Daniel of Arabica
brew, drink, repeat
Tasting notes
Up there, on my list of highly anticipatory experiences is the prospect of cracking open a new bag of beans: to smell the aroma that wafts out from the just opened bag, the fragrance of the fresh grinds, the scent of the rising steam upon application of the brewing water and finally, the first sip of the — hopefully — flavorful result.
In and among the links, videos and other assorted coffee related ephemera here on Daniel of Arabica are a group of posts who’s sole purpose is to highlight my experiences in brewing coffee. They’re a collection of impressions and evaluations of coffees that have passed through, what I like to hyperbolically call “The Lab”.
Serra Negra
Next up in the legendary DofA Labs™ is this really quite chocolaty (they’re not lyin’ on the package) Brasil, Ritual’s “Serra Negra”.
Learning and sharing with the MoJoToGo
The culpable variable
A few days ago I tweeted to express my frustration with a certain “burnt” flavor I was getting from a V60′d brew of Intelligentsia’s Tanzania Edelweiss and to ask weather that flavor had any relation to a brew’s TDS rating. Chris Tacy’s first response was to suggest I clean my grinder. Given that I am a proponent of consistent grinder cleanliness, I am surprised I didn’t simply tackle that first as a possible culprit and give the brew another go. But I didn’t. And he was right.
The next morning I cleaned my grinder and produced the best V60′d cup of Intelligentsia’s Tanzania Edelweiss I’d had since I picked up the bag. The general question – the relationship between TDS and any specific flavor of a cup of brewed coffee – wasn’t answered (feel free to release your flood of knowledge in the comments, though) but at least I was able to find the culpable variable for the specific flavor issue I was having. Again, as I’ve said before (and apparently it is something of which I need to be reminded): a clean grinder = an exponentially better chance at a tasty cup of coffee.
Coffee pedagogy
The TDS and flavor question was brought about by a most excellent post by Jesse Raub on his site, ‘Bitter Press’ entitled “Let’s Talk About TDS, and MoJoToGo’s Coffee Lite Mode” (link at the bottom). For me the piece is a perfect example of how rehashing a well-worn topic can have educational benefits. In the pursuit of the productive dissemination of information, how something is taught (aka, pedagogy) can be incredibly important.
Despite all the talk I’d heard and all of the prose I’d perused on the same subject matter, for some reason I feel like Raub’s piece is the one that had me “getting it” this time. My interest in using the MoJoToGo app at home has been rekindled.
Getting my MoJo back
Raub’s piece is a commentary on TDS’s contribution to the flavor profile of a cup of brewed coffee and a recommendation for using the MoJoToGo app’s new ‘coffee light’ mode. In the post he talks about using the app as a tool for brewing better coffee even if one has no refractometer and how the ‘coffee light’ mode is somewhat designed for this very purpose.
I splurged on the ‘coffee’ mode a while back and only used it once but Raub’s piece made me realize that I really ought to be getting my money’s worth from the MoJoToGo app. He basically gave me “permission” to use it even if my bank account doesn’t have the resources to supply me with easy access to a refractometer at this time.
Sharing my MoJo
One of the nice things about the MoJoToGo app is that it allows you to save recipes and to share those recipes via email. Sharing via email is nice but in this modern world of social apps it’s not always the most ideal route of dissemination. I would like the ability to share the recipes more easily with a wider range of people simply by pressing a button. Maybe via Twitter or one’s Google Docs account. The ability to sync up to one’s Dropbox account would be awesome as well.
Currently the app produces an attractively formatted view of a recipe in the app…
…and a somewhat less attractive but entirely practical version for sending via email…
As an alternative, it would be nice if, instead of simply producing these two formatted displays, the app would do three things:
- For email, continue sending a formatted message but also supply the option to include a spreadsheet document containing the same information.
- For Google Docs and Dropbox send that same spreadsheet file to either or both of these services.
- For Twitter (and this is more tricky, as I am going to just go ahead and assume that the makers of the MoJoToGo app are not at all interested in getting into the data storage business) maybe a screenshot of the view one has of a recipe from inside the app (there are already plenty of image hosting services available for use with Twitter), maybe along with a link to the recipe file, on either of the two above-mentioned services, if one chose to make one on export.
I produced a recipe for the tasty V60 brew of Intelligentsia’s Tanzania Edelweiss I made this morning and I have it shared for all to view on Google Docs but it was a bit of round-a-bout process and was greatly facilitated by the fact that I use Gmail as my email client. The process went something like this:
- Export the recipe via email, to myself, from the MoJoToGo app.
- Open the email from within Gmail and click the “Make Document” link at the top of the email.
- Activate the “Publish to the web” feature from within Google Docs
- Shorten the link (if using Twitter, this is advisable)
- Copy that link to whatever service is going to be used to share the link.
Yeah. Complicated.
The winning recipe
Here’s the link to the recipe I used, hosted on Google Docs: MoJoToGo Coffee Recipe – Intelli Edelweiss. As I said, I have no refractometer at my disposal from home so the TDS and extraction are merely “goals” without the benefit of measurement but, in the interest of ease of replication, the recipe includes the grind, brew time, water temperature and the specific method I used on the V60.
On the off chance you’d like to import it directly into MoJoToGo, hit me up at my ‘senddanielmail’ GMail account and I will export it out of the app directly to your email address so that you can use the “import this recipe” link that is included in the email by default by MoJoToGo.
I think the MoJoToGo app is an awesome tool even for home “enthusiast” use but to that end, it could be a bit more social. Even for the pros, though, I would think more socially oriented features would go a long way towards easing and widening the dissemination of the knowledge required to brew consistently excellent cups of coffee.
Links…
My successful MoJoToGo Coffee Recipe for Intelli’s Edelweiss
Intelligentsia’s Tanzania Edelweiss
@cbtacy says “clean your grinder”
A clean grinder = an exponentially better chance at a tasty cup of coffee
Jesse Raub: “Let’s Talk About TDS, and MoJoToGo’s Coffee Lite Mode”
Teaching Strategies: Learning Styles
Four Barrel’s Panama Duncan Estate
A nearly thoroughly enjoyed bag of Panama Duncan Estate
I tend to like to make connections with flavors between coffees. Like a venn diagram of flavors and aromas. There are many intersections between coffees. Some might share an earthy character but be different in all other respects or two coffees might share a majority of flavors and differ in but a few. Comparisons, I have learned, are the key to tasting. We are always using metaphors when tasting, weather that be the lemony citrus of some Ethiopian coffees or the earthiness of Indonesians.
And so it goes with the Panama Duncan Estate I picked up from Four Barrel1. This Panama had the sort of prominent tanginess I have come to associate with the coffees of El Salvador. The difference, to my palette was that the tang veered closer to the savory than the sweet. Where the tang of an El Sal might remind me of a light fruit punch or jamaica agua fresca or the chewable orange flavored vitamin C tablets I used to eat like candy as a kid, this Panama had less of the light fruit characteristics I have tasted in many El Salvadorian coffees and more richness (the marzipan notes of the grounds notwithstanding). That richness brought its sweetness closer in character to its savory notes and made me think of Hawaiian style pizza or a delicious pasta sauce made with the ripest of tomatoes. In the cup it was sweet like ripe tomatoes or other, more developed sugars like caramel. In the fragrance of the grounds it was marzipan, honey and butterscotch.
Its savory side reminded me of the herbs (and here we go again with the tomato sauce references – call a spade a spade) I put in my spaghetti sauce – thyme, rosemary, marjoram – but all together, integrated, a single savory hit to the palette.
The acidity had some of the ripe tomato, the aroma was the savoriness, the body was the sweetness. The mouthfeel sat in the middle: not watery thin and not exceedingly syrupy.
The method
I have been playing with my new Hario V60 and like it very much. It’s like a responsive sports car. Any slight change in technique or brewing parameter is almost always immediately evident in the finished product.
For this Panama I settled on a fairly fine grind. A couple steps finer than what I would normally use for a cone drip or a Clever. The water, each time, was :30 off the boil. 32g of coffee to 425g of water. 50g of water to start the bloom and, after :30 more, using a slow and measured pour and never filling the cone more than 3/4 of the way up, I was able to get a 2:30 extraction time.
Footnotes
- This is a link to Four Barrel’s retail page and to what appears to possibly be a different coffee. While my bag simply says “Panama Duncan Estate”, Four Barrel is calling this one “Panama Duncan Estate Reserve”. Not sure of the difference. [↩]
Damn Clever post
A long time ago in a land far, far away I mentioned that I might be writing a post about my experience with the Clever Dripper at some point in the near future.
Well, that “near future” has come and gone. In fact, we are now in what you might call the far distant future. At least in terms of the amount of time that has passed since I let my intent be known. Ah well, such is the life of the amateur blogger.
So, now, at long last, let me say a few things about my experience with the Clever:
1. Yum
Yeah, “yum”. The Clever has loads of potential to make that bag of finely sourced, roasted and presented bag of beans into a very tasty cup of coffee with very little effort. Especially when compared to other drip/cone methods.
All of the coffee I have made using the Clever has been the most consistently excellent coffee I have had at home…er, I mean in “The Lab”. I’ve made good cups with all of the methods at my disposal, to be sure. Day-after-day, though the Clever has been the most reliable method of getting the most out the beans I buy.
2. Technique
In my experience, there are but two variations in technique that make a major difference and those two can be summed up in this question:
To stir or not to stir?
That is the question. The stir has been the paramount differentiator between either two good but different cups of coffee or a good or bad cup of coffee. What do I mean? … Read more →
Verve’s Burundi Bwayi
What if a Yirg & a Kenya ...?
I made a pilgrimage of sorts this week to Santa Cruz, CA for an opportunity to soak in the aura of a roaster who’s coffee I have been enjoying locally for some time now. I’ll leave my experience at their café for another post – that’s what the Café tramp series of posts are for – but Verve coffee roasters’ beans have left me impressed.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area there are three cafés – each of which I have great respect for – that feature the coffees of Verve: Modern Coffee in Oakland, Sightglass in San Francisco and farm:table, also in San Francisco.
At each location the espresso blends, the single-origins are all just … well … well, hell, they’re just scrumptious. Flavor, flavor, flavor. Packed with it. Impressed.
They’ve all been interesting as well. “Interesting?”, you say? “What on earth are you talking about?”. I’m talking about individuality in flavor. Each Verve coffee I have had carries some unique flavor profile. Walnuts in one, sweet cane in something else, leather, cocoa and cardamom in another. So far, everything I’ve tasted from Verve has it.
But what about the Burundi ?..
Verve’s Burundi Bwayi – The short version …
if a Yirgacheffe and a Kenyan coffee had a love-child, well, this – Verve’s Burundi Bwayi – is what it would taste like.
… and a little bit longer one
On one hand, like a fine Yirgacheffe from Ethiopia, Verve’s Burundi Bwayi has aromas of delicate oolong tea and fragrant flowers. On the other, there are traces of Kenya’s concentrated, molasses-like sugars and dark berry-like sweetness.
Where the Burundi Bwayi distinguishes itself, where it makes itself unique – like any good child should – is in it’s creamy mouthfeel, the slightly sweeter fruit-punch-like berry flavors that also make themselves known and it’s distinctively – for an African coffee – woody, earthy palate (almost Sumatra-like) that carries over into the long, dry finish. Top it all off with a sharp but pleasant, sort-of tart apple-like acidity and you’ve got another unique entry in the Verve lineup.
A little more info … for the truly geeky
Of interest to me was the fact that this was a wet processed African coffee. Wet processed – as opposed to dry processed – coffees are known for their clean, un-muddied flavors and crisp acidity. The tart-apple-like acidity of the Bwayi was not of particular surprise then. What was surprising was the almost Sumatra-like woody, earthy component.
If you look at the photo above (click it to make it larger) you’ll notice three terms at the very bottom of the bag: Bourbon, Jackson, Mibitzi. I was already aware that Bourbon referred to a particular coffea arabica variety. Bourbon is a popular and highly productive variety of coffea arabica that was planted by the French on the island of Bourbon (now Réunion) around 1708, mutated and was then planted throughout Brazil in the late 1800s (Wikipedia). Jackson and Mibitzi I was not familiar with. A little research revealed that both Jackson and Mibitzi are both Bourbon cultivars native to Rwanda and Burundi. Now you know.
Just the facts
Who: Verve Coffee Roasters What: Burundi Bwayi Wet Process When: Roasted on January 7th, 2010 Where: Santa Cruz, CA Why: I ♥ coffee How: Chemex
Ecco’s Brazil Santa Terezinha
What I expected from Ecco’s Brazil Santa Terezinha was what I have been led to expect from all of Ecco’s coffees — a complex, multi-layered cup of liquid elegance. What I got at first, though, was a simple, solid cup of coffee. I wasn’t dissapointed but I wasn’t 
wowed either.
When I picked up the Terezinha from the fine and talented folks at Modern Coffee in Oakland, CA they mentioned that what stood out most from their experience with it was the unsolicited and uniform praise heaped on it by their customers. Now, It is normally simply the nature of the café business that the majority of one’s customers are not likely to go out of their way to let you know how much they enjoyed their cup of coffee. There is a vastly greater chance of you hearing what’s wrong with the cup — call me a cynic — but many of Modern’s customers were, indeed, going out of their way to let them know they thought the Terezinha was an excellent cup of coffee. I was intrigued. I brought a bag home.
Ecco has a reputation — here at “the lab” and elsewhere. Elegance. Refinement. Sophistication. These are just some of the words that come to mind when I think of the coffees I have had from Ecco. We’re talking Mercedes-Benz, Rolls-Royce, maybe Cadillac. That’s the expectation set by past experience with Ecco. Ecco is refined. Ecco is sophisticated.
What Ecco is not, is simple. Here, though, is a cup that just says “drink me every day, I’m uncomplicated” It’s easy to enjoy — mellow and sweet with just a touch of tartness. Simple. Solid. Just a nice cup of coffee. For the coffee snob — in which group I proudly claim membership — there isn’t much there in the cup.
There’s plenty up front. The whole beans smell sweet and like a loaf of yeasty Italian bread. In the perfume of the grinds there’s a sharpness, some sour notes (in a good way). I got concord grape and meyer lemon Add to all that, marzipan (from the back of the spoon, after breaking the crust in the press-pot). In the cup, though, it all changes dramatically. in the cup the Terezinha is just … well … a simple nice coffee … at least at first …
It’s only when it cools that the Tererzinha really comes alive. Now, this is the case with almost all coffees, that piping hot, you are not going to get all that a particular coffee has to offer. You have to let it cool a bit before the fullness of flavor (if, in fact it is there, of course) comes to the fore. So it wasn’t entirely unexpected that this coffee would open up a bit given a chance to cool off. It’s just that not only did the Terezinha require a greater amount of temperature loss before the complexity that was evidenced before and during brewing returned but that the change was so dramatic. Back, was the meyer lemon, the sweetness (mellow and round in the cup). Added to that was a hint of vanilla. Harder to coax out are the oolong flavors (that nice floral-fruit aroma). I had to swirl the mug a bit.
So, patience, then. It will be rewarded. What, at first blush, is a simple cup will come alive and that trademark Ecco elegance and refinement will finally make itself known.
Just the facts
Coffee: Ecco Café’s Organic Brazil Auction Lot Santa Terezinha
Brewing method: Press-pot
Source: Modern Coffee, Oakland, CA
Swoon
[...] so freakin complex it will make you swoon
Indeed. “[...] so freakin complex”, in fact that this single-origin coffee could have easily passed for a blend in a blind tasting. I picked up the bag of Reserva from my local Whole Foods after a long stint of Africans and Indonesians. I couldn’t have picked a better return to the continent.
The notes, such as they are:
- butter and sweet (butterscotch)
- rich
- integrated flavors
- rasberry
The paucity of notes should not throw up any red flags for you but, in fact, stands in direct opposition to the sheer amount of flavors present in a cup of the Reserva. The note on “integrated flavors”? My feeble attempt at reflecting the numerous and varied flavors that that made up the cup of this elegant, rich and complex coffee.
As a challenge, I decided to refrain from looking at Barefoot Coffee’s tasting notes before I created some of my own. And what a challenge it was. So nuanced, so well balanced, so well integrated, were the flavors that I had a difficult time connecting everything my palette was encountering to an appropriate volume of words such that I thought I was doing the Reserva justice – Maybe it’s time for some more education – and so, the list above. On the other hand, I didn’t have a difficult time enjoying it.
I prepared the Reserva both in the press-pot and the Chemex. The press-pot brought out the sweetness (butterscotch), while the Chemex highlighted just how balanced this coffee is. I can’t recommend one prep over the other, it shines either way.
Quickly…an Indonesian…
Flying Goat’s Dolok Sanggul as procured from Local 123.
Just the raw, mostly, unedited notes from various rounds of tasting the Dolok Sanggul…
Bright, vegetal, peppers, earth. Bright like the sidikalang Brighter than most indos. Sauteéd onions, cran-apple acidity, Tamarind, toast and cinnamon And vanilla? And wood. Maybe I’m simply more aware of unami but here it is again, The beans themselves smell like a spicy Indian meal.
Stale
I’ve had a bag of Ritual Roaster’s Finca Matalapa La Cidra, El Salvador sitting in my cupboard, nearly empty, for almost a month now. And no notes. Nothing. Search as I might, I can’t find a single tasting note I’ve made on this coffee. The roast date on this bag is September 10th. 
Man! Falling down on the job, that’s what this is.
Making lemonade
But I’ll take this as somewhat of an experiment, something to pique my interest, lemons…into lemonade: how does this coffee taste when it is truly, beyond all debate, past its prime? Do some coffees hold up well even long after they are deemed, by common practice, stale?
In my experience there has been at least one coffee that, indeed, has held up well against time and common practice: Ritual’s Finca Moreno, Santa Barbara, Honduras that I wrote about last December continued to brew a fine cup even two weeks past its roast date (and here’s an interesting turn of events: I wrote about two coffees in that post and the other was…drum roll, please….Ritual Roaster’s Finca Matalapa, El Salvador, the CoE winning instance of it…talk about revisiting an old friend).
This is, of course, a decidedly unscientific exercise, at least in terms of the methods used in this post, but I am not going to let that stop me. I am going to compare my notes about this aging beauty against Ritual’s notes on the same coffee. I brewed the old La Cidra in a press-pot. I made the judgement that it would do the best job of coaxing out any off-flavors if there were any to be had.
The test
Lets take a gander at the bag and the flavors claimed to reside within: “pineapple, lime candy, maple”, is what the bag states. The description on Ritual’s website is similar: “Lively and sweet, with flavors of ripe pineapple, lime candy, and a subtle maple finish”.
So, what did I find in the “stale” bag? Honestly, nothing but good things: a woody fragrance in the grinds and an unami-like savory character (“tang and saltiness like miso soup”, is what I wrote), a sweetness (tamarind and molasses), a thick viscous body and a pleasant lime acidity in the cup.
Even taking into account the differences in flavor perception between two (or more) different taste buds, I think the the La Cidra held up respectably well to the ravages of time. The pineapple and maple turned into and/or was perceived as something more concentrated and the lime acidity was still there, possibly in a less pronounced form but still pleasantly present in the cup. Impressive.
Old coffee
This has me thinking that I need to be more rigorous about this, that it would be interesting to re-create this using my own tasting notes and that this has the makings of a new series of posts examining the degree to which any number of coffees’ flavor profiles are changed by time.
“Old coffee”. Yeah. I like it…
Brazilian Blue
No, I’m not sad. Not at all. How could I be with a coffee like this in my pot every morning? It’s Ritual Roasters’ Daterra Sweet Blue.
The fragrance of the freshly ground coffee? Peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches (yeah, I said PB&J).
I brewed the Daterra two ways: press-pot and Chemex.
In the Chemex, as always the aroma during the pour-over is especially intense. More intense than in any other preparation. Aromas during the poor in the Chemex were of sassafrass (yeah, I said sassafrass). In the cup it was sweet and smooth but a little boring. In the press-pot, on the other hand, things became a little more interesting.
The press-pot brought a lot more complexity to the table. Cranberry. Cola. Cherry. Hazelnut. Cardamom. Thick, round and sweet with a still light but lively acidity. Now, that’s better.
I can’t find this coffee on Ritual’s website but the next time you find yourself in the Mission, take a gander at the shelves. Maybe you’ll get lucky.
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