NY redux...

I am feeling trashed this morning. Swung by Grumpies yesterday and had a shot. Met CO on the way to the airport and chewed his ear for an hour. I do expect detailed notes on the coffees but maybe some avid blogging by him and Mike are in order.
Tired. Little Ben who just visited Grumpies Sun, just txted me that someone tried to order a low fat espresso. ... I need to go for some Ecco Reserve at Simon's and then I will feel better.

Playing around a bit with some Yirgacheffe Addis Ketema...

Since we are kindly waiting on a bag of Yirg SOS from Terroir that may never materialize... we decided to go play with what was left of an old bag of the drip coffee roast we had lying around. It was roasted the 28th but has been open for sveral days so it barely had a little life left in it. Of course this blog would be delighted to have a hand picked bag brought down from the roastery, that's not likely to happen....

We decided to see if we could get some respectable pulls like we used to back when the Saturday afternoon coffee club was more of an event. We took some of Terroir's Yirgacheffe and pulled it through Ben's frankensteined home machine withPID and all fired up and ready to go. Here follows some of our results... reader be warned... notes are transcribed as is without editing. Sink shots were left out.

notes: Grounds smell wonderful. The note of ginger pops immediately with a hint of some cocoas.

Shot A: 16grams 175F 1oz

A boring 'nestle' cocoa. Aroma was like honey. Dull but drinkable hot. Bitter andyuck as it began to cool. Too hot and too short maybe?

Shot B: 16grams 174F 1oz

Apricots honey aroma. Nice like that venezuela cocoa bar while hot. Too sour as it begins to cool. Grind? Too short, not too hot? Sickly sweet and acetic.

Shot C: 16grams 173F 2oz

dull and tasteless. Temp too low but volume is right.

several shots occured between this and the next that were not worth noting.

Shot D: 16grams 175F 1.25oz

ginger becomes more prevalent. A little intense but very sweet and tasty as it cooled. Perfect for americano style. No cocoa? -Mouthwatering effect- Bit on the citrus side, volume too low but temp is right.

Shot E: 16grams 175F 2oz

Ginger cocoa and dried fruit. Aromatics on the nose pop. Creamy. About as good as it gets for this coffees age.


Summary: Given that this is in fact a drip roast pulled at odd temps, it was pretty nice. I think most people would go americano on this and enjoy the aroma andsugars in the cup. If you do get the idea to try this, shoot me an email and I can give you some pointers. You need a PID to play around with this kinda stuff and don't expect traditional espresso profiles. These low temp shots make great americanos but are a bit too different from a normal straight shot. We bounced around on this one a lot because it is a lot harder to nail these on a home setup than on the Synesso even with a PID!


Great fun to experiment when you have a little extra something. Sometimes you can hit on something you didn't expect.
Cheers


Jaime

Boston coffee scene?

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Lights dim... exit stage left.










That's about what it feels like. Ben(coffeemonkee) said it best as things are a little strange these days as I am in limbo but no longer in the shop. I wanted to try and arrange a few coffees for some of my friends and associates but we'll see how that goes. Likewise, I will take a little something down to NY for my trip tommorrow. being out of the shop is exhilerating. I can spend my time writing notes, clearing my head, and just organizing a lot of loose ends.

I don't get into other shops much but I was looking at what's going on in NY right now where Grumpies has become a bit of a hang out for some of the more passionate barista in town. No such thing exists in Boston... well not shop to shop yet. When @ Simon's, we used to get a lot of what you could call disgruntled kids hanging out lamenting the state of the shops they work in. Some were passionate enough about the coffee and that it led them into our cupping group or even catching on at Simon's.

This kid lil Ben is a good example. He worked for a little while over at a shop a little farther down mass ave. Yeah, the other two from Cambridge at the USBC last year were from there. He was working for them during that time and really was hoping for something more. The plastic tamper, dulled grinder blades, and general disrespect for anything beyond what they were serving seemed to get him down. He ended up leaving them a bit burnt out and frustrated. We caught onto him when he came in and took some photos of the shop and was hanging around the counter reading an issue of barista mag. Not something you often see...! Ben dropped Steve Ford's name a little later about his next trip to San Francisco. Gold in our book. He ended up getting training a bit with the guys at Ecco and is now getting used to working bar at Simon's. Lil' Ben is a unique and passionate person who really just needs to get enough cuppings under his belt to build a barista's palate. It is being able to diagnose by taste alone that takes a long time to teach. Knowing different bitters/sours and what the causes are is often a case of just doing it and tasting the garbage and the goodies.

I was just thinking though with Ben how different it would be if he had been at a shop that was rocking the espresso and good coffees. Then he would be coming over to share and relate rather than coming over looking for a new stage.

That would be cool. To have someone to compete with and some good play at trying to be the best in town. I think that would be cool.... but having them work with me is cool too.

Cheers,



Jaime

Ecco Reserve and Yirg SOS...

Waiting for the Ecco Reserve right now. Maybe monday. If you go into Simon's they still have some of Andrew's N. Italian running right now. Simon will order the Terroir Yirg SOS for next week but I am uncertain as Simon is getting two of his grinders serviced leaving him short on grinders.

Just had Denez pull me a great shot of Ecco N. Italin but I still like the Reserve much better.

-Jaime

Coffee chemicals: Stinkers and not so stinky...

Prospective reading on coffeed.com

The two least favorite chemicals in coffee according to this blog: 2,4,6 trichloroanisole(TCA) and Geosmin
Two sources of your earthy musty, moudly, dirty smells/flavors in coffee. Charming, I think not. In wine, you can find mention of these flavors with cork taint, poor handliing of the grapes and other general missteps in the processing of wine. TCl and Geosmin are also noted in wine as being associated with barnyard (something so unhygenic in preparation that it took all the unsavory substances of a barnyard to create) flavors but sometimes in coffee, many pundits call these wild and intriguing.

Earthy alone is such a strange descriptor in coffee. In wine, earthy is often frowned upon by many as an imperfection. To quote an article on winepages.com on Earthy: 'It is not a "goût de terroir", which in its true sense means expressive of its terroir or complete growing environment, not tasting simplistically of earth!' Yet, there are many who desire this character in coffees and in particular in espresso. Simply put, this is an old way of thinking that goes back into the use of Robusta and dark roasts for espresso because of some perception of what espresso should be....

One of my favorite espresso is the nontraditional Ecco Reserve, a blend of two brazils(Cachoeira & Daterra farms) offered by Andrew Barnett of Ecco Caffe. I would not use earthy as a descriptor in this coffee but it is a fabulous espresso on it's own. I wouldn't use that to define any of the drip coffees from Terroir either. In some ways, the more expenisve coffes coming out of CoE present this profile of clarity and cleanliness over earthy muddled flavors.

It seems in many ways clarity is the antihesis of earthy. Yet, earthy is so tied to 'body' and our perception of the generic espresso profile. This leads me to consider that flawless coffees may be lacking or of less body than muddied defect laden coffees. I wonder in essence if we should continue to grade body as often as we do in any way as an indicator of quality? The funny thing is that once you are weened off of the earthy profiles, it's a brick to the teeth to try and go back.

One of the more pleasurable finds was a chemical named β-damascenone. Noted for it's aroma of honey, roses, and exotic flowers. This is an actual component of rose aroma, teas, and evidently many different products such as red wines. The other intruiging notes are on Furals, furans, and some aldehydes which seem to lead to a lot of the ideal fruity and floral but volatile and fleeting aromas I enjoy, but that's another entirely more complicated post. So the next time someone drops a floral or perfume remark, you can say, yep, that's posible. There are more than enough chemicals in coffee for us to compare coffee to wine complexities and intricate floral aromas.

The point of this is that coffee has the same potential as wine to be a culinary experience. We just have to get the right green, the right roast, and the right extraction to make it all come together in that defining moment on the cafe floor. As I see more and more defining experiences among all the boring ones out there, I feel a change coming in the industry abut how people perceive coffee.

The flavors are all there to be had and we just discover how to get at them and repeat them. A mouthwatering task, but that's the best part... we get to taste everything.


-Jaime van Schyndel

See also “…Coffee: The Chemistry behind its Magic” by Marino Petracco