Archive for April, 2007
A new study has found that people from families prone to Parkinson’s Disease, who drink coffee (or smoke, surprisingly), are less likely to develop the disease. It may just be coincidental, they’re not sure yet. In other words, people with physical conditions that lower their risk of Parkinson’s may also be more inclined to enjoy drinking coffee - not the other way around. Still, it’s yet one more excuse to go brew up a cup. 
(via Reuters)
April 13th, 2007
With the weather getting better (in most parts of the country, at least), attention is turning to the outdoors, and many are planning gardening projects. I figure it’s a good time to remind people of how great coffee grounds can be for your garden. It’s a great way to put them to use one final time after extracting all the flavorful goodness from them. When I was a kid, my parents would dump them into the rose garden outside the kitchen, with fantastic results. Me, I’ve been using a ceramic compost container from Gardener’s Supply (pictured here) to store them in. Works better as I make 2-3 espressos a day, don’t really want to be heading outside that often just to dump out the portafilter! It looks nice, has vent holes to help the grounds dry out, and is easily washable. At $30 it’s not cheap, but I feel better knowing that I’m helping to put the grounds to good use rather than just throwing them away.
April 13th, 2007
So what does it take for a mega-corporation like Starbucks to invent a new coffee drink? Well, this article over at MSNBC goes through the work that went into the creation of the Dolce De Leche Latte. It took them over a year to get it to the point where it was ready for the public! There’s a neat video about the drink at that site too.
April 11th, 2007
I recently moved from near sea-level (200 foot elevation, I think), to a more extreme elevation in the mountains of Colorado - approximately 8500 foot elevation. Naturally, when unpacking, finding the coffee roaster was a priority, and I eagerly dropped some green beans in to replenish my supply as I was almost out. With the roasting profile I’m accustomed to using, a typical roast would take twelve to fifteen minutes. Since my roaster is in my garage, I decided to work on unpacking boxes while the coffee roasted.
Enjoying the smell of roasting coffee, I set to work organizing the garage. A very, very short time later, I caught a whiff of that not so pleasant smell of smoking coffee beans. I glanced at the roaster and saw a steady stream of thick smoke pouring out the the top vent! I rushed over to stop the roast, but by then it was of course too late (for my tastes, at least). Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve burnt coffee beans, but the amazing thing was that it happened in about SIX MINUTES. I was shocked. That batch was promptly dumped out, and I tried to roast some again, this time never straying more than a few feet during the roasting. The results were similar, and incredibly rapid roast that this time I fortunately caught in time.
I tried roasting a different bean and got the same results. I quickly concluded that it was most likely a factor of altitude, and a Google search confirmed my suspicions. Seems ‘high altitude coffee roasting’ is defined as anything about 3000 feet. My 8500 foot elevation is an extreme example of this! Anyway, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about this subject:
High altitude coffee roasting is a method of roasting coffee at an altitude of 3,000 feet or higher.
In roasting coffee, high altitude allows for quicker roast development at a lower temperature, avoiding the two most common problems of roasting coffee: baking, and scorching. Baking coffee occurs when it is roasted too long, causing inadequate structural expansion and resulting in flavor that is flat and lacks intensity. Scorching coffee occurs when coffee beans are roasted at too high of a temperature causing lack of development and resulting in flavor that is wild and woody. In roasting coffee, heat should be applied at both the lowest temperature possible and for the shortest possible amount of time. High altitude roasting helps accomplish that objective.
I had spent years refining my roasting temperature profiles to get the perfect roast - though my machine couldn’t put out quite enough power, hence the long roast times (I consider 10-12 minutes until the second crack to be ideal, but found I had to push that to 14-15 minutes). Now, I’m back to square one! Time to redo roasting profiles and figure out what is best at these higher elevations. It’ll be a fun process, one that I’ll document here at Coffeeopolis from time to time.
April 10th, 2007
If you care about quality, don’t buy coffee from Vietnam. Well, since they mostly export robusta beans, this may not be something the average person would be doing anyway (Arabica beans are typically more highly desired, for many reasons). The Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association has admitted that they use old criteria for quality, and there are no quality tests at ports before customs clearance. European ports have had some trouble with Vietnam coffee, much more so than beans from anywhere else. Read more over here.
April 9th, 2007
Ever been wine tasting? Well, coffee lovers sometimes do something similar, and it’s called cupping. Basically, it involves a lot of slurping and spitting. You want to run each sip across your whole mouth, to ensure that all taste buds on the tongue have a chance to sample it. There’s a long article about this over at Planet Blacksburg that’s worth reading.
April 5th, 2007
Photographer Irene Müller has captured some amazing photos of drops of milk falling into coffee. I know, I know, it sounds like a lame thing to spend your time photographing, but the results are incredible! Simply amazing. See the rest of this post for a few samples, or check out her gallery here. She has a lot of other very artistic photography on that site. (via yousaytoo)
Read more …
April 2nd, 2007
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