The green and the brown: Coffee roasting at home
It is one of my fundamental beliefs that most foodstuffs can be made successfully at home. The results may not be the best example of their type – there’s a reason specialist producers exist – but they...
View ArticleCoffee roast no. 2
Half a pound of green coffee doesn’t last that long, especially when you consider that it loses weight in the roasting process! Fortunately, I don’t rely exclusively on coffee I’ve roasted myself, so...
View ArticleHome-roasted coffee no. 3
With the return of warmer weather, I took some time last weekend to roast another batch of coffee with my heat gun. I do all my roasting outside so I don’t have to worry about containing the chaff, but...
View ArticleHome coffee roasting: Blend No. 1
Since posting about my third round of home-roasted coffee, I’ve been trying to roast a batch – some smaller, some larger – once a week. I think I’ve gotten pretty good with the process by now: I’m no...
View ArticleMélange à deux: Home-roasted coffee blend no. 2
Since randomly throwing together my first coffee blend, I’ve been reading more about blending, especially on the fantastic Sweet Maria’s site. In particular, I learned that there’s a distinction to be...
View ArticleRobusta coffee
My friend Stuart McCook, a historian who studies coffee cultivation and blogs about it at Coffee Cultures, has been called an “apologist for Robusta coffee.” Robusta is a species of coffee plant...
View ArticleHome coffee roasting: Espresso blend
Most of the coffee I drink, I brew in a French press. But I do also have a relatively low-end espresso machine, which I use several days a week when I need a caffeinated afternoon pick-me-up. Of...
View ArticleMokha-Java
I was very excited recently to see that my preferred green coffee supplier, Sweet Maria’s, had a supply of coffee from Yemen, specifically named for the Yemeni port city of Mokha. As well, they had a...
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