Saturday, February 12, 2005
Coffee
Karen tells me that she has found several people interested in coffee roasting and had sent them to my blog. Well none of them announced themselves (posted a comment), so I can’t tell if they did. I urge you to post a comment when you visit us so that we can know you visited.
However, for those who are interested in exploring the world of coffee – get ready to be surprised. If you haven’t had freshly roasted coffee, ground in a burr grinder and served in a French press, you haven’t really had coffee yet. Believe me, it’s a wonderful world. Coffee has more that 800 flavor compounds, more that 2 1/2 times that of wine.
So how do you get to experience all this? First, there is a lot of learning to do. Most of it you can do at these two sites:
Sweet Maria's
Sweet Maria’s is a blessing to the coffee world. They are (to my mind) the best green bean supplier in the US and are even used my many in Europe. They don’t just sell green beans though. Thom has extensive cupping notes on each coffee he stocks, and he only stocks the best. For a long time he had no Sulawesi on his list until a lot came in that met his standards. But that isn’t all. As you browse around the site you will find more information about coffee, coffee roasting and coffee accessories than you could imagine.
CoffeeGeek
Excellent articles, many product reviews but the best are the forums. This is a community of people who love all aspects of coffee. Join and participate in the forums. Unlike the pretentious and often hostile world of alt.coffee people are polite, very helpful, knowledgeable and eager to welcome a newbie to the dark side.
Want to change your enjoyment of coffee. You will hear this again and again both on alt.coffee and coffeegeek, buy a good burr grinder. They aren’t cheap but they are worth it. When we got our Solis Maestro Plus for the first time and just tried it out on some local roaster's coffee beans (probable 10 days old and therefore stale) we could hardly believe the difference, and a French Press will also make a huge difference, giving you the ability to control all aspects of the extraction
Now to roasting. Roasting coffee doesn’t smell like roasted coffee! In fact it can produce a lot of smoke. I cannot say enough about my Zach & Dani roaster. It has a catalytic converter and eliminates the smoke. Handy if you are in Nebraska in the winter. Put in the beans, press a button and 20 minutes or so later you have a beautifully roasted 1/4lb of beans. Not bad for $99. So why aren’t YOU roasting?
However, for those who are interested in exploring the world of coffee – get ready to be surprised. If you haven’t had freshly roasted coffee, ground in a burr grinder and served in a French press, you haven’t really had coffee yet. Believe me, it’s a wonderful world. Coffee has more that 800 flavor compounds, more that 2 1/2 times that of wine.
So how do you get to experience all this? First, there is a lot of learning to do. Most of it you can do at these two sites:
Sweet Maria's
Sweet Maria’s is a blessing to the coffee world. They are (to my mind) the best green bean supplier in the US and are even used my many in Europe. They don’t just sell green beans though. Thom has extensive cupping notes on each coffee he stocks, and he only stocks the best. For a long time he had no Sulawesi on his list until a lot came in that met his standards. But that isn’t all. As you browse around the site you will find more information about coffee, coffee roasting and coffee accessories than you could imagine.
CoffeeGeek
Excellent articles, many product reviews but the best are the forums. This is a community of people who love all aspects of coffee. Join and participate in the forums. Unlike the pretentious and often hostile world of alt.coffee people are polite, very helpful, knowledgeable and eager to welcome a newbie to the dark side.
Want to change your enjoyment of coffee. You will hear this again and again both on alt.coffee and coffeegeek, buy a good burr grinder. They aren’t cheap but they are worth it. When we got our Solis Maestro Plus for the first time and just tried it out on some local roaster's coffee beans (probable 10 days old and therefore stale) we could hardly believe the difference, and a French Press will also make a huge difference, giving you the ability to control all aspects of the extraction
Now to roasting. Roasting coffee doesn’t smell like roasted coffee! In fact it can produce a lot of smoke. I cannot say enough about my Zach & Dani roaster. It has a catalytic converter and eliminates the smoke. Handy if you are in Nebraska in the winter. Put in the beans, press a button and 20 minutes or so later you have a beautifully roasted 1/4lb of beans. Not bad for $99. So why aren’t YOU roasting?
