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Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/03/21 12:32If you can boil water (and can find some fresh coffee beans) you can make coffee that is remarkably good... so good, in fact, that you will want to come back for more... or make coffee for a group of friends.
Great coffee, imaginative dessert foods and good company go hand in hand so -- consider this: Good coffee can change you life.
We are going to tell you how - here at Coffee School.Colin is the Senior editor and creator of the CoffeeCrew.Com Website
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colin
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Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/03/31 11:39The greatest challenge is finding fresh coffee
this is a test message -
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amanda
User Coffee Lover
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Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/07/10 21:50I love coffee very much, i want to know more about coffee products and beans,and give me some recipes to prepare tasty coffee.
editor: Nice try at sneaking in a free ad! Free ad and URL deleted! Walking on thin ICE Amanda!
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BP101
User Junior Barista
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Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/07/11 06:36Colin, I think a Coffee Schoolis a wonderful idea. I have been getting into coffee for many years now, but I am still learning and discovering, and there is still much I have to learn. For example, I think home roasting is the answer to the fresh beans concern, and the popcorn popper is the easiest method. But I do find the roast hard to control: if I stop the beans after first crack, the coffee flavour can be weak, but once it gets into second crack it roasts awfully fast, and can make for bitter coffee. I roast a lot of decaf for my wife, and those beans can go to carbon (and virtually unusable) very quickly. Any ideas about getting better control over the degree of the roast?
Of course, I also find the roast varies greatly with the bean I am roasting, along with the temperature, humidity, etc. And then there is the way I make up the coffee: a mid-brown roast might make a weak cup of drip, but have much more flavour in a vac-pot. I know part of the answer is taking this all more seriously, but I have this fear of cross-indexing everything until I go crazy (let's see: the Kenyan AA, roasted to Full City, is best in a French Press, but the Malabar should be roasted until the oils start to show, and then used for espresso...arrrgh!). Any suggestions for approaching this reasonably? Thanks, as always.
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colin
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Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/07/11 09:07Home roasting with a corn popper is a good way to learn the chemistry of coffee roasting.
You can even get some interesting flavors as well as a sense of what fresh coffee can taste like.
Still, roasting 2-4 ounces of coffee at a time, especially quality arabica, is a bit of a lost cause. It takes volume, in coffee roasting, to achieve true greatness. Part of the chemistry of coffee roasting is roasting in volume. Large quantities of beans interact with each other enhancing the overall finished product.
Small batches? Small flavor. Still, it is a great way to learn.Colin is the Senior editor and creator of the CoffeeCrew.Com Website
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dave
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Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/07/11 10:30Not sure how soon I'll put it into use (need more green), but I just picked up a $3 Westbend Poppery II that seems quite clean / hardly used. There is a Poppery I in the family, but I don't think that it will ever see coffee duty
I still like the heat gun method for being hands on, but when one was sitting there..
Dave
We all know that Colin is now a Toper man...Dave is an Ottawa resident and Coffee Expert
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kme
Visitor
Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/07/26 00:40kme,
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deaflegacy
Visitor
Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/08/14 18:21I look forward to taking the Coffee lessons.
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dave
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Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/08/14 20:14Welcome, deaflegacy!
Feel free to ask questions; that might be a faster way to get feedback since we don't have a scheduled set of 'lessons' currently planned.
On the earlier subject of popcorn makers: you can also try a really long extension cord. That might drop the voltage to the heater, some, though it would also slow the fan as well, which could reduce your batch size at the same time (I don't know; I think that a lot of people use(d) the extension cord trick).
One 'common' concoction for roasting upwards of 1 lb at a time (usually a bit less), has been to combine a different kind of popcorn popper (usually a Stir Crazy, lately a Salton UFO) with the convection oven top from a glass convection appliance (like a Turbo oven / Galloping Gourmet), and a few bits of hardware. Users need to experiment a bit, but they are an improvement over small poppers.
Recently, a glass domed, quiet, and profile-ready drum roaster has come on the scene -- the Gene Cafe roaster. You'll pay a pretty penny for this one, but it gives you a lot of control over moderate roast sizes.
DaveDave is an Ottawa resident and Coffee Expert
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DonzasH
User Senior Barista
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Re:Coffee school - lesson one - 2006/12/05 11:43Hi, I am sort of entering the world of coffee. So far I bought an Atomic and can't wait for it to come. My question is on blending coffee. What is the rule of thumb and what combinations work?? Also whats the point of blending??(I am pretty satisfied with straight up coffee beans
Cheers
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