It has recently come to my attention that we actually have a few readers. Not only that, but readers of the.....caffeinated persuasion...
For this reason, I feel as though we should maybe think about posting things that are at least semi-coffee related. So this is my vow to at least mention coffee in every post. Starting now.
We've been doing some "in-depth" horsing around with the construction of an espresso blend. Some of the new coffees we have in have been quite pleasant as shots, so we thought we'd give it a go. The first lego was the Brasil Sul de Minas Yellow Bourbon natural process I've been having pretty good luck with. We've all been drinking test batches of it for the last week and the more recent profile has proved to be the winner. So we started playing around with the brew temps on the Synesso, zeroed in on 199.5F, and out came some amazing shots. A rich brownie batter-ish chocolate was the first thing that hit me, a soft, smooth texture. Vanilla pipe tobacco in the middle with little notes of sugary lemon. Clean, slightly almondy finish with subtle hints of lemon. A little too smooth to be by itself, but a great base. It held well in milk, and it was good.
We started running some shots of Organic Colombian Popayan to see if we like it better as a base than the Brasil. The Colombian was..... interesting as a SOS. It reminded me of Counter Culture's Five Country Espresso. It had that earthy, cyprus taste to it. Like the forest smells after it rains. We played around with temps for awhile to see what else we could get out of it. Leathery at higher temps, salty and sunflowery at lower temps, but always with the musty cyprus taste. Right before giving up on it, Josh pulls one at 200.5F. Bingo. The dominating cypruss taste had turned more towards a light rose tone, good body, and lush orange soda middle notes, seriously, orange soda. Not much of a finish, but good enough qualities for us to throw it in the blend.
With the success of finding an awesome base coffee in the Brasil, and narrowing in on the quality acids in the Colombian, we hugged eachother and called it a night. I predict this blend taking us around a month to put together. I'll keep posting the progress. Next step, the Harrar MAO.
Quick side note, if you haven't checked out the experiments with brew temps on Chris's Godshot blog, do it now.