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☕ Coffee ☕: Ingredients, Roasting, Grinding, Brewing, and Tasting

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Interesting thoughts on cold brew. I like it microwaved as well. So glad to be drinking good ethiopian. Just as I remembered it, nothing overly great to hang your hat on but not an off scent or flavor to it. Looking forward to the freshies. Wont be long. I am thinking of getting a crown box, i mean might as well. Could always be worse :)

Hows the hambela? Dont make me cry to much.
 
Haha, that sounds like something that would happen to me. You are joking though yeah? Did you get into it, you dont seem to very often but i have seen glimmers [emoji3]

Looking at roastmasters site a 7.52 ethiopian is 5.82 with 50 pounds. Seems intriguing enough. Something like 65 for 10 pounds total to door for all. But dont know how much shipping is.
 
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After freaking months of not being able to get a shot out of my espresso machine, I sat down with 4 ounces of mediocre Colombian I was willing to waste. I FINALLY got a nice shot, 25 second pull. It will get better, but this is such an improvement over not get any flow.
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Awesome harbortown. Those shots look so good. I never get a dark rust color like that. Were those beans a little darker roasted?
 
Thanks Apple. I'm not really sure how I got that rust color.... Maybe someone who knows more about espresso could chime in? I really don't know anything about it, but I get a decent shot here and there haha.

That particular bean was a Colombian, not a very dark roast. I dropped it about 60 secs after 1c ended.

I see Burmans listed an Ethiopia Konga. Their description isn't as enticing as Roast masters was last year, but that is pretty typical of burmans.

Sweet Maria's and burmans both emailed some really great looking coffees actually. I might stock up big.
 
New Dry Process Burundi posted @ SM's today - sounds like it could make killer espresso! Gonna grab 5lbs when something else interesting pops up or I get too antsy.

Ummmmm....and then???

I guess their mods don't like it when you call them out for being pretentious, ******-canoes.

@applescrap & @HarborTownBrewing - agreed, i thought the same thing as soon as i saw that picture - those shots looked tasty!


Roasted 1lb of SM's latest Ethiopian - Uraga Tome (Dry Process). The berry aromas from the trier were sweet and easy to detect. They peaked about 20 seconds before I ended the roast.

Here is the graph:
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Bean close up - this natural does not roast very even:
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I guess you start to judge the shots astetically. The color of them, the legs, the crema, the sweetness, smell, the way they taste and make you feel. Heard a barista champ on a youtube vid talk about that nice copper color.

Welp, haha, wish i did any of that more, i pull shots, throw them in a plastic cup with sugar, add milk and the ice and go out to mow lawn. Come back in and hit another. And another sometimes. Sometimes i add hot water and some of the wifes creamer or use the creamer with the iced drink. Any drink tips\recipes guys?

Good looking out thanks. Burmans looks like nice coffee and every burman i have met i have liked. There are ao many coffees labeled konga. Also they come in different prices. How to know who has the best? Which grower are we getting? Does anyone else sell that roastmasters? Seems like the trust needs put into the the vendor (roastmaster, crown, sm, etc). Jammin, anyone, help me understand this better. Ultimately it seems who cares if its great, no?

Jammin roast looks good. Always impressed by the ability to draw 1c out like that. What does the squigly blue line represent.

Edit.. really thinking about getting the burmans now. Like the flat rate shipping. Dont want to get too little or too much especially with flat rate.
 
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Sry, more from the desk of scrappy. I've been thinking about roasting fast v slow, roast times, etc... experimented this morning by keeping the heat and fan on high until 5 minutes or so. The beans were very even and a nice pale green. From there I put the temp down one notch to 5 of 6 bars. It had not cracked by 11:20 which normally this stuff cracks at 9. The second I switched it to high it started to crack ar 1136. The beans were very even in color and a nice Brown. They hadn't expanded much. I turned it down immediately because I was trying to develop or whatever I was trying to do, and they didn't start cracking until a minute after that. I let it go 30 seconds beyond that and pulled it. Definitely smelt the strong smell of cinnamon. Ultimately and I'll post a picture they look very similar to the other beans and if anything a little more scorched. As usual I'll probably go back to roasting straight through on high heat and high power but I hope something unique will come my way.
 
Pics with flash. I like tan cracks and with my ethiopians once that middle goes brown to black then chocolate will over power fruit. Mint is slower roast 13 mins other is 9ish min. They are closet than they look but too high hrat at end added some scorch to slow it looks like.
 
Would you elaborate here? Was it bitter?
Coffee off gasses CO2 for a day or two after roasting so if you drink it too soon you get some sour from the CO2 and the off gassing keeps the water from making good contact so you under extract. Basically it will be thinner and maybe a bit sour.
 
It may have been mentioned someplace in the 102 pages of this thread...?

Having roasted with air and a whirly pop (plus a few others) I have to say I like the whirlyPop better than air roasting. The whirly keeps the beans in contact with the smoke where the air roaster draws it off. So I found that the whirly gave me a deeper richer roast. I like that better. The air roaster tends to bring out the bright flavors more and has less of the deep smoky flavors. That could be a good thing for certain coffees, or other peoples tastes.

The difference is not huge and I have no problem using either. I tend to use the whirly because I like the flavor better and I can roast a whole lot more at a time.
 
^^different folks and all that.

Here is the pics, slow v fast roast. I put mint next to slower. I dont think it tastes as good.
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Nope, I found the quicker versions are lacking compared to the longer ones. Does not pay to do it quick I found.
 
Finished with the grinder. I aligned it tonight and it took very little to get it even. I’m interested to see any difference in grind tomorrow.

I have to say that this build was a major pain in the ass, but I’m happy with it. I highly doubt there is another orange SJ out there. [emoji23]

The manufacturing of the doserless components were ****, but not much I can do there. Slightly unaligned with the cover and chute but acceptable under the circumstances. The good thing is that this should last a long time.

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Knowledge is power, and it's also frustrating. I think I'm getting too caught up on my bean temp on this new roaster and am trying to regulate the temp too much. Each type of bean reaches 1c at a different temp and it is leaving me stalling out roasts trying to get to 1c at a certain time goal.

On the other side, the Bullet is extremely controllable with the infrared heating.

I stretched out the carmelization so much on an Ethiopian bean, it actually tasted like caramel almonds. Which my wife thought was cool, but I did not.
 
Never heard of Burman @applescrap but I see they have three different yirgacheffe in stock currently. Are you happy with them? Assuming you have bought from them before. I've only purchased from Sweet Marias and still learning this whole coffee roasting thing. ;)
 
I heard of them here through jammin or harbortown. Never ordered from them before now. will report back. Email came from jon burman and so did shipping label. Interesting enough. Right, i got to roasting couldnt wait.

I tried to take some pictures as I was roasting but it was hard. I went with full temperature to the end. And as you can see on the pictures was staying pretty even. Right at the end though seem to kind of start getting too dark too quick. The slow roast on the other Ethiopian I did I can't tell if I like or not. I think it's better but I'm not sure. I agree with the caramelization comment above. Seems like that process really develop some good caramel flavor.
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I buy my bags from Burmans because at 38 cents a bag, you can not beat the price, especially when you buy beans and get a fair price on shipping.

But I was looking at their offerings and the descriptions are copy pasted for many of the coffees. I looked at 4 different Ethiopian beans that had the SAME EXACT flavor description.

Tom at SM might get a little carried away with some of the descriptions, but I've never read one and wondered what it might taste like. Whenever I read the Burman or Bodhi descriptions I feel like I'm taking a gamble on what I'm getting.
 
HOW ARE THE SHOTS GAHDAMMIT!?!?

Funny you should ask. Today’s afternoon shot was sooooo fracking good. I’ve been enjoying some of the Hambala Hassan for the last week or so as espresso, Americano, long black, iced, etc.

My roasting, preparing, and tasting skills are elementary so to pull a shot like I just did is simply amazing. I’ve been battling some things over the past few weeks though.

Here is my daily setup.

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I put a pot of drip of standard Uganda Bugashi in the morning for the wife and I. The problem with this is that I use the same grinder, so my burrs move twice a day between drip and espresso. It’s not terrible because I have a pretty good idea of where things need to be with the markings on the collar. It does prevent me from really dialing in on the espresso side.

My issues are either choking from grinding too fine or channeling.

The choking has pretty much been resolved this past week with a slightly coarser grind and not tamping too hard.

The channeling has me baffled at this point. The grind has minimal clumping so a wdt is really only a means to distribute a little. I’m on the lookout for a 49mm distributor but they aren’t available in the States yet from what I’ve found. I need to keep a better eye on where it’s channeling and if it moves around or stays in the same spot. I’ve seen others complain about channeling after the install of the IMS shower screen.

But even with all of these factors, I’ve been really happy with the results. I’ve never made espresso like this.

And today’s shot was 15g in.

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The burman konga sede is nice. I dont want to go to far after only one taste but it is very berry. It might even be very very berry. Not blueberrry i dont think. There is however hiding very very deep in the coffee some sort of imperfection. The roastmasters konga I think was better but this Lively cup is certainly worth the little bit extra. It's not quite good enough to get 10 or 20 lb of I don't think but if you really like berry Ethiopians this one is worth it. With the shipping deal 7 pounds was 59 iirc.
 
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