Coffee... Nectar of the Gods?
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cloudy said:Have him stop by my house on his way, will ya?
up here too, im patient, i can wait..
i wanna play with his ass.... erm.. donkey.. ah.. thats just not right
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Extreme coffee
How home roasting has changed a cup of joe for the obsessed - Carol Ness, June 23, 2004
When Eric Lundblad first started roasting his own coffee, his friends didn't want to hear a word about it. "It was too insane. They'd say why would you roast coffee when you live in the Bay Area where there are all these great roasters?" says Lundblad, a software engineer who lives in Oakland.
Now, three years later, Lundblad has to buy many more pounds of green coffee beans than he needs because these same friends stop by so often for a home-roasted cup from his French press. "I slowly won each one of them over with my coffee," he says. "I have friends who don't drink coffee except mine."
Lundblad is part of a tiny, slow-growing underground of coffee drinkers who treat their daily brew with the same respect many people give wine. Home roasting allows them to buy premium beans at bargain prices, choose from many varieties of coffee and vary the roasting level from light to dark.
On a dozen or more Web sites, they trade tasting notes ("fruity" and "bright") about beans from this hill in Kenya or that farm in Guatemala, about roasting techniques, instructions for pulling the perfect espresso, and equipment reviews.
It would be premature to call home roasting a trend. This is still extreme coffee. Consider the San Francisco man who spends his days scouring eBay and junk shops for '70s-era air popcorn poppers that double as bargain roasters. Or one in Ohio who's figured out how to run his roaster off his PC to give him pinpoint control of the roast.
But more people are venturing into it. The Internet has provided a place for the word to spread and commerce to flourish. Home roasting isn't difficult, and it doesn't have to involve expensive machinery.
Home roasting is about one thing: Done right, the coffee tastes better. The main reason is freshness.
"Most people are drinking stale coffee and they don't know it," says Tom Leaf of San Francisco, who roasts in his Sunset District yard using what he calls the Holy Grail of bargain roasters, an old Westbend air popcorn popper.
Hard, gray-green coffee beans stay fresh for a year. Once roasted, their volatile oils and fruit flavors are lively for just a few days. They deteriorate within a week.
Because green beans stay fresh, home roasters can stock up on coffees from different regions and growers -- they call this their coffee "library." Then they can choose among them as mood dictates, the way a wine drinker would pick among Zinfandels and Merlots from the cellar.
Leaf, a winemaker who's nurturing his startup, Grapeleaf Cellars in Berkeley, likes being able to get up in the morning and decide, "Oh, today I'd like to have Nicaraguan."
One recent day, Leaf picked up nine kinds of beans from Sweet Maria's, the Emeryville-based online green bean company that sells some 70 hand- selected coffees: "Ethiopian Yirgacheffe WP Decaf," "Guatemalan Coban -- El Tirol Estate." The labels even have tasting notes: "Kenya AA Auction Lot 499 -- Mweiga: medium-toned, bold cup, floral, spice, licorice, fruit rind to finish."
Thompson Owen, co-owner of Sweet Maria's with his wife, Maria Troy, has just returned from one of his four annual coffee-tasting trips. He knows the farms, the growers and how they grow the beans.
Sweet Maria's pays 2 to 3 times the market rate to get the best beans from farms where workers earn a living wage. Owen has established such a reputation for quality that coffee brokers working the Port of Oakland, the specialty coffee port in the United States, routinely call him when a tiny batch of something of interest comes in.
'The' coffee place
For roasters like Tom Leaf and Eric Lundblad, Sweet Maria's is the center of the coffee universe. Sweetmarias.com not only sells beans and equipment, but posts meticulous descriptions of its coffees, the politics of the regions where they're grown and Owen's reports from the field. It's a one- stop primer on roast styles, techniques, lingo, equipment and links to other good coffee sites. Sweet Maria's sells its ultrapremium green beans for $4 to $6 a pound, half the price (or less) of ordinary roasted beans. Leaf likes the bargain aspect, though Owen says home roasting isn't likely to save most people money because there's always some tempting gadget -- the latest electric roaster, burr grinder or espresso machine -- to buy.
The other appeal of home roasting is that it lets you control how dark or light your roast is. For all the Bay Area's proud history of specialty roasters, dark roasts rule on the West Coast. "In California, you can hardly buy a medium roast," says Kenneth Davids of Oakland, a coffee scholar, tasting consultant and author of "Home Coffee Roasting: Romance & Revival," the only book on the subject.
Credit or blame Alfred Peet, who pioneered the extreme dark roast, which mellows coffee's acidity, but can add a bitter or even charred taste, Davids says. It caught on.
Critics say an overly dark roast can destroy the bean's nuances and cover up poor quality, while allowing for the consistency that large commercial roasters want. Some roasters are now moderating that style, but it remains hugely popular.
Davids, who has been roasting coffee since the mid-1970s, wrote his book in 1996, thinking that home roasting was about to burst into the mainstream. Roasting machine manufacturers hoped the same thing, and started marketing lots of expensive gizmos. But many of them have ended up as garage sale fodder. That's because home roasting does have its drawbacks. It takes some tinkering and can make a mess.
Chris Wheaton found out a few weeks ago when he used a popcorn popper to roast his first batch in his Bernal Heights home. It was 10 p.m. "I filled the entire house up with smoke," says Wheaton. "All the smoke alarms went off, and the kids woke up."
Smelly fumes and smoke are unavoidable when roasting. So is chaff, the thin skins that slough off as the beans heat and pop. It flies all over the place. Now Wheaton does his roasting on the front porch, pointing smoke and chaff out to the street. Leaf uses his atrium or backyard.
Lundblad roasted in his spare bedroom until his sister came to visit and told him, "Eric, you have to stop this." The aromas from roasting aren't as pretty as the ones you get from brewing coffee, and, he says, "It's a hard smell to air out." Now he uses the garage.
But for all three, roasting is more than worth the hassle. "You can definitely tell as you're drinking it that it's better," says Wheaton. "And when you go back to what you had been regularly making, it's like, 'wait a minute, I'm paying double for this stuff and it's not nearly as good.' "
It's a guy thing
It's no coincidence that all three are men, and two of them make wine. There's a little of the mad scientist to home roasters. Apologizing even before he says it, Davids points out that "most home roasters are male hobbyists. They love to tinker. Women want a better cup of coffee, but they don't want to fool around with it."
Both Davids and Tom Owen think home roasting is bound to stay a niche pursuit, at least until more people start thinking about coffee the way they do about wine.
At Sweet Maria's, Owen and Troy have seen too many frustrated new roasters to think it will have broad appeal. "Customers will say, 'I want to make it taste like Major Dickason's,' " says Troy. "Well, go buy Major Dickason's. I mean, why make your own beer if you like Miller?"
Owens adds, "I think people are kind of proud of the fact that it's really not for everyone."
But still, their business grows by about 10 percent a year, and other coffee roasting Web sites report similar growth in hits.
Lundblad gets exactly how geeky it is to roast coffee at home. He remembers first running across the idea on the Net and thinking, "Oh, thank God, at least I'm not that obsessive." But he kept reading Sweet Maria's enticing descriptions.
"I finally gave in," he says. After roasting his first beans, there was no turning back. Now, every four days or so he disappears into his garage and fires up his Caffe Rosto for two or three small roasts. And then he sits back and waits for his friends to stop by.
full article w/instructions, pics, etc.
How home roasting has changed a cup of joe for the obsessed - Carol Ness, June 23, 2004
When Eric Lundblad first started roasting his own coffee, his friends didn't want to hear a word about it. "It was too insane. They'd say why would you roast coffee when you live in the Bay Area where there are all these great roasters?" says Lundblad, a software engineer who lives in Oakland.
Now, three years later, Lundblad has to buy many more pounds of green coffee beans than he needs because these same friends stop by so often for a home-roasted cup from his French press. "I slowly won each one of them over with my coffee," he says. "I have friends who don't drink coffee except mine."
Lundblad is part of a tiny, slow-growing underground of coffee drinkers who treat their daily brew with the same respect many people give wine. Home roasting allows them to buy premium beans at bargain prices, choose from many varieties of coffee and vary the roasting level from light to dark.
On a dozen or more Web sites, they trade tasting notes ("fruity" and "bright") about beans from this hill in Kenya or that farm in Guatemala, about roasting techniques, instructions for pulling the perfect espresso, and equipment reviews.
It would be premature to call home roasting a trend. This is still extreme coffee. Consider the San Francisco man who spends his days scouring eBay and junk shops for '70s-era air popcorn poppers that double as bargain roasters. Or one in Ohio who's figured out how to run his roaster off his PC to give him pinpoint control of the roast.
But more people are venturing into it. The Internet has provided a place for the word to spread and commerce to flourish. Home roasting isn't difficult, and it doesn't have to involve expensive machinery.
Home roasting is about one thing: Done right, the coffee tastes better. The main reason is freshness.
"Most people are drinking stale coffee and they don't know it," says Tom Leaf of San Francisco, who roasts in his Sunset District yard using what he calls the Holy Grail of bargain roasters, an old Westbend air popcorn popper.
Hard, gray-green coffee beans stay fresh for a year. Once roasted, their volatile oils and fruit flavors are lively for just a few days. They deteriorate within a week.
Because green beans stay fresh, home roasters can stock up on coffees from different regions and growers -- they call this their coffee "library." Then they can choose among them as mood dictates, the way a wine drinker would pick among Zinfandels and Merlots from the cellar.
Leaf, a winemaker who's nurturing his startup, Grapeleaf Cellars in Berkeley, likes being able to get up in the morning and decide, "Oh, today I'd like to have Nicaraguan."
One recent day, Leaf picked up nine kinds of beans from Sweet Maria's, the Emeryville-based online green bean company that sells some 70 hand- selected coffees: "Ethiopian Yirgacheffe WP Decaf," "Guatemalan Coban -- El Tirol Estate." The labels even have tasting notes: "Kenya AA Auction Lot 499 -- Mweiga: medium-toned, bold cup, floral, spice, licorice, fruit rind to finish."
Thompson Owen, co-owner of Sweet Maria's with his wife, Maria Troy, has just returned from one of his four annual coffee-tasting trips. He knows the farms, the growers and how they grow the beans.
Sweet Maria's pays 2 to 3 times the market rate to get the best beans from farms where workers earn a living wage. Owen has established such a reputation for quality that coffee brokers working the Port of Oakland, the specialty coffee port in the United States, routinely call him when a tiny batch of something of interest comes in.
'The' coffee place
For roasters like Tom Leaf and Eric Lundblad, Sweet Maria's is the center of the coffee universe. Sweetmarias.com not only sells beans and equipment, but posts meticulous descriptions of its coffees, the politics of the regions where they're grown and Owen's reports from the field. It's a one- stop primer on roast styles, techniques, lingo, equipment and links to other good coffee sites. Sweet Maria's sells its ultrapremium green beans for $4 to $6 a pound, half the price (or less) of ordinary roasted beans. Leaf likes the bargain aspect, though Owen says home roasting isn't likely to save most people money because there's always some tempting gadget -- the latest electric roaster, burr grinder or espresso machine -- to buy.
The other appeal of home roasting is that it lets you control how dark or light your roast is. For all the Bay Area's proud history of specialty roasters, dark roasts rule on the West Coast. "In California, you can hardly buy a medium roast," says Kenneth Davids of Oakland, a coffee scholar, tasting consultant and author of "Home Coffee Roasting: Romance & Revival," the only book on the subject.
Credit or blame Alfred Peet, who pioneered the extreme dark roast, which mellows coffee's acidity, but can add a bitter or even charred taste, Davids says. It caught on.
Critics say an overly dark roast can destroy the bean's nuances and cover up poor quality, while allowing for the consistency that large commercial roasters want. Some roasters are now moderating that style, but it remains hugely popular.
Davids, who has been roasting coffee since the mid-1970s, wrote his book in 1996, thinking that home roasting was about to burst into the mainstream. Roasting machine manufacturers hoped the same thing, and started marketing lots of expensive gizmos. But many of them have ended up as garage sale fodder. That's because home roasting does have its drawbacks. It takes some tinkering and can make a mess.
Chris Wheaton found out a few weeks ago when he used a popcorn popper to roast his first batch in his Bernal Heights home. It was 10 p.m. "I filled the entire house up with smoke," says Wheaton. "All the smoke alarms went off, and the kids woke up."
Smelly fumes and smoke are unavoidable when roasting. So is chaff, the thin skins that slough off as the beans heat and pop. It flies all over the place. Now Wheaton does his roasting on the front porch, pointing smoke and chaff out to the street. Leaf uses his atrium or backyard.
Lundblad roasted in his spare bedroom until his sister came to visit and told him, "Eric, you have to stop this." The aromas from roasting aren't as pretty as the ones you get from brewing coffee, and, he says, "It's a hard smell to air out." Now he uses the garage.
But for all three, roasting is more than worth the hassle. "You can definitely tell as you're drinking it that it's better," says Wheaton. "And when you go back to what you had been regularly making, it's like, 'wait a minute, I'm paying double for this stuff and it's not nearly as good.' "
It's a guy thing
It's no coincidence that all three are men, and two of them make wine. There's a little of the mad scientist to home roasters. Apologizing even before he says it, Davids points out that "most home roasters are male hobbyists. They love to tinker. Women want a better cup of coffee, but they don't want to fool around with it."
Both Davids and Tom Owen think home roasting is bound to stay a niche pursuit, at least until more people start thinking about coffee the way they do about wine.
At Sweet Maria's, Owen and Troy have seen too many frustrated new roasters to think it will have broad appeal. "Customers will say, 'I want to make it taste like Major Dickason's,' " says Troy. "Well, go buy Major Dickason's. I mean, why make your own beer if you like Miller?"
Owens adds, "I think people are kind of proud of the fact that it's really not for everyone."
But still, their business grows by about 10 percent a year, and other coffee roasting Web sites report similar growth in hits.
Lundblad gets exactly how geeky it is to roast coffee at home. He remembers first running across the idea on the Net and thinking, "Oh, thank God, at least I'm not that obsessive." But he kept reading Sweet Maria's enticing descriptions.
"I finally gave in," he says. After roasting his first beans, there was no turning back. Now, every four days or so he disappears into his garage and fires up his Caffe Rosto for two or three small roasts. And then he sits back and waits for his friends to stop by.
full article w/instructions, pics, etc.
Clare Quilty
Literotica Guru
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Do any of Lit's resident coffee aficionados own conical burr coffee grinders? If so, is there an appreciable qualitative advantage to one of these grinders over a humble blade grinder? Or, as I suspect, are they more of a status symbol than a necessity in the pursuit of the perfect cup of joe?
I own a French Press, which I never use as its a pain to clean. I figured out how to French Press brew coffee in a automatic drip coffee maker. I want to avoid having yet another useless appliance lining the top of my kitchen cabinets.
Hey I'm a Guru now--and without ever having taken up the Saffron Robe.
I own a French Press, which I never use as its a pain to clean. I figured out how to French Press brew coffee in a automatic drip coffee maker. I want to avoid having yet another useless appliance lining the top of my kitchen cabinets.
Hey I'm a Guru now--and without ever having taken up the Saffron Robe.
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You were from the start, Quilty. (That's not flattery.)Clare Quilty said:
As for your query, I don't know joe (tea drinker here.) P.
seasparks
Really Really Experienced
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- Jun 18, 2004
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- 357
Jamaican Blue Mountain for me. When i can get it that is.
Otherwise I have to make do with whatever is available.
Once, On board the USS Tortuga, I saw an ensign win a bet by taking a full jar of Folgers crystals instant coffee, add just enough water to make it semi liquid, and then chug the whole thing straight from the jar.
He was sick for 2 days, and bouncing off the walls for most of that time.
All that to win a mere $10 bet.
Have any of you seen that caffiene candy?
Each piece is supposed to have the caffiene of 2 cups of coffee.
I found some at a truck stop in Arizona. When I got to my brother's house, his rugrats found it and ate it.
Jazzed the little anklebiters right up
Otherwise I have to make do with whatever is available.
Once, On board the USS Tortuga, I saw an ensign win a bet by taking a full jar of Folgers crystals instant coffee, add just enough water to make it semi liquid, and then chug the whole thing straight from the jar.
He was sick for 2 days, and bouncing off the walls for most of that time.
All that to win a mere $10 bet.
Have any of you seen that caffiene candy?
Each piece is supposed to have the caffiene of 2 cups of coffee.
I found some at a truck stop in Arizona. When I got to my brother's house, his rugrats found it and ate it.
Jazzed the little anklebiters right up
Belegon
Still Kicking Around
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- Jul 6, 2003
- Posts
- 17,134
seasparks said:
Have any of you seen that caffiene candy?
Each piece is supposed to have the caffiene of 2 cups of coffee.
I found some at a truck stop in Arizona. When I got to my brother's house, his rugrats found it and ate it.
Jazzed the little anklebiters right up
Speaking as a father, that needs to be posted in the Horror section. NOT Erotic Horror, just Horror.
lucky-E-leven
Aphrodisiaddict
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- Jan 17, 2004
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So how many people did we wind up with that are NOT coffee drinkers? I think there were four or five out of the whole AH crowd!
I still say, ick, ick, ick. :ewwwwwwwww:
I suppose we all have our own vices and stimulants. I know I have mine, but we'll not go there.
~lucky
I still say, ick, ick, ick. :ewwwwwwwww:
I suppose we all have our own vices and stimulants. I know I have mine, but we'll not go there.
~lucky
sirhugs
Riding to the Rescue
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- 41,689
lucky-E-leven said:So how many people did we wind up with that are NOT coffee drinkers? I think there were four or five out of the whole AH crowd!
I still say, ick, ick, ick. :ewwwwwwwww:
I suppose we all have our own vices and stimulants. I know I have mine, but we'll not go there.
~lucky
may we have a list?
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Mat., I like my tea really strong, with milk (not cream) and a level spoon of sugar. I get various teas from England (Yorkshire and Typhoo make a strong cuppa), and I also like Russian and Georgian. I use bags for a cup and leaves for a pot. Do you make scones?matriarch said:
P.
lucky-E-leven
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ABSTRUSE said:I'm out of coffee, I just came to inhale the thread.
Get ready, I'll be by in five to pick you up and take you to that little gourmet shop with the sidewalk bistro.
~lucky
cheerful_deviant
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lucky-E-leven
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ABSTRUSE said:
LOL
I'm not just going to slow down and make you jump in this time. Especially not without any caffeine in your system.
~lucky
p.s. Leave the bra at home.
matriarch
Rotund retiree
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- May 25, 2003
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perdita said:Mat., I like my tea really strong, with milk (not cream) and a level spoon of sugar. I get various teas from England (Yorkshire and Typhoo make a strong cuppa), and I also like Russian and Georgian. I use bags for a cup and leaves for a pot. Do you make scones?
P, I drink my tea black, no sugar. And ONLY Early Grey or Lady Grey. Not too strong. Very un-English, but very refreshing.
Like you, I use bags for a mug, and leaves for the pot.
I've never tried Russian or Georgian, I have tried a few others, but always come back to my favourites. I'll make sure to have Typhoo in stock.
And yes, I do make scones. Which have to be eaten with lashings of cream and either jam or fresh strawberries. Its de rigeur, I'm afraid. When in Rome........
I also, in the winter, love drinking my tea, with friends, round a log fire, toasting English Muffins and crumpets, which are spread with English butter, which then proceeds to drip down your chin..........*licking my lips*......deeeeeelish.
Getting hungry? Thirsty?
Mat
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"Lashings" of cream? Gawd, I am so there. love you! P.matriarch said:
matriarch
Rotund retiree
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perdita said:"Lashings" of cream? Gawd, I am so there. love you! P.
*laughing*...........love you too, hun.
I can see this visit is going to add a few inches to my skeleton. Not that they'll be visible with the current set up.
What with chipp butties and bacon sarnies, and toad in the hole, you'll be like a sexy little barrel at the end of the trip.
Going to get something to eat now, before I go out for the evening.
Hope the work on the net connection goes to plan this weekend.
If I don't see you around again this evening, see yu next week.
Mat
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