Archive for the Category »Roasting Coffee «

17
Nov
No Coffee At Starbucks?

Big business creates ambivalent feelings for me. I am respectful of their prowess in marketing yet harbor disdain for their ‘deep pockets’ that give them the power to drive small businesses to close their doors.

Successful businesses from Walmart to MacDonalds are noted worldwide. Today’s variety of consumer products is overwhelming and the selection of goods is astounding, and yet, driven by humanity’s sheep-like behavior, limited.

Starbucks coffee percolates a brewing of emotions in me. It will never cease to amaze me the magic performed by their marketing .

Coffee was a veritable mainstay on grocery lists and every restaurant; nothing novel or new about coffee until Starbucks’ created a giant of a business from this one commodity simply by changing the market. They have been so successful that they are driving small coffee shops out of business. That’s what creates my ambiguity.

I wonder if Starbucks’ spells the end for all of those places that serve a good cup of coffee and a piece of pie or doughnut. Remember those memorable truck stops and doughnut shops that cops and truck drivers used to frequent? Their presence was the sign of a great place to get a cup of coffee. The choices were simply between black coffee or coffee with cream, and perhaps a bit of sugar.

When I was going to college my favorite place to study was a local coffee shop. If I started with breakfast, I could stay there for hours and they would refill my coffee cup with the ‘octane’ to keep me studying for a meager price.

Now, people of every age group line up for the opportunity to place an order for a specialty coffee drink that costs almost $4.00. Even the familiar bastions have begun to succumb to the demands of today’s society, manipulated by the giant. Doughnut shops, like Tim Horton’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, and local coffee houses have surrendered to the mocha latte, cappuccino and other mutations of the grocery list mainstay.

As a ‘coffee connoisseur’, my hypothesis was that the addition of the flavoring syrups and creation of catchy names for the frou-frou coffee drinks was a cover up for what I considered over-roasted coffee beans. Admittedly, it was just my opinion knowing that one man’s poison is another man’s delicacy.

The other day, out of sheer necessity (coffee lovers understand that concept) I had no other choice but to join the line in a Starbucks. While the aroma of the coffee was delicious, I could almost taste the burnt taste of Starbucks’ coffee.

One by one, each of those in front of us silently made their way to the front of the line and ordered their trendy coffee drink. As each person exited the line, my addiction to coffee became more obvious; I wanted my cup of brew! Even the chicory flavored coffee was going to be delicious.

Finally, I stepped up to the counter and asked for a ‘grande’ cup of coffee. The guy just looked at me like I had spoken in an unfamiliar language. After repeating my request with the same reception from the young man, I became concerned that I had had a stroke while standing in line and that my speech was incomprehensable.

Thank God the server standing next to him understood me or I might have rushed myself to an emergency room!

She asked me if I would be able to wait while they made a fresh pot of coffee.
At first, I was shocked! “What?! There’s no coffee for sale in a Starbucks’ Coffee Shop? Then I realized that my hypothesis was dead on accurate. Starbucks’ doesn’t sell coffee, they sell frou-frou drinks! What a marvelous stroke of luck for Starbucks’, the flavored syrups mixed with coffee, given the fancy names has generated billions of dollars in sales!

Given the situation I was in, I had no other option than to garner my ‘coffee fix’ by purchasing one of their frou-frou drinks. The pumpkin spice flavored syrup and milk with the espresso was delightful. The coffee flavor was absent, however.

Hats off to the marketing division of Starbucks’! You did your job well.
As far as my opinion about Starbucks? If it has changed, it isn’t for the better. I certainly can’t afford the financial requirement of a Starbucks’ habit and I know that my metabolism can’t afford the caloric addition of a daily frou-frou coffee drink.

I hope all of the frappe drinkers and mocha latte lovers continue to enjoy their specialty coffee drinks. I wish them all well. But I am on a mission to find a place where they serve a fabulous cup of coffee, with nothing extra in it but a smile and a little conversation from a friendly server!

Oh, by the way, I don’t think it is possible to put all of the great little coffee shops out of business. 

Java Queen International represents and distributes some of the highest profile coffee roasters in the world. For coffee drink recipes.

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03
Sep
Coffee Roasting, Roast Coffee At Home, Coffee Roasters

Coffee Roaster For Home Coffee Roasting; Smoke Free!

The Art of Roasting

We’ve seen coffee roasting done in domestic ovens, popcorn makers, huge commercial coffee bean roasting machines that need the expertise of a craftsman with years of experience to operate and mega roasters that are fully computer-driven. Interestingly, forty-five seconds either side of ideal will produce a batch of coffee that is either too light in colour if under-roasted (and hence milder than the target roast) or coffee that is too dark in color if over-roasted (and hence stronger or more bitter than the target roast).

Therefore the ideal coffee roaster isn’t going to be an old popcorn maker but to some people’s surprise nor is it the human-operated commercial roaster. It is actually the fully automated roaster that comes out on top as it virtually guarantees consistency. Its computer sensors know with precise accuracy the moisture content, density, average bean size and bean hardness that will all play in part in determining the optimum roasting time. Roasting times will therefore differ from batch to batch.

Generally speaking, the roasting process takes between fourteen and sixteen minutes to complete. During this time the beans expand and they lose weight as water is driven off. The surface temperature of the beans eventually reaches between two hundred and two hundred and twenty degrees Celsius and by this stage the sugars within the coffee beans have caramelised.

Smokeless Home Coffee Roaster

The color of the beans changes as they roast. They start off being green then they turn a light brown colour then a chocolate-brown colour and eventually a dark brown color. They will ultimately turn black if left in the roaster for long enough. (Luckily for us as consumers the beans are never roasted this long. As you could imagine, carbon and water do not make a very nice espresso!)

When the desired roast has been achieved the beans are ejected into a cooling tray where they spend about five to ten minutes cooling down to sub forty degrees Celsius. If they don’t cool sufficiently they continue to roast and will retain a very smoky aroma and flavor.

After the beans have settled the oils locked within come to the fore, giving them a “wet” appearance. It is this valuable oil that forms the crema on a well-extracted espresso. All baristas strive to maximise the crema on their coffees as this is from where a lot of the taste and aroma in coffee emanates.

Keeping it Fresh

If given the opportunity the beans will absorb the air and it is the oxygen in the air that will cause the bean to go stale and lose valuable aroma. This is why proper packaging after the beans cool and settle is essential. A high-grade foil bag with a one-way valve is the most appropriate packaging material for coffee beans.For domestic users, coffee should be stored at room temperature in an airtight container

Home Coffee Roasting Starter Kit

 

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23
Aug
The next best thing in coffee? Roasting Coffee Beans

Brewing from beans roasted at home.
By Jenny Lim

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

Smokeless Coffee Roasters To Roast Your Own Coffee At Home.

HILTON HEAD, S.C. – For most java lovers, making a morning cup of joe simply requires a coffee pot.

Tim Judge, however, requires a propane-fueled barbecue pit.

When you roast your own coffee beans, you apparently need some additional equipment to get your daily jolt of caffeine. And if you’re like Judge, that may call for a Brinkmann Pro Series 7231 three-burner gas grill.

Judge, owner and sole roaster of Judge Java, a Hilton Head Island gourmet coffee roasting company, does what a growing number of coffee aficionados are doing: use their very own coffee roasters to fire personal batches of unscathed, pea green coffee seedlings, until the beans’ skins caramelize and crack, plumped and darkened into some preferred shade of brunette.

The best coffee is consumed within one to three days of roasting, said Judge, a java junkie who decided to start his wholesale coffee bean business on the island at the start of this year. Now that personal roasters are on the market for less than $100, more caffeine devotees are buying the machines so they can add roasting to their repertoire of coffee-consumption skills.

People are starting to realize you can buy these little machines for $89 to $99, get green coffee, roast it and have it in the morning,” Judge said.

Of course, the Hilton Head coffee seller uses a slightly pricier contraption. Thanks to the Internet, Judge figured out how to implant a motorized, rotating, stainless steel cylinder into a propane gas grill – turning the meat griddle into a $1,200 coffee furnace. Along with smaller roasters,

Judge peddles replicas of his transformer grill, which he uses to roast six varieties of green beans and concoct Judge Java’s Hilton Head Heritage Brew, a Sumatra bean blend. Most of his coffee is for wholesale, though he retails individual bags of beans for those who want to pick up an order from his warehouse.

Roasting green coffee, it seems, is serious business.

And perhaps an increasingly popular one, too. As of this week, the Web site Coffeegeek.com had nearly 31,000 posts to its online forum about home roasting, the second most popular discussion next to talk of espresso machines and grinders, which boasted 92,000 posts.

There is a distinguishable flavor difference between just-roasted beans and the store-bought grind, according to Judge, a self-taught roaster who said he harnessed his coffee prowess through Web sites about java.

“Once you start roasting, I don’t think you’ll ever go back to buying,” he said.

The businessman preaches his fresh-is-best gospel at an unsurprisingly caffeinated clip of speech. He lists his preferences for green beans at a fervent pace: They’re less processed, he insists. They’re cheaper, too, selling for a quarter to half the cost of roasted beans. And coffee, Judge suggested, can be good for you.

“Antioxidants!” Judge exclaimed, rationalizing that as long as a mug of the a.m.-haters’ nectar stays free of whipped cream and sugar, it can, in fact, offer health benefits. Never mind that Judge calls coffee a “legally addictive substance” and takes his with cream, sugar and Ovaltine, thank you very much.

“Coffee isn’t the worst `ism’ in the world,” he said.

It should come as no shock that a man who manages to roast coffee beans on a propane grill would wear a Hawaiian shirt while doing it. Behind Judge Java’s warehouse on Beach City Road last week, Judge shoveled a plastic cup into a bag of green Sumatra beans six times and tossed the seeds into his grill-roaster’s metal tube, with the glee of a kid at Christmastime.

Regardless of the hardware used, the coffee-roasting process is generally the same: Green beans are plopped into a 400- to 500-degree roasting machine. After the device rotates the sizzling beans for about five to eight minutes, they make the sound of bursting popcorn kernels. Another three to five minutes later, the beans erupt into a second round of applause. After a few more minutes, the seeds are ready to be dumped onto a tray, where the chaff from the pods can flutter off the toasted beans.

“Whee!” Judge cried out, as the 48-year-old poured five pounds of Heritage Brew onto a wire net and whirled his oven-mitted hands through the browned pebbles to separate and cool them.

Learning to roast green coffee beans may be an art best learned through practice. Judge said his first batch was under-cooked. But he’s slowly becoming a coffee bean-whisperer of sorts, learning to listen for the brew’s readiness after the second pop.

“You have to hear it,” Judge said. “It’s all about the cracks.”

The New Jersey native said he gets Judge Java’s beans from a wholesaler in Charleston. Judge’s warehouse now stores 1,500 pounds of green and roasted beans – including Colombian, Kenyan AA, organic Peruvian and Rainforest Alliance Costa Rican coffee, as well as the Sumatra beans that make up the bulk of the Heritage Brew blend.

Though Judge is a former antiques seller and mail order company owner and currently also sells home bars and cigar humidors, he is particularly – what else? – perky about his new venture as a coffee roaster.

In fact, he seems to have only one ounce of negativity when it comes to all things coffee.

“I always wonder: If you’re drinking coffee, why decaf?” Judge asked. “Decaf is for people who don’t drink coffee.”

 

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