Java
It’s all Bill’s fault. He told me how easy it is to roast your own coffee. Now I’m obsessed with it. I bought a FreshRoast rather than went hard-core with a heatgun and a dog bowl, like some of the people on Coffee Geek.
The roaster came with a pound of green beans – Swiss water process decaf Sumatra Takengon. They sucked. Majorly. I had serious reservations about the whole thing. I ran down to Mozart’s Coffee Roasters which is just a couple of minutes away and picked up some of their green beans – $4/lb for any green bean, and they have quite a variety. They were better, but still not the coffee flavor explosion I was looking for. Then I placed an order from Sweet Maria’s. Wow. They’re pricier, but every green coffee they sell is accompanied by a detailed review saying what aromas it has, how dark to roast it for optimum flavor, if the beans need to de-gas for an extra long time, etc. My favorites from there so far are the WP Decaf Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, the Ethiopian Harar, and the Costa Rican La Minita Tarrazu. I’ve learned that African coffees generally have floral and fruity notes, while Central American coffees are more earthy and chocolatey. There’s one Ecuadorean coffee, the Escafe, which is insanely bright and tangy and not good by itself, but it’s great in a blend.
So I’ve got my little spreadsheet, figuring out what I like and don’t like, and in the meantime realizing that if I drink too much coffee I get heart palpitations. Hopefully that’s going to go away once I’m off all this ear infection medication. Cause, damn that’s annoying. But it’s ok, cause I get to mix myself a half-caf blend. Today it’s 2 scoops Harar (blueberry flavor), one scoop Escafe (brightness), and 2 scoops Kenya AA WP Decaf (not outstanding in and of itself but a good base for this blend).