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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.