Coffee Appreciation

Cheers Andrew. I just find it easier to wash a percolater or pyrex jug and tea strainer than dismantle my machines and wash them. Laziness on my part really.

Stove top percolaters ftw. You're hard pushed to find a kitchen without one in many parts of Europe.

EDIT, for those that have never used a percolater they work on much the same principle as an aeropress except they use pressurised steam to force water through the coffee. You end up with the same dense coffee puck at the end too.

How much coffee do you drink in a day? 2-3 per day? It's less of a faff than you think. And besides, upper body and core work out. To the max!

2-3, and only at weekends.

Currently have a £30 De'Longhi grinder, or should I say blade grinder. Shock horror! Will it make that much difference buying a 'proper' grinder?

second crack with the porlex/aeropress combo. (don't worry I won't post everytime I make a cup of coffee from now on)

beans: herbazu (st ali)
porlex: 5 clicks (still looks pretty rough)
weight: unsure (1 aeropress scoop of grounds)
time from pour to plunge: 40s (someone was talking to me in the middle)

result: a much more drinkable cup, decent strength but still lacking in some of the flavours I've had from the herbazu before.

will stick with 5 clicks for now and play about with the overall steep/pouring times now.

also came up with workable solution for people coming in and nicking the water from the kettle when I'm waiting for it to come back from the boil a little by finding a jug in the recesses of the cupboards. can now pour my water out and move to the other kitchen counter to get things done just so in my own time while the chimps continue to fight for the kettle and catering tin of nescafe gold.

result: a much more drinkable cup, decent strength but still lacking in some of the flavours I've had from the herbazu before.

Was it either overly sour or bitter? That might help you get the grind right if it's either over or underextracted. The extraction being right, I'd just up the dose.

2-3, and only at weekends.

Currently have a £30 De'Longhi grinder, or should I say blade grinder. Shock horror! Will it make that much difference buying a 'proper' grinder?

I had one. They make dusty crap. Buy a Porlex Mini, or cough up for an electric. You'll get far better coffee; more consistent, less sour and bitter at the same time.

that's a nice looking pour aroogah, where did you get the naked portafilter from?

Happy Donkey. http://www.happydonkey.co.uk/

Great for bits. Hippy likes their coffee, I have no experience of them.

2-3, and only at weekends.

Currently have a £30 De'Longhi grinder, or should I say blade grinder. Shock horror! Will it make that much difference buying a 'proper' grinder?

I stand by my comment from the top of the previous page -

Best £30 you can spend that will give you the biggest improvement in coffee.

I went from a blade grinder to the Porlex and the improvement was really, really noticeable.

porlex for Aeropress - 1 click

are blends made pre or post roasting? I.e. if I mix 3 types of roasted beans in a bag is that a blend?

it depends. would you consider yourself an artisan?

You know what? I'd be interested to know the answer to this.. Often wondered how a blend is attained and maintained say when I buy a bag from hasBean or monmouth..

my assumption is that each of the different beans will need a different degree of roasting, so presume they will be done separately and then blended.

am sure bombcup can clarify

tl;dr version - at our place we both pre and post roast blend.

OK, blending. Funnily enough, at Monmouth we're in the middle of a transition from post-roast blend to pre-roast blend. Since the start Monmouth has always post-blended the coffee, for the reason DJ speculated above. It also allows you to tweak the blend according to how your coffees are tasting on the day.

Currently the blend being sent to wholesale and mail-order customers is still post-blended due to the customer consultation not yet being completed. Here's how we do it;

First job of the day is to taste all the previous day's roasts. We're checking for roasting faults, natural defects and taints. If you heard us round the tasting table you'd think we hated coffee - we have to be super critical. The tasting notes are written up on each roast's data sheet and filed, along with a sample of the coffee for reference in case a complaint occurs - if we know who the customer is and the bestbefore date from the bag we can trace each component of the blend all the way back to the farm gate.

If we're happy with all the blend coffees then we'll start putting them together. Our current blend is 40% Brasil Santa Ines, 40% Guatemala El Capetillo and 20% Colombia Viota. We use the cooling tray at the front of the roaster to mix 61kg batches (60kg + 1 so we can overfill the bags). It's mixed for 5 minutes then removed and packed into kilo bags for dispatch the next day.

The pre-roast blend (not including organic blend) is served as drinks and sold over the counter in Monmouth's own shops. The decision was taken to trial a pre-blend when demand began to go beyond production capacity. Post-blending is very laborious - today for example I roasted over 500kg of blend components. That's going to take me 1 1/2 hours to blend in the morning. I'll then have around 5 hours roasting, plus lunch then cleaning and maintenance so it's pretty much at the limit. Pre-blending the shop coffee allows us to supply the demand within a normal working day.

The decision to pre-blend was not taken lightly, we spent many weeks tasting and tweaking the profile and would not have gone ahead with it if we did not think the result was at least equal to the post-blend. We discovered by roasting the coffees together that some melding of the flavours takes place - the flavour profile did not change once we'd nailed the profile but the drinks seemed to have extra depth and body from the mingling of oils aromas and vapours within the drum. The baristas reported that the shots were more consistent, probably from the more efficient mixing of the coffees in the roasting drum.

So that's the nuts and bolts of blending. Whether one method is more artisan than the other, all I can say is that coffee roasting, being a barista, patissiere, brewer, roofer, plasterer, whatever is a trade. A specific set of manual skills learned through work experience. The only artisans I've ever met are those who feel the need to apologise to their peer group because they feel that becoming a tradesman is not befitting of their expensive education.

Just out of interest, don't different beans need different timings and heat to get them properly roasted?

I thought there were a couple of stages of cracking, so how is this managed with the pre roast blends?

Ok, I've stuck in an order for a Porlex. Thanks Chris.

cheers for the info bombcup

Just out of interest, don't different beans need different timings and heat to get them properly roasted?

I thought there were a couple of stages of cracking, so how is this managed with the pre roast blends?

Individual coffees need different roast recipes or 'profiles' to get the best from them. The profile includes the drop-in temperature, the points at which the airflow is altered, the point when heat is reduced and the drop-out point. Barring a few exceptions cracking occurs within a few degrees whatever coffee you're roasting (first crackle starts between 185 - 188*c on our big machine). The time taken to get to these temperatures is important and is managed by the mass of coffee you load in to the machine, the airflow and the point at which you reduce the heat.

When you are roasting a blend of green coffees you have different densities of coffee. Our Brasil is considerably less dense than the Colombia and Guatemala so one might expect it to reach higher temperatures more quickly, however, what seems to happen is that the beans transfer heat and insulate each other so they behave uniformly. In effect the greater thermal inertia of the more dense beans protects the softer coffee.

We have to stop thinking of the roast as three separate beans being roasted together and think of it as a single entity with a known flavour profile we are trying to achieve. It's not so much a case of trying to strike a happy medium between the three individual roast profiles as trying to do the flavours justice as we would with a single origin coffee.

So a bit of a paradigm shift in the approach, but it does make a lot of sense. I can see that even with a single green bean there will be some variation between the beans (density and size) so effectively you the pre roast blend just incorporates a larger variance. But as you have mentioned you get a better mingling of the flavours and mixing of the beans this way so it appears you actually end up with a more uniform consistency.

Thank you for the detailed clarification.

No worries, glad it was clear enough, I'm never quite sure if I'm rambling nonsense.

also came up with workable solution for people coming in and nicking the water from the kettle when I'm waiting for it to come back from the boil a little by finding a jug in the recesses of the cupboards. can now pour my water out and move to the other kitchen counter to get things done just so in my own time while the chimps continue to fight for the kettle and catering tin of nescafe gold.

Do you not just stand in front of it, wielding a butter knife, baring your teeth?

Happy Donkey. http://www.happydonkey.co.uk/
Great for bits. Hippy likes their coffee, I have no experience of them.

I like their bits and their service, never tried their coffee. #ithink

...while the chimps continue to fight for the kettle and catering tin of nescafe gold.

Just reminded me of another reason I really DON'T miss my old office!

I like their bits and their service, never tried their coffee. #ithink

I stand corrected.

they've changed the blend on it - I must admit I didn't like the initial 3 bean blend but the new 2 bean blend is miles [sorry] better

I wish I'd heard more people say this earlier, when I had a bag of the earlier revision of Red Brick. Some shots were unbelievably sour and just about took my face off. It was like biting into a lemon.

There's a cafe on Cambridge Heath Road, near the Hackney Road junction, which does Red Brick for £4.50 a bag. Maybe the better stuff will have gone up in price, but it's worth a try again.

Angry Brews?

Am in York, and got a bodum santos like this one.

To use it on a gas flame hob, I need a diffuser...so where would I get one. I have no idea at all, thanks for the help.

I got one from John Lewis, you should find one in any kitchenware shop. I use my vac pot straight on the flame without any problems.

Currently enjoying a Malawi AAA and Daterra Sweet Yellow, both from Atkinsons in Lancaster. Both v. citrusy.

That's all.

ah make us one and send it down the teleporter will ya?

did you get yerself an aeropress yet?