Nordic Cloudberry sounds like an EDM synthesizer preset.
Have you tried using a Moka Pot? Not quite espresso, but theyāre cheap as hell and durable as can be.
Iām really loving my French press for dark roasts. I grind beans every morning and donāt really see a reason to upgrade from my current setup.
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Think of french press as the unfiltered cigarettes of coffee.
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I used to have one and liked it now that you mention it, I could consider getting another. I brought it to Louisiana and one day I went to use it and it was filled with mold.
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Taking a break from my wholesale bag to dig into one of my TJās small lots. This bag has one of the most unique smells Iāve encountered to date, excited to try it soon.
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After looking at coffee most of the morning, I finally came away with two bargain bin geshas. If anyone is interested, my understanding is that these are in rather short supply. Free shipping at $25 compared to $50 for most places (ships on Tuesday and Friday). Starting to look like the big name roasters are getting rather low on supplies. HappyMug is down to just a few specialty single origins and I think two of them were decafs. Klatch has some new Brazilians that looked interesting. George Howell selection seemed pretty underwhelming.
https://www.blackwhiteroasters.com/collections/frontpage/products/mikava-cm-gesha
https://www.blackwhiteroasters.com/collections/frontpage/products/gesha-village-natural-1
Ordered both; thanks for sharing. Will try and remember to review here when we receive it.
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Iām bummed I didnāt get more of that Brazil coffee I posted, itās great, maybe my favorite TJs coffee yet. Oh I guess itās second to the legendary peaberry they had: Reddit - Dive into anything
I completely forgot about this until now but yeah this coffee had some of the most distinct tasting notes Iāve ever experienced.
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I havenāt actually brewed a real gesha yet so this should be interesting. These arenāt Panamanian trophy lots but theyāre real gesha varietal for way less than $150/lb. Tasting notes check out and if I can pull bergamot and raspberry / orange out of the same cup itās going to be like Christmas here every morning.
Fwiw, Sweet Mariaās sold a roasted Esmeralda recently at $17.50 per 1/2 lb (they sold it green for a long time at $17.50 / lb). That was the deal of the century. They wrote this:
Roasted on 5/02/2020 to City- 1/2 LB BAG
Delicate floral and jasmine notes with a bubblegum aroma.
.
$8.99 / 12 oz has to be a tight margin on dry Ethiopian pb.
TJs must have some weird deal with producers that allows them to offer beans from all over the world for such reasonable prices. My guess is something like theyāre not a pure bean varietal and that they pay for the whole crop in advance.
Maybe their deal is they just strong arm farmers lol. You know, the Starbucks model.
But the fact that the bag names an actual estate and claims āsmall lotā is pretty remarkable for an $8.99 bag. Hambela is no joke and many of the big roasters have it. Peaberries are sorted by hand. Mixed varietals is fine. Iād be more worried about cutting it with cheaper shit like the old Blue Mountain / Kona trick of only being required to have 10% by volume.
You should try some, they started doing these a few years ago and Iāve found them to be consistently tasty and obviously a solid value. We finished the Brazil but since I basically collect these I have an older Papua New Guinea (Sigri estate) and more recent Burundi (Agahore plantation), the latter of which I am more excited about because Iāve previously had the New Guinea and it was just ok.
That reddit thread is interesting. Looks like TJ buys green from a supplier then sources the roasting out locally. That makes a lot of sense and is the only way it could possibly be fresh, but it also means there will be regional variation. They also explain how to decipher the roast date from the bag. Itās a way better model than what most supermarkets are doing which is allow āpremiumā coffees to sit on shelves for months at double the price.
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A couple things Iāve noticed about digital scales for coffee:
(1) Auto-off is bad for coffee brewing. Iāve bricked brews getting distracted during the process and allowing it to time out. The best scales Iāve seen have adjustable auto-off parameters.
(2) Prefer higher than 1 gram resolution. Itās probably ok for most home brewing, but I started running into trouble making my own water. Would also like to use my scale for things other than coffee. I think 0.1 gram resolution is preferable (0.01 gram resolution is overkill).
Of course, you need a tare function and ability to switch between units of measurement easily. Thatās common on most but not all scales youāll encounter.
A timer feature is nice but not essential. The $250 scales with āsmartā features that can [upload data through some proprietary app pipeline on your phone] seem like a huge waste of money to me? Iād rather go for build quality and reliability than the option to connect it to some dumb app.
I was at TJās yesterday and that Brazil small lot was still in stock, go get some and test it!
Not gonna lie I was skeptical of a $20 gesha being able to deliver on the hype but all I can say is that I guess you have to try it to believe it. Iāll write it up later in full but the raw impression is that, yes, it tastes like tea with a juicy, fruity acidity.
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Good. Because we bought two pounds of each. Iām not great at resisting bulk discounts, and the wife loves coffee as much as I do.
What water temp do you recommend for maximizing the flavor in a pour-over? Iāve heard everything ranging from 175-205.
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Can you give your exact setup? My general advice is that you want the water in the kettle to be as hot as possible, especially for lighter roasts. 205 in the kettle is not 205 by the time it contacts the coffee bed. If you have a good digital thermo like Thermapen / Javelin, try playing around to get an idea for how fast youāre losing heat and what temps you can expect at different points of the brew. Some devices (e.g., Chemex) lose heat quicker than others due to design factors (glass construction, slower drawdawn on thick papers, larger surface area of slurry). And may God help you if youāre transferring the water to a different vessel first.
175 F sounds way out of range. Maybe there is some dark-roasted bean that works at that temp but I donāt generally brew those coffees. My default is to start with the pedal to the metal and then back off if grinding coarser doesnāt attenuate overextraction.
For those trying to follow a discussion on water temperature in a country that uses the freezing and boiling points of water as 0 and 100 on their scale
175F = ~80C - kettle boiled a few minutes ago
205F = ~96C - kettleās just boiled
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