Coffee: Does anyone else treat it as more than just a commodity?

[budlykush]

I'm a total coffee freak. I roast my own twice a week, conical burr grind and brew with a press pot using 202-205 degree water. I have been doing it for a little over 5 years. Light roasts of "origin" are the way to go.
Unlike french roast. Have you ever heard of a Colombian or a Jamaican french roast? No, because the dark roasts all taste the same, so it any coffee will do (even seconds) for french.

I found out about green beans from a local farmers market where two guys sold green and roasted Hawaiian coffee beans. A great site for home roasters is sweetmarias (dotcom)

BK

 

[Str8Dank]

i only use a french press with freshly roasted beans! if you order in a coffee shop order a double americano and see what you think of it. it's much fresher then a cup of coffee it's espresso made to order and hot water added to make it the consistency of coffee.

 

[EatMoGrass]

Organic Shade Grown Fair Trade here brewed in a Bodum French Press. Ground in a cheapo grinder 15 seconds before steeping for 3-4min. Lightly sweetened with only 2-3 drops of locally produced honey. Two or three cups along with a small cannabis brownie are the perfect way to begin the day.

 

[Tjinez]

Another coffeegeek here. Mainly making coffee on my PIDed Rancilio Silvia and Mazzer mini E grinder, but also love a nice cup of from the aeropress, gold filter och french press.

I'm mainly into natural processed coffees and have a thing for good Ethiopian ones.

Pouring latte-art while high is amazing by the way

 

[Reverend Mojo]

Coffee is the nectar of the GODS!

Cannabis and coffee go together perfectly. Nothing like a wake n' bake with a morning cup of Joe.

 

[b8man]

Love my coffee - but finding good beans where I live is hard (Asia). So often they taste burnt and the flavor is just gone.

Can't wait to be back in a cool climate where hot coffee just makes more sense.

 

[Bumble Buddy]

My local roasters lightest roasts started getting too dark. Finally nudged into action after mulling it over for an age, I tried roasting some batches in a saucepan with cheap heat gun that's been laying around here... its all over now wow its so good, the flavors and aromas incredibly intense

 

[foaf]

I love coffee and for reasons unclear became interested in home roasting. I now have a very nice home roasting maching that does 11 oz in about 17 minutes, the genecafe. The benefit is that I have the freshest roast in town, I can experiment with different degrees of roasting coupled with different varieties of green bean and even delux fair trade organic green beens are about $4 a lb or less. also, green beans can sit on the shelf for a year and not go bad, its only once you roast them that the clock starts ticking. www.sweetmarias.com

coffee and pot go soooo well together.

 

[kannubis]

not a commodity, its a morning necessity
getting better now though - used to sit at the coffee shop drinking 12 oz espressos with just a touch of half & half until they kicked us out
still love the french press product with full body dark roast med/coarse grind to the beans

 

[basspirate]

French Press. Dark Organic/Local Roast. Black.=Ideal I'm also into drinking espresso. Coffee is definitely one of those things like wine, beer or cannabis that can yield such pleasant subtleties.

 

[Trichgnomes]

I love coffee and for reasons unclear became interested in home roasting. I now have a very nice home roasting maching that does 11 oz in about 17 minutes, the genecafe. The benefit is that I have the freshest roast in town, I can experiment with different degrees of roasting coupled with different varieties of green bean and even delux fair trade organic green beens are about $4 a lb or less. also, green beans can sit on the shelf for a year and not go bad, its only once you roast them that the clock starts ticking. www.sweetmarias.com

coffee and pot go soooo well together.

I'm glad you like the genecafe, foaf. I've been eyeing it for quite a bit now. I really want to get into home roasting for sure, I obsessed over it for quite a while, but still haven't decided which gear I want, or if I want to go super low-tech at first. There is an amazing roastery in my area, so I have just been getting it roasted to order from them.


I'm glad this thread is going strong, but I have still yet to see any syphon aficionados. Are you out there?

 

[foaf]

The only problem with the genecafe, and its similiar with all home roasters, is that the cooling cycle is too slow. You have to stop roasting before the desired darkness and try to estimate how much extra roasting takes place in the cooling cycle. To fix this, and it wasnt my idea I got it off a coffe site, I have made a big funnel type thing out of a polypropylene apple juice jar with the bottom cut off and a screen at the mouth. I hook it up to my home central vacuum and once the beans reach the desired darkness, I hit the emergency shutoff, and dump the hot smoking beans into the funnell, and the air rushing over them cools them in like 20 seconds and arrests the roast.

as mentioned above, Ive always been a dark roast guy, but Im finding many more interesting flavors in the medium roast. so far my favorite is to blend 1/2 1/2 a medium/light roast for the fruity acidic flavors, and a dark roast for that wonderful roast flavor.

 

[Bumble Buddy]

I like blending the roasts too foaf, mostly light roast with just a little extra roasted roastyness.

Go for it Trichgnomes, you can get a $10 heat gun and a saucepan/dogbowl and give roasting a go! Just heat the beans gradually and swirl them as you go (do a bonghit first ), the first crack popping sounds happen as the beans expand from water vapor, then a couple minutes later second crack starts to sizzle and you can stop the roast thereabouts which will give a medium roast. I cool the beans with a large metal screen colander above a fan. The variety packs from Sweet Marias are a good way to get started.

 

[basspirate]

I wanna know more about that syphon/gravity brewer/whatever thingy. it looks neat-o.

 

[xmobotx]

I'm glad you like the genecafe, foaf. I've been eyeing it for quite a bit now. I really want to get into home roasting for sure, I obsessed over it for quite a while, but still haven't decided which gear I want, or if I want to go super low-tech at first. There is an amazing roastery in my area, so I have just been getting it roasted to order from them.


I'm glad this thread is going strong, but I have still yet to see any syphon aficionados. Are you out there?

wife and i love coffee - we want to try the coffee syphon as well. just dont know how long till i can justify one in the budget (kinda spendy)

that gif is pretty cool too

 

[Trichgnomes]

I wanna know more about that syphon/gravity brewer/whatever thingy. it looks neat-o.

Word, I agree it is quite neat-o.
I have been drinking syphon coffee almost exclusively for the past 10 months or so. Unbeknownst to most coffee enthusiasts and diehards alike, the Vacuum Pot actually predates the French Press/Press pot by about 50 years. A little history

After extensive palate testing, changing one variable at a time, going through a couple syphons, I ultimately settled on the Hario TCA 2, and adopted the Barismo Technique.

And it may seem pricey to some folks for a coffee pot, but for the quality of product and quality of coffee that it produces, it is not much to ask for. For the novice, a high end grinder and espresso machine might be over the top, but IME, syphon coffee is an incredible method of preparing brew coffee, without taking the plunge into espresso equipment. (My grinder broke a little while back and I have been hand grinding for the past three months or so...) I should note, I am pretty into lighter roasts, and vacpot really brings all the high notes to the cup. I used to be into darker stuff, but now I like to stick somewhere in between City and Full City. Vienna is the darkest I will go.
All in all I think one can purchase a Hario vac pot and butane burner for under $150 USD. There are other companies, such as Yama that have cheaper ones, but from what I hear the glass is inferior. I am trying to get a glassblower make some for me, so shoot me a pm if you have interest. It is all super preliminary at the moment, so just bear that in mind.
If you like consuming cannabis out of glass water-pipes, why not try brewing your coffee in a sweet glass pot? Give it try and I would be surprised if many were disappointed with the results.

 

[smokefrogg]

i'm not nearly as hardcore as some here

french press, i love a nice dark and oily french roast, i also loooove that jamaican blue mountain *droool*

i do taint mine with a bit of milk and cream, dad always gives me crap for that haha

 

[basspirate]

How could a cannabis connoisseur not be into such a device? Hehehe, it just reminds me of a space age bong. I need to try this though, I am always looking for new kicks with coffee. $150 bucks isn't anything to sneeze at, but the wife and I are both into coffee and another one of the baristas at the small coffeeshop she manages (her job which only fuels my addiction) told me about this thing. It kind of went into the back of my mind until I saw this thread.

Thanks for the detailed description! I would have never imagined that thing would predate the french press.

 

[xmobotx]

looking around on youtube i found there are coffee shops where they do the syphon pot and they are heated by a halogen light

i think it would be interesting to have that light setup for 1 and not have to use the burner (but still have that option of course)

 

[Trichgnomes]

i'm not nearly as hardcore as some here

french press, i love a nice dark and oily french roast, i also loooove that jamaican blue mountain *droool*

i do taint mine with a bit of milk and cream, dad always gives me crap for that haha

Honestly I used to be really into dark oily french roasts, with cream and sugar. I was super purist about my tainting, using raw cream from grass-fed gows, and organic sugar (I know super heady, right?). That was a just over a year ago, when I rocked the Chemex pourover exclusively. It wasn't until I got my second syphon (As pictured above), that I was able to truly enjoy black coffee, and light roasts at that.
When I got on the syphon kick, I geeked out hard on coffee forums, like coffee geek and coffeesnobs (AU), in a similar fashion as I have on Cannabis related forums. I really try to preach the light roast now, because most people that are dark roast fans will scoff at a light roast, saying it is "Not bold enough," or that it "Lacks body." I know this because I used to be in this crowd. After I stepped outside of this misconception however, I realized how subjective such statements really are.

Here comes the rant (I apologize in advance)...

When coffee is roasted pass the state that many refer to as Vienna (Lightest dark roast/Darkest light roast), drastic changes begin to occur. S.O. (Single Origin) characteristics or terroir, get replaced by roast characteristics. Once you get to the point of French or the dreaded :shudders: Italian roast, any terroir discerning subtleties that would have been present at a lighter roast are now gone. Once those precious oils escape to the outside of the bean, there go the complexities of the cup. The subtle nuances of different beans from farm to farm, continent to continent, etc.--vanish.

Micro-lot award winning light roasts are what got me off cream and sugar. Beloya, in particular. This is because light roasts tastes horrible with dairy products. My girlfriend also stopped drinking coffee with cream/sugar, but only at home, when made by me via syphon. When I got into the world of microlot coffee, light roasts (among other values) sort of just clicked for me. It stirred a new passion in my life.

I like to use this analogy, and I think it will hit home for a lot of you folks. Imagine for those of you that don't grow, or if those of you that do had to stop. Imagine every bag you bought, had nuggets from 10, 20, even 50 different farms. How stoked would you be?
That's what happens with Co-op coffee. Even your heady fair trade organic blah blah blah...

Not to say that it is such a bad thing, as it does help a lot of small farms in some cases. There are some extremely small farms however, and a lot work with roasters directly, to insure a high quality crop, that was all grown on the same farm.
Now, I want to further clarify something that I learned in my researching feverishly some months back.
The origin of the French Roast: I don't have references, this is paraphrasing what I read a few months ago--feel free to do a search)
At the time that the French were getting into coffee consumption, all of their colonies were not producing even decent crops. In order to compensate for the poor flavors of the beans, they roasted it really dark. Because remember folks, roasting dark replaces bean characteristics, both good, and bad.

looking around on youtube i found there are coffee shops where they do the syphon pot and they are heated by a halogen light

i think it would be interesting to have that light setup for 1 and not have to use the burner (but still have that option of course)

Yes, my first experience seeing a Hario in person was at Blue Bottle in San Francisco. The were the first in the US to rock the halogen bar, IIRC. They do not use the Barismo method however. Their (syphon) coffee is also vastly overpriced. the novelty of the halogen lamp is pretty badass though. There are a few other places scattered around the States that have the halogen bars, but mostly it is the rage in Japan.