Decaf Project: S&W Roasting
This is a followup to my previous cupping; this time around I evaluated the Decaf Project samples for S&W Roasting.
The Decaf Project: Rose Park
Quite some time ago, James Hoffmann stated his interest in doing a broad decaf test where he would get one set of bulk single-origin beans, split it in four, and process it four different ways. It took a while for this to happen, but finally he was able to make it happen, in the form of The Decaf Project.
Being super excited about decaf in general, I ordered two tasting kits, one from Rose Park (who I’ve never tried) and one from S&W (who I’m quite familiar with and a big fan of).
Both of my kits arrived in time for the big tasting event, although being at 7 in the morning my time I opted to wait until the afternoon, and further decided I’d only do one at a time. So for today I’ve just cupped Rose Parks roast.
Roast note: Burman Colombian Las Montanas EA Natural Process
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*:
- 6:00 at 980 watts
- 1:00 at 1140 watts (at which it barely reached first crack)
- 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.
Coffee soda, revisited
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
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.