Roasting

Back when I was a dirt dweller, I used to buy coffee beans from this little warehouse in Oakland. The company, Sweet Maria’s, was owned and operated by a guy who personally flew around the world, visiting plantations, sampling coffee beans at the source, and then buying small batches from the best of them. I have wanted his job ever since. When I imagined this sailing adventure, I pictured myself, sailing through the world’s finest coffee growing regions, making dozens (if not hundreds) of forays into the mountains to restock my ever dwindling supplies of green beans. As the journey wore on, it became apparent to me that this dream was (perhaps) a bit unrealistic. The resources and local knowledge needed to find and visit the farms change with every locale, and the time and money needed to make the trips is not insignificant on our modest budget. ...

For the last year or so Victoria and I have been harboring a secret desire. We hoped to combine our love of coffee and our new nomadic lifestyle and create from the union a more perfect coffee. Over the last week that dream has slowly become a reality, but it has been a long and trouble fraught journey. The project really took form when I discovered that there was a guy, in Georgia, making a small (4 lb) coffee roasting drum out of 304 stainless steel that was designed to fit into a backyard bbq. I started fantasizing about custom ordering one for my little SeaBQ, but got a little overwhelmed by the details. ...

Last night I roasted up three batches of Yemen Mokha Ismaili (highlighted in my last post). The first batch was Full City + and the second and third were roasted all the way to Vienna (all roasts were at full heat). Today when it came time to grind it up for the trip I decided to mix the FC+ and Vienna roasts together. If the smell is anything to judge by I am going to be delighted with the results. Hopefully I’ll get the licorice/cinnamon, clove flavors of the bean ( which FC+ reveals best) and the deep chocolate/caramel/earth flavors of the Vienna roast. ...

I posted my first roast report in March, right after I got my new roaster. Since then I’ve been so busy with roasting, entertaining, traveling, and life that I’ve not reported back. Well here it is. Sometime in July I convinced Vick to let me take over a portion of the laundry room for my roast shop (gotta love the smell of burnt cardboard in your clothes). I moved a bunch of stuff around and finally got the roaster semi-permanently set up next to the microwave. With the scale and barrel stand on top of the microwave everything fits nicely and I don’t have to move a bunch of part in and out of the cupboards every time I want to make a batch. This dance was occurring every 4 or 5 days so it seemed like a worthwhile compromise to our anti-clutter rule. Now the only thing I have to do when its time to roast is pull the ducting up to the hanger and crack the window a bit. ...