I don't know if I've ever posted here, but I think I should. I had a tumblr that I devoted to brewing, but that ecosystem isn't a place I'd re-start writing about hobbies or interests.
I'm not sure if I intended my "What's Brewing... " blog to include coffee, but it fits... and, at the moment I'm obsessed with coffee... again. Even more.
Long story short... I've been roasting my own coffee since about 1997. I remember roasting in a skillet in our kitchen on Beverly in Whittier. It was smoky and mysterious, and probably not so good. A friend worked as a coffee roaster and gave me the gift of some green beans. I think I tried the oven and the skillet. Over the years I always told myself and other people that despite not being able to roast perfectly, I knew that the freshness factor was a huge flavor win. And... that kept me doing it, as best I could, for many years.
Fast forward to recent years... as brother Daniel can tell you, I wasn't satisfied with the home-roasted or home-brewed coffee for sometime. It used to be good, but somehow it just didn't taste great anymore. I wondered if my taste buds were getting old/stale. However, when I changed variables, I didn't have any "aha" moments that made me think I could solve the issue. I had gone from roasting in a modded popcorn popper to an electric stirrer skillet, and while it roasted a lot at once... it still didn't taste great. I doubted the 20 minute roast was ideal. Sometimes it smelled good in a jar, but it didn't brew up exciting coffee. I was having to replace the roasters about once a year for $120, and I wondered if a few of them might add up to the cost of a good one... Carol agreed, and I decided to change my method. I bought a Behmor, which is an electric drum roaster, built like a toaster oven with smoke suppression and everything.
When I started roasting with the Behmor I loved that it was a 1 lb. roaster, so it seemed like I could roast quickly on the weekend and stay stocked up. I still doubted the 20 minute roast time-frame. It seemed like the roasts were darker than expected no matter what I did. The character of Ethiopian beans seemed like it was baked out of them, and they didn't have much fruit. I just kept going, and wondered if my coffee maker was not good... or maybe the Amazon grinder...
Luckily Carol is super supportive of my hobbies and coffee drinking... and when I got fired up on upgrading our brewer and grinder it was a greenlight. I felt sheepish buying an absolute gadget, but I got a Fellow Aiden brewer that has all kinds of heat controlled brewing profiles, etc... it's a super gadget. It looks modern and sleek too. As soon as I bought it I was worried about it breaking. That's the problem with newfangled gadgets.
So, the next step was using the gadget to try to get better coffee from the coffee I'd been roasting. It turns out, it wasn't only the brewer and grinder. It was lots of things. In the maze of coffee quality there are many twists and turns. I went down the rabbit hole.
1. I discovered that people who want more controlled roasts on the Behmor have to pay lots of attention to the roasting. I'll make a separate post about where I've gone with that.
2. I learned that I was getting an ashy taste from our tap water, which made most (all?) roasts taste less good. I started buying distilled water and adding minerals packets for an ideal coffee water (yes, they make and sell such a thing). This was a clearly noticeable variable. I haven't made coffee at home with tap water since.
3. I learned that lighter roasted coffees need more time to "rest" after roasting. I had normally thought they were hitting peak at 4-7 days, but it turns out that some can take up to 4 weeks to open up and show their true fruity flavors.
I joined some active Reddit coffee groups, and I had plenty of nerdy obsessive stuff to read. I reddit. I am now aware of the whole underworld of pourover geekdom with grinders, kettles, and flavor notes lists that are dubious. People are paying $45 for 100g of beans in a corked test tube so they can try to extract a fleeting flavor whiff from a tea-like lukewarm version of coffee. It's a fussy food hobby and I'm here for it.
For the past few weekends I've been working on dialing in my roasting on the Behmor, but the resting period means I'm also aging coffee in the basement, and periodically taking some out to sample. I now have a backlog for about 3-4 weeks, and plenty to taste. Meanwhile, I'm also getting interested in tasting other peoples beans (something I've barely done for the last 20 years). I've been reading about cult favorite roasters and seeing if I can stomach the prices, and maybe qualify for free shipping. Now I have coffee in the freezer too. When I travel to new places I try to get some coffee and bring it home. I've been getting green beans from new vendors to see if I can discover some new favorite beans. I'm into it right now. It's a pretty good hobby for winter weekends. Except for the overcaffeination... I've been feeling restless.
