A perfect shot of espresso with my “Trunch” blend. This blend is Brazil, Mexico, Sumatra and Costa Rica, and it is exactly what I want in a shot. There’s abundant bittersweet chocolate and roasty nuttiness, and the Costa Rica gives it a nice little kick at the end.
The roast profile is a Diedrich style slow start/fast finish with 1st crack hitting at about 11min, and roast finishing just at the start of 2nd crack at about 14min.
Yes, you can do this at home too. Screw Starbucks.
So, you like the result of a Clover brewed cup, but you don’t want to spend $6000 on a machine? Oh yeah, Starbucks bought Clover and you can’t buy one anyway. Well, you are in luck because you can replicate the process with a sub $30 device.
Chances are you have an AeroPress, or at least have heard of it. It’s probably the cheapest coffee brewing device out there and it makes a seriously good cup of coffee. If you don’t have you really can’t loose much by picking one up. There’s many different ways to use the AeroPress. The “inverted” method is quite the rage right now. I happen to use the inverted method because it makes less of a mess. According to the latest stats on the World Aeropress Championships, about 50% of the people use the device the way it was intended…so you can make a great cup either way.
But, there’s another way you can use the AeroPress, and it simulates the Clover style brewing method. So, if you are willing to possibly make a mess, watch this.
When I started home roasting with the FreshRoast SR700, it was for two reasons. First, I realized that even though I had started to buy really great beans from local roasters, it was expensive. I looked, and a pound of very good green coffee is about $5, and a pound of good roasted is anywhere from $15 to $20. So, by roasting myself, I save big bucks. Second, I am able to get exactly the coffee I want when I want it. I roast on demand, and never have any wasted coffee.
So, I decided on the FreshRoast SR700. It’s computer controlled, and that’s too geeky to pass up. But, a friend had an SR500 and recommended that. So, after some research, it really did look like a great way to start at home.
Now, enter Roastero. After I started roasting, I joined the FreshRoast Facebook group. There’s over 100 people there comparing recipes and sharing advice on the FreshRoast SR700 and SR500. Then, I see a post from 2 college kids that are writing an open source program to control the SR700. You better believe I jumped on that invite.
The stock SR700 software lets you save lots of steps, but you still only have control over 3 heat levels, and 9 fan speeds. It’s pretty flexible, and produces fine roasts, but it’s still sort of limiting. Roastero on the other hand uses temperature targets for each step. You can actually build a real roast profile. This software takes a really good machine and makes it a great machine. The roasts you can do with this level of control are incredible. The only nit is that the software is still using those 3 heat levels, so it toggles back and forth between them to maintain a given temperature. That is a limitation of the hardware. So, the resulting curve is not smooth. But, the average of the result works out fine.
I am able to create profiles that put 1st crack anywhere I want it. I can produce nice even light roasts, or dark roasts with a roaring 2nd crack, and they are all nice and even.
Here’s a quick video.
We’ve created our own brand called Jumped Up Little Germ. It’s shirts and mugs for true coffee geeks.
Sumatra Iskandar won some awards this year. So I picked up a few pounds to home roast.
This batch was roasted 20 sec into a rolling second crack. It came out excellent. Brewed as a single origin espresso, it had all the body you would expect. It was thick and syrupy, with mild sweetness and a touch of acidic tang to wake up the mouth. I regularly use 25% Sumatra in my “go-to” espresso blend, and this bean again showed me why I do it.
As an Aeropress brew, this was also outstanding. The cup was exceptionally smooth and not bitter at all. The sweetness was perhaps more pronounced than in the espresso preparation and the aroma had chocolate notes to it. The thickness of the body noted in the espresso preparation was also very noticeable.
#starbuckssucks
So, what is the difference between Arabica and Robusta coffee exactly? Everyone says Arabica tastes better, and it’s likely because of it’s lower caffeine content. Caffeine is actually bitter tasting, so more of it means a more bitter cup. But, there’s actually a bit more to it. This article makes it short a sweet.
10 differences Between Robusta & Arabica Coffee | The Roasters Pack
Of course, that’s not all on the subject of Arabica and Robusta. Just do a Google search, and you’ll see what I mean…of course you probably already know that because that’s how you probably got here.
I get it. I really do. It’s part ritual, part science. Coffee cupping really does allow someone who really knows coffee to detect the nuances of a bean. But, what does the end consumer do? They usually take your meticulously crafted work, dump in two packs of sugar, maybe some cream, and chug it as they run out the door to work.
So, what’s the point of a snooty cupping session? Do people really smell bread and other silly words that are overheard when describing coffee? The same could be said for wine enthusiasts. As I said, I’m sure it has it’s place, but even most of the self proclaimed coffee snobs that drink it black couldn’t talk intelligently about what they are consuming. Shouldn’t you evaluate the product on the consumer level?
When I first started making coffee at home with the intent on “crafting” the result, I’m sure I made the mistake everyone makes. I grabbed a bag of beans that said “espresso” and started in like a rhino trying to help a baby bird back into a nest…pretty ugly picture. My main goal was to produce a product that was at least as good as Starbucks to save my family money ($3.50 a pop ads up). It wasn’t hard to do that. Starbucks really does suck. It took about a year, but I managed to quickly graduate to seeking out the artisan roasters in my area for the beans, and getting a nice espresso machine, and cranking out a product that people now anticipate when they come over. I did this all without coffee cupping.
So, why am I attempting to cup coffee now? I’m curious. Does it actually enhance my personal experience? Will it make my product better now that I’m also roasting my own beans? Really, what coffee cupping does is provide a standardized way for folks in the coffee business to evaluate and talk about coffee. But, does in benefit the consumer? If a cupping session reveals a Full City roasted Brazilian bean to have hints of bitter chocolate and black currant, does the person who will be dumping in two packs of Splenda before even tasting the beverage care? No, no they don’t. Do people like myself that actually ask for just a single shot of espresso benefit. Yes, yes I do. But, can you really educate the entire public on how to really evaluate coffee? Starbucks is proof that you can’t.
Why am I ranting? Because I can. That’s just my opinion. Of course, I could be wrong.
The coffee at Starbucks may suck balls, but as I sit here in a Starbucks killing time, I can’t help but be thankful for what Starbucks does offer. The yogurt parfait (the one with berries) is quite a nice little breakfast. The pastries are adequate for a snack. There’s free WiFi, and I always get perverse pleasure out of the sheer befuddlement of the cashier when I refuse to order a drink.
The “cafe culture” that Starbucks has created is actually a bit like the Cult of Apple. Both companies created (or rather perverted) a pre-existing product (or products). Apple at least makes cool gadgets (whether or not you can stomach their business practices is a different issue). Starbucks on the other hand, has completely wrecked the coffee they serve, but have convinced the people that it’s what they need (not want). They did this by providing a community around the product that people found attractive. In the computer age, free WiFi is a big deal. So, the ability to come in, sit down, type up a mud-slinging blog piece about the very establishment providing the WiFi is really cool. People meet for job interviews, tutoring sessions, short business meetings, blind dates, the list goes on. And, while your here, have a drink. Unless your me. In which case, you pre-fill the Starbucks branded travel cup someone got you as a joke with a home roasted, home brewed latte and sit down without buying anything.
So, Starbucks is good for something, just not coffee.
I’m now 2 weeks into my home roasting adventure, and I’m never buying pre-roasted beans again. Don’t get me wrong, there’s small batch roasters out there that are insanely good. But, for less than 1/2 the price, and still making mistakes, I’m producing product that I would happily stand up against some of the best cafes in town. The crema is thick and colorful. And, possibly most important, the shots taste almost exactly as they smell. The blend I’m working with is producing balanced caramel sweetness with bakers chocolate flavors, and it’s thick and luxurious.
The aroma of fresh roasted coffee is through the roof, the taste completely ridonculous (sic) – a religious experience. Home roasting coffee guarantees all this never is out of reach. Did I mention the cost savings? It costs me roughly 1/2 as much to be home roasting my own coffee. If you are a serious coffee drinker, you could probably pay for a vacation every year with the money you save.
If you saw the precious post, you saw that I’m using a FreshRoast SR700. The one consistent knock on the FreshRoast machines in reviews around the internet is batch size – too small. Yes, you can only roast 4oz at a time (final yield about 3.2oz per batch). But, the flip side is that each roast is about 10-14 minutes. So, you have almost a pound with an hour of home roasting. Let’s be honest here…is it really such a terrible thing to spend an hour home roasting coffee? You can geek out as much as you want on the science of it. Analyze each roast. Tweak recipes. Oh, and did I mention the cost savings (again)? Buy some exotic beans. Try some new coffees!
Well, I did it. I pulled the trigger on this baby, and will be taking the next step towards complete coffee snobbery. Of course the computer geek in me couldn’t be content with the SR-500. No, I had to get the Fresh Roast SR700 so I can control the thing with my laptop and save my roast profiles.
Now, I just have to wait for the beans I ordered from Sweet Maria’s to get here so I can start roasting and blending. I will be posting updates with my efforts, so stay tuned. The funny thing is I think this may actually make me buy more coffee…in the name of research of course. I have to have baseline samples with which to compare my output.