hand-me-down Krups1, but it made awful coffee2. I donated that to a charity shop, as I thought my Aeropress3 and its “espresso-style coffee” was sufficient. Then I added a Fellow Prismo to the mix to add a bit more pressure (and cleanliness), but this still wasn’t espresso. Then my eye got caught by the Flair Classic, which was much better at making espresso but also much fussier. So I started investigating a bunch of home espresso machines, and I decided I wanted the Breville Bambino Plus… but it was pretty much impossible to buy.

After trying to buy it from a few different places, and trying to order a few other machines, I eventually settled on the Gaggia Classic Pro, which I used fairly happily for about a year and a half.

But there were still a bunch of things I didn’t like about it, such as the lack of preinfusion, a difficult-to-use steam wand, and a water tank design that made it way too easy for fruit flies to reenact Hotel California4. So, last November, when the Bambino went on a pretty deep (20%) discount for Black Friday (and when I was already spending large amounts of money getting my kitchen remodeled anyway), I decided to take the plunge and get the machine I’d wanted in the first place.

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Cascara experiments

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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!

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My updated current espresso process

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9 months ago I posted my then-current espresso process. As this is a constant experiment and processes change over time, I figure it’s time for an update:

  1. I have returned to single-dosing, and have 3D printed a single-dose hopper for that purpose. This makes it less convenient for me to rest/outgas my beans but it’s easy enough to just, y'know, open the bag while it waits in the refrigerator. Oh also I grind into the dosing cup, not direct into the portafilter, and I give the dosing cup a little shakey-shake before pouring it into the portafilter (with a dosing funnel).

  2. My dose is now 18g, and since I’m single-dosing there’s no time calibration necessary. Also, I give the beans a quick spritz with water (aka “RDT” in coffee nerd circles) to cut down on static and clumping.

  3. My leveling process is now to do a vertical tap, and then WDT, with no additional leveling. Also, for the WDT I ended up settling on a bit of cat6 Ethernet cable which I stripped down to the wires which I then straightened, forming a sort of whisk. It’s probably not food-safe, but it works.

  4. I still tamp as before, although as part of my tamping I also turn the tamper around a couple of times to ensure that the puck is flat and releases.

  5. I extract either a 1:2 ratio (i.e. 18g in, 36g out) or 30 seconds, whichever comes first, and use that as a guide for dialing in my grind.

Espresso tonic variant: Tropical ginger beer

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Okay, so, a lot has been said about espresso tonic. But there are other interesting combinations of espresso with carbonated beverages.

One fairly obvious one would be an espresso kola, namely espresso and a cola-type beverage. It’s okay with Coca-Cola but really good when using Q Kola.

Earlier this year, Morgan Eckroth won the US Barista Championship with a signature drink that involved lime extract, mango purée, and orange blossom water (among other things). And those flavors have a profile pretty similar to Q’s tropical ginger beer, so I figured…

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