GroundLevelCoffee

… of coffee cupping.

It’s one of those things that you wish you could do, but don’t know the best place to begin.

Perhaps it’s best left up to the experts - but they may be wrong. And we each taste differently and enjoy different aromas and flavours.

Another thing with aromas and flavours is that they allow or encourage us to reminisce - they hint at something in our memories - maybe a place, or an occasion where we smelt or tasted that before.

But at the end of the day I think it’s important when trying coffee to know if it’s good and if it’s worth drinking (or buying), and how something better may be able to be coaxed from the bean through a different roast.

In recent weeks I’ve had a bit of a search over the net for information about coffee cupping. There’s a Beginner’s Guide to Cupping on CoffeeGeek. Fortune Elkins often speaks of cupping on her bread coffee chocolate yoga blog. (Like here for example). Tom Owen from Sweet Maria’s has a monochrome copy of the SCAA’s flavour wheels available.

I’ve tried cupping only a few times. The first time was at a coffee geek gathering early last year. The second time was at the OzGreens gathering at Toby’s Estate a few weeks ago. That again piqued my curiosity and so I’ve sprung for a copy of Ted Lingle’s Coffee Cupper’s Handbook from Sweet Maria’s.

It arrived today and so I’ll commence a deeper journey in the future into cupping. The mysterious art may lose some if its mystery.

The Aeropress arrived late last week and I’ve had a chance to make a few brews with it.

First impressions are that the variables take a bit to pin down. How much water? Temperature? Quantity and grind? Do I dilute the product? If so, by how much.

After probably 8-10 cups over the weekend, I can produce something drinkable. I grind around 1 2/3 scoops of coffee at a grind perhaps half way between my usual espresso and SwissGold/plunger grind. I use enough water to come to the top of the oval ‘2′ on the Aeropress piston. I dilute around 1:1 with hot water and add my usual milk. The result is similar to a moka pot or Americano-style drink in terms of flavour and strength. I’m guessing my grind is a tad too fine because plunging the Aeropress takes a deal of effort - I wonder how easy it would be to break a cup?

It seems to require about twice as much coffee as the SwissGold, but with a relatively short extraction time (30 seconds, maybe), I guess that makes sense.

The coffee from the Aeropress is stronger but thinner than my usual brew from the SwissGold. There are no fines, and the coffee lacks a bit of the substance as a result. You can drink to the bottom of the cup without coating your tongue in mud.

Clean-up is fairly easy - about on a par with the SwissGold or a plunger.

After a bit of pondering, I’ve plonked down some readies for an Aeropress brewer.

They seem to have been in Australia from earlier this year - being available from Coffeepress.com.au. Cost is $54 including delivery, and I’ve opted for an extra couple of packs of the filters. News around the CoffeeGeek forums is that the filters are reusable and so I should be set for years to come.

I’ve also checked out Sweet Maria’s and Tom has some pictorial instructions on using the Aeropress.

Mine should arrive in a couple of days and so I’ll put it to use one the weekend. If it’s a better, cleaner cup than my SwissGold One-Cup, then I’ll probably spring for another one to use at work.

Had my first serious look at barbeques for roasting today.

The first shop I went to (Barbeques Galore) had a wide selection from 2-burner jobs up to the 6+ burner cow-roasting ones. I came across a helpful assistant in the shop who seemed genuinely surprised and intrigued that you could roast coffee in a barbeque. Anyway, it appears that most burners are rated around the 15MJ mark, and so a 3-burner model seems the way to go. Rotisseries appear to be a bolt-on add-on at about $40 for the kit (excluding motor which I don’t need anyway).

A few come with side burners - which may be useful to try skillet roasting one of these days; but a ring burner sells for around $20 and so it’s no big deal. Standard roasting bay measurements appear to be around 65cm wide and 50cm deep (front to back).

Called in at another shop after that, but they seemed to be flogging only the higher-end, higher-priced brands. No thanks.

I’ll check out another shop or two over the coming week. Still no great rush.

The RK Drum and motor has been ordered, paid for, manufactured, despatched and delivered. From payment to delivery was less than two weeks and from South Carolina to New South Wales. It was sent via USPS on Thursday and was available this morning.

It’s a fine piece of work. The drum appears to be rock-solid and the motor no less.

I need to crack the whip looking for a suitable barbeque and associated bits and pieces. Unfortunately Australia isn’t so well endowed with small, fairly cheap barbeques as is the US, but I reckon I’ll find something appropriate before too long.

Having received the drum and motor, I’m pretty keen to get it going…

After several months of pondering, I’ve finally decided to purchase an RK Drum. Ron will be supplying me with a 4 pound drum and, because I’m in Australia, a commercial motor to spin it around. Should arrive in around 5 weeks time - but I’m in no hurry since I also need to check out barbeques, gloves, and some bean-cooling paraphernalia.

My roasting began 2 1/2 years ago in a popcorn popper or two, moved to an Imex, then I added a few heat guns to my repertoire. I also put together a Stir Crazy/Turbo Oven combo, but I have some concerns about its longevity.

The RK Drum is the last (at least for a few years) in a line of home roasting gear. It reputedly gives excellent results and is built like a tank. The main things I’m looking forward to are improved roasts (particularly for espresso machine use), and the ability for larger batch sizes. I current give away or sell small lots of coffee, but with a roasting capacity of close on 2 kilos, there is greater scope for that.

For some reason one of the better accompaniments to coffee is biscotti. I’ve tried only a couple of recipes for biscotti in the past couple of years, but this was the better one. It uses pistachios rather than almonds.

Pistachio biscotti

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
20 minutes standing time
Makes 1 loaf

50 grams butter, softened
½ cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ cups plain flour
¼ teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon baking powder
100 grams shelled unsalted pistachios, roughly chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line an oven tray with baking paper. Place butter and sugar in the small bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

2. Sift flour, allspice and baking powder and add to the mixture. Fold in pistachios using a metal spoon. Shape dough into a 30cm-long log on a lightly floured surface. Place the log on the prepared baking tray and bake for half an hour or until it is golden brown and firm.

3. Let stand for 20 minutes until cool. Using a serrated knife slice the loaf on the diagonal into 1cm-thick slices. Place slices onto a prepared baking tray and bake for further 10-15 minutes until slices are crisp. Cool for 5 minutes then place on a wire rack to continue cooling.

(This recipe came from the December 2003 issue of Better Homes & Gardens, but I couldn’t find it on their website.)

I’ve had a few other things on my plate for the past few months and haven’t had much ‘head space’ for coffee-related posts…

But there are some new coffees starting to flow into my stocks from OzGreens and The Green Guys and so more will be forthcoming from me soon.

The beans I’m particularly looking forward to are all Arabian/North African namely an Ethiopian Harar and two Yemen beans - the Mattari and Ismaili. All are renowned for their fruitiness. They’re all dry-processed and so can roast unevenly, but all should be distinct as a plunge (or blended with something with a base or mid flavour like a Sumatran or Kenyan). I’ve also got some Balinese beans on the way and so may try a blend of Yemen and Balinese. Previously I’ve blended Yemen’s in a ratio of around 15-30% for machine use (cappa or latte style), but with a reasonable quantity on the way, I can try a few different ideas over the next few months.

After plunging my coffee at work for close on two years now, I’ve sprung for another SwissGold one cup coffee filter. I’ve had a SwissGold at home for over two years with intermittent use but hadn’t used it too much until on and after our holiday last month.

SwissGold filters don’t seem to be readily available here. I bought my first one at a slightly up-market homewares store, but they don’t stock them anymore. The latest purchase came from The Coffee Company.

So how does a SwissGold compare to a plunger?

• Slightly easier clean up.
• Not as portable (I’ll need to brew in the kitchen then toss the grinds).
• The grind seems to be a touch more critical. A bit too coarse and the coffee is noticeably weak. A bit too fine and the coffee easily overextracts and the brewing stalls.
• It’s a different tasting cup. The SwissGold gives a cleaner brew.

So what sort of grind setting is appropriate? In my Zassenhaus, I turn the nut one full rotation open from where the burrs bind. For the Macap a setting of around 5 seems OK. That equates to a grind similar to drip - which makes sense since that’s what the SwissGold is.

Is the SwissGold a permanent feature of my work coffee brewing? No. It’s different, and I’ll use it for weeks-months-years; but one of the facets to coffee brewing is that different brewing methods yield different results in the cup - not necessarily better, but different.

As mentioned, I roasted up a batch of Indian arabica ‘Catimore’ last week. The roast hit the beginning of second crack. I rarely take my roasts far into second - early snaps for a few beans is the usual maximum.

I’ve sampled the Catimore as a plunger and in my standard latte-style drink since then. As expected the plunged lot was a little over-roasted for my taste and I lost a fair bit of the varietal character of the bean. A subsequent roast to a full city (well clear of first, but second nowhere in sight) brought out some of that character. The shots I pulled from the first roast were a bit odd. The pour from the Macap on its standard grind setting was too fast - maybe 15 seconds for 50ml and blonding into the bargain. Next time I dialled in a dent finer and the pour was about right. A touch of brightness, perhaps, which I thought the longer roast would burn off. Haven’t tried it since, but I’ve got a couple of kilos on the way.

I received a sample of the Arabica plantation ‘Catimore’ greens from Neil today. After a quick Google, I discovered that Catimore is a variety of arabica bean, and that region of India has produced some good greens over the years. The sample was around 300 grams and so I figured on two Imex roasts rather than one SC/TO roast.

Total roast time was 8 1/2 minutes at an ambient temp of around 26C. The roast is a full city+ with some beans hitting second crack. I had intended to roast to a full city, but some beans got a little ahead of me.

Roast aroma was very good, and the aroma of the just-roasted beans is promising. The roasting beans let go of a fair bit of chaff - suggestive of a dry-processed bean rather than wet-processed.

I’ll let them rest for 24-36 hours before first sample. With the roast just hitting second crack, the beans should be suitable for plunging and espresso.

Based on the roast aromas, it’s a bean I’d be happy to grab some of. Further reports to follow.

Having returned from holidays earlier this week, that first evening I fired up the Diadema, bunged some Dominican beans in the Macap and proceeded to pull two “15 second blonde gushers”. Was it the beans? The grind? Problems dialling in the grinder? A machine that had sat unattended for a week? Poor dosing, distribution and tamping? I didn’t know.

The next day was a similar story even with a finer grind - blonde, fast, gushing.

Day three saw an improvement. I’d roasted some 1-1-1 blend a day earlier and, though it hadn’t rested enough, it was my bean of choice for that evening’s lattes. The time was better - around 22 seconds; the colour was OK - browny-red rather than blonde; and the stream was OK - about 50 ml.

Day four was a repeat of day three - “must have been the beans”. Maybe.

Day five - today - saw a slightly larger dose and harder tamp. Shots were in the vicinity of 28 seconds for the doubles, and the quantity was a tad on the small size: Ristrettos. Not bad as lattes.

The moral? Stick to basics: Beans, grind, dose, distribution, tamp. In this case it was predominantly the beans: The Dominicans were roasted for plunger and were around 9 days old. I would have eventually pulled a decent shot from them at a finer grind, but it would have taken a couple more days.

We’ll soon be embarking on a week’s holiday ‘in the country’. Since an espresso machine and grinder isn’t near enough the top of the packing list, I’ll take a lighter approach to coffee-making for the duration.

The kit will comprise:

• A SwissGold one cup coffee filter
• A Zassenhaus knee mill
• A 7 gram scoop
• Two types of pre-roasted beans: A Dominican Republic and an Ethiopian Harrar.

On the bean front, I reckon the Dominican is one of the best coffees I had last year, and the Harrar will offer a good contrast to the Dominican.

I reckon that kit is about the smallest and lightest allowing for on-demand grinding. For those times when more than one cup is required, the SwissGold also serves as a very useful filter through which steeped coffee can be poured.

Further to the other day’s post about the Yemen Ismaili, I can almost guarantee it’s underroasted. Ground some this morning in the Zassenhaus, and it was difficult due to the hardness of the bean.

Aroma-wise there is a little of the blueberry, but not much; and not much flavour, either.

It’ll keep me in plunger coffee for the remainder of the week, and I won’t be sorry to see it finished. It’s a pity and a waste. Just need to remember to let the roast progress a little further next time. I think the factor that tricked me this time is that the chaff was pretty dark around the beans.

A question posed on my previous site was for suggestions for one-cup brewers.

I’m not an expert on brewing methods, but there are a number of ways of brewing a small quantity of coffee including:

• Using an espresso machine
• Moka Pot (aka ’stovetop espresso’)
• Chemex
• Plunger/French Press/Cafetiere
• SwissGold One Cup brewer
• Vac Pots

Some of these are faster and cheaper than others. For speed, I reckon the SwissGold one cup brewer or plunger would be quickest; followed closely by the Chemex and other drip-type cones. Vac pots and moka pots are probably next up in terms of speed.

For further info, check out Sweet Maria’s for a range of products and brewing tip sheets.

For those in Aus, many of these products can be purchased from places such as Coffee for Connoisseurs, Pioneer Coffee Roastery, Peters of Kensington, Coffee Company.