A lot is written on how to keep roasted coffee fresh.  Pretty much anyone with an interest knows that coffee is best enjoyed freshly roasted, and that the best way to do this is buy enough from a roaster to last a few weeks.  What hasn’t been so well documented is the storage of green unroasted coffee and how this might affect quality, and therefore the taste once roasted.  Most green coffee beans come out of sacks, some of which look pretty cool, but that’s about as far as it goes.  Hessian sacks (made from jute) have been used the world over since coffee was first commercially grown and exported, so why change…Or maybe it’s time for a change?

The only real development from the hessian coffee sack is the GrainPro bag – essentially a large food-grade plastic bag that green beans are stored within, though still usually put inside a more traditional sack on the outside.  This has lots of advantages by better protecting the green beans and developing a modified atmosphere.  If you’re into bags, you can read all about them HERE.

The problem with traditional sacks is that they often have an open weave and are porous so they don’t protect against moisture or other liquids.  Given the journey that coffee goes on from the country of production before it arrives in the UK, there are plenty of opportunities for temperature changes, humid atmospheres, and the chance for potential contamination.  The GrainPro bag makes a big difference by protecting a quality coffee on this journey.

The Brazilian coffee producer Daterra has taken things a step further with their vacuum packed ‘boxes’.  We’ve been a fan of Daterra Bruzzi for a long while and use it as part of our Lusty Glaze espresso, so grabbed the opportunity to further improve the quality by using these boxes.  Rather than explain what they are all about, check out this video from Daterra (which also has lots of generally interesting info and a narrator with a smoother voice than the coffee they produce!):

The quality of the vacuum packed boxes is amazing, and they are great for a micro-roaster being 24kg, but the experience of opening a vacuum pack kind of lacks something compared to a sack.  You get the aroma of green beans rather than jute, and the beans are much better protected…just the whole experience is a bit sterile compared with the traditional sack.  It’s a bit like comparing the experience of listening to an analogue recording with digital, you know the sound isn’t as ‘perfect’ and there are crackles and hisses, but there’s something about analogue that makes it more of an experience.  So we won’t be giving up using coffee from sacks for a while (we also like decorating the roastery with them!), but where boxes are available we think the improved quality is generally worth it for just a bit more in cost.

Pedro (our cast-iron roaster) micro-roasted a 10kg batch of a new espresso this week, destined for some serious coffee and surfing fans in Polzeath.  For our ‘design for life’ espresso project we were set a goal to design an espresso that best represents ‘time spent in the tube’ using only high-quality traceable arabica beans.  We started by returning to origin to see whether a single-estate bean might fit the bill, and whilst we tasted some great examples we came to the conclusion that combining these in a blend would better achieve our taste goal: an espresso with clean, crisp and bright acidity balanced by a mellow sweetness.  It had to be “mellow”, surfer dudes wouldn’t accept anything less (or more).  The outcome is an espresso that takes a bit of practice to knock on the head each time, but one that delivers a great taste experience when perfected – with or without milk.

Selecting our three-bean mix wasn’t too difficult, given our familiarity with the characteristics of each and what they can therefore contribute to a blend.  A decent back-bone and smoothness comes from Sumatra Lintong, which also adds a touch of syrupy fruitiness.  Fazenda Palmital beans from the Cabo Verde district of Brazil give a marzipan sweetness thanks to the Catuai and Mundo Nova arabica varietals with a mix of natural and wet processing.  A good amount of fully washed Tanzanian peaberry (Ngoro Ngoro crater highlands) completes the blend and provides the citrus fruit acidity to cut through milk.   The roasting profile turned out to be the deal-breaker and, perhaps surprisingly, pre-blending was found to be the best approach to achieve the most even roast and balanced taste.  Too light a roast (just after first crack) gave an espresso with fabulous acidity but a bit too much for some, and the sweetness wasn’t, well…. “mellow” enough.  Compared with Lusty Glaze espresso the acidity was off the scale!  By roasting the beans to a mid-point between first and second crack using a reduced heat input the mellow sweetness develops in the Fazenda Palmital beans and the acidity drops slightly to a level that gives a perfect balance.

The roast profile has been coined the Polzeath Roast as it sounds a lot better than ‘city’, ‘light french’, or whatever else you might call it! And it’s also the only place you can drink it at the moment.  We’ll be adding this as an alternative style of espresso to our Lusty Glaze in a few weeks, but if you’re impatient head over to Polzeath for time in the tube and you might find some!

Our ‘Design for Life’ project reached a stage where we needed to get blending…so for the past week we’ve been mixing things up at the roastery.  The only rule, as ever, was there wouldn’t be any robusta beans touching ‘Pedro’ our Joper roaster.  Whatever some might say to justify robusta beans being used in an espresso blend, we think they just taste cheap and nasty!  What made the blending and espresso construction more interesting for us is that we were given “time in the tube” as inspiration, so we then developed an end goal in terms of how we wanted this espresso to taste…

‘Time in the tube’ doesn’t involve the London Underground, but a more laid back (and wet) Cornish equivalent!  The espresso needed to reflect this laid back style with a mellowness, but also a crisp acidity to produce a bright espresso with enough adaptability for use with or without milk.  So a contrasting style to our Lusty Glaze espresso which also has a mellowness, but is quite low in acidity and focuses on maximising body and dark chocolate notes.  Cue the Ethiopian Sidamo Q1!

You can’t beat a good African coffee to lift acidity and give a zingy and fruity kick.  We’ve been comparing the Sidamo and our Tanzanian Kilimanjaro as part of a three-bean and three-continent blend, using different proportions and roast profiles.  We’ve nailed the mellowness by using an estate-grown Brazilian (natural, pulped natural and semi-washed) which contributes a soft sweetness and body, but the real tricky part is that introducing beans into the blend with too much acidity risks wiping out some sweetness during espresso extraction.  We’re looking for a soft mellow sweetness and a bright acidity at the same time.  This is also where the coffee roasting plays an important part – as the roast gets ‘darker’ the acidity drops off and bitterness rises.  We think we’ve found the right beans, and the best blend proportions, so now it’s all down to determining the roast profile.  We need more ‘roasting time’ and less ‘tube time’!

A friend recently said that when it comes to judging coffee the “cup never lies”.  It sounds a bit like the title of a James Bond movie, but he’s right.  The trouble is there are a lot of different tastes out there, so it can be hard to objectively judge a coffee when dealing with such a subjective thing as ‘taste’.  The cupping process attempts to introduce some objectivity to what might otherwise be an impossibly subjective process.  We’ve been on a cupping mission this week as part of our ‘design for life’ espresso project…

One of the first tasks we have as part of our project is determining whether an espresso blend or single-provenance bean is the way to go.  This is largely determined by what the end-goal is, but for the timebeing we wanted to see how our Ethiopian Sidamo Q1 performed as an espresso.  In particular, how well might it perform as a high-quality everyday espresso?

Our method of cupping involved the traditional technique, followed by pulling lots of espresso shots.  Heated debate on scoring and taste descriptions followed, and due to the high consumption of coffee not a lot of sleep took place afterwards.  It was possible to reach immediate agreement on one aspect: the Sidamo Q1 makes a great espresso, but a very specific tasting one.  A bright and clean tasting acidity, a distinctive character very similar to a spicy Aussie Shiraz, with a medium body was the general consensus.  The aroma caused most debate and needed an executive decision, so I’m going with floral and ‘cut grass’ (honest).

Since our cupping we’ve been enjoying the Sidamo as an espresso.  It has a very specific taste though – one that suites those looking for a great example of an Ethiopian Sidamo, and/or who favour a bright and zingy espresso style with good acidity.  Also, one that is best served without milk.  As an option for an espresso the Sidamo Q1 is great at defining how a good example should taste, but it won’t give the adaptability needed for an everyday espresso.  Such an espresso generally needs to work when served with or without milk, have character and complexity (but not sit too far within one ‘taste camp’), and also have sufficient flexibility to produce a good pour with a different range of skill and machines used.  Quite a tall order…

Our next ‘design for life’ project task is to achieve these goals through selecting and roasting beans that will give the necessary adaptability, but at the same time will create an espresso worthy of comment.  In the same way that Lusty Glaze espresso has a character, but also adaptability.  Only it needs to be different.

For the last couple of days the Hands-On Roastery has smelt of jute and green beans from four different continents! A new selection of beans is always exciting and not just because the coffee sacks all have something different to say…this time we have some extra special, but complicated, coffee beans.

African coffee can be tricky for a coffee roaster – sourcing beans is only half the story, but an essential part of the process which involves a lot of research and questions to find the highest quality coffee.  As part of our ‘design for life’ espresso project our starting point was to ‘return to the origin’ and what better way than the birthplace of coffee: Ethiopia.  We wanted to see what an Ethiopian coffee might contribute to an espresso, and also see how it performs as a single-origin espresso.

A Sidamo was top of our list.  Grown in the Sidamo Province of Ethiopia, Sidamo is available as either dry-processed or washed (unlike most other coffee growing regions in Ethiopia, such as Harrar, where coffee is predominantly dry-processed).  Whilst there are some fantastic dry-processed coffees from Ethiopia it can be like a game of Russian roulette finding them, and the ripest and best quality coffee fruit tends now to be sold to washing stations where it is prepared for export.   The classic description of Sidamo is having lemon and citrus notes, with a deep winey taste that’s often spiced, and a floral aroma.  Washed Sidamo tends to have a lighter body and less of an earthy taste than dry-processed with a delicate complexity.  So the decision was made that we wanted a washed Ethiopian Sidamo.  Simple?  No chance…

The methods for grading Ethiopian coffee can differ by region, and the Ethiopian Coffee Exchange (ECX) has its own internal grading system (1-9) which differs from the export grading system (assigned by the Central Liquoring Unit).  So identifying the top grade of Ethiopian Sidamo available can be pretty confusing!  An export grade of 1 or 2 is given for fully washed beans so that was a good starting point for us.  Then we came across a Sidamo with a Q1 designation.  Speciality grades of Q1 and Q2 are granted by Ethiopian Q graders, determined by cupping and defect count.  The ECX feature these highest quality Sidamo coffees in a catalogue for the export market.  So after a lot of interrogation, we selected the washed Ethiopian Sidamo Q1.  To celebrate, we put a small batch in the roaster straight away for a trial roast – here is a short video leading up to and including ‘first crack’ of our Ethiopian Sidamo Q1:

The next stage is the best – cupping.  More on that in our next blog post.  In the meantime, those with a coffee subscription might have some Ethiopian Sidamo Q1 landing on their doorstep next week!

When it comes to roasting coffee specifically intended for espresso, there are so many different factors to consider that it’s a bit like an engineering design project (minus the technical drawings).  The approach taken with Lusty Glaze was to decide on a style and taste as the goal, and then work back by finding the coffee beans and roast profile that could deliver this.  So when a customer asked if we could roast coffee to use as their unique espresso, it was the perfect excuse for a new design project.  Our ‘design for life’ project is in its early stages, so we thought it would be a good idea to chart the whole process via The Blog.

Like any good design project, it’s first necessary to deconstruct the end product and consider each component part.  Antonio Gaudi said: “originality consists in returning to the origin”.  This had absolutely nothing to do with coffee because Gaudi was an architect – though being a bit of a genius, perhaps he enjoyed a good brew and foresaw the Third Wave of coffee!  It happens to be our project starting point: returning to the origin in coffee terms means considering what beans we’re going to use, and whether we actually need to blend at all to create the perfect espresso.  How about using a single-origin, or even better, a single-estate bean? Isn’t blending coffee what used to be required when high-quality coffee beans were lacking?  Our next blog post will cover our findings.  In the meantime, we’ve got new green beans to source…

As predicted, the email contained a great description of the Las Lajas beans including a whole heap of adjectives (or Las Ladjectives!) that hadn’t been apparent from our cupping, but still made perfect sense.  The honey tone that we felt stood out in the Las Lajas was agreed, but in addition Mr Wallace had this to say in terms of espresso: “it has a sweet floral note with a tang in the way honey is sweet but with more complexity than white sugar. I find it can have quite tangy acidity as well in a similar way to pineapple or pink grapefruit”.  As a filter coffee his choice of ladjectives included a “buttery and smooth” mouthfeel.

As tempting as it might be we’re not going to update our website to describe the El Salvador Las Lajas as tasting like pink grapefruit, but sat here with cold hands wrapped around a Flat White made with Las Lajas there’s definitely a bit of grapefruit in there somewhere.  And a bit of manuka honey.  Believe it or not, it also tastes like good coffee should do too.

If you’ve got any of your own ‘ladjectives’ we’d love to hear of them!

One day we’d like to come up with a formulae like E=MC² that takes into account all the variables (type of bean, processing method, roast profile, extraction etc.) and tells you what your coffee will taste like!  But for the meantime we’re happy experimenting (because we’re no good at algebra and enjoy tasting a lot of coffee in the name of experimentation).

The rules for our roasting showdown were carefully drawn-up: Two roasts of Lusty Glaze espresso, each roasted to the same ‘end-point’, BUT using two very different roasting profiles to get there.  That meant everything was the same (green beans, our Joper roaster ‘Pedro’ etc.), including the point at which each batch of Lusty Glaze was ‘dropped’ from Pedro.  Both batches of Lusty Glaze looked the same, the difference was how we got to that end-point – a different time/temperature curve (controlled by heat input) and hot-air flow (Pedro has a damper).  We could draw a graph but that would be getting a bit Open University, so hopefully you’ll get the picture.

The first Lusty Glaze roast profile was longer with a gradual increase in bean temperature, whereas the second by comparison was more like a 100m sprint to reach first crack…it took 3.75 minutes less to reach its end-point when it was dropped for cooling.  Then came the hard part – waiting 48 hours to try both as an espresso.

The Outcome:

We’ve tasted a lot of Lusty Glaze espresso, and know it better than pretty much any anything else (THIS is a close second!).  So we felt pretty confident about being able to compare our two ‘showdown’ alternative roasts.  Here’s our results sheet:

It came as a bit of a surprise to find that both batches were still clearly identifiable as Lusty Glaze.  Both retained the full-body and smooth mouthfeel, even the 100m sprint version (AKA Speedy Glaze).  But hidden beneath this were quite a few differences, most noticeably with Lusty Glaze’s chocolatey taste.  This was all down to how the differing roast profiles effected sweetness. Lusty Glaze normally has a dark chocolate taste that carries through milk.  Our slow-roasted batch of Lusty had much more of a milk chocolate sweetness, whereas the “Speedy Glaze” version had a well-developed dark chocolate taste, similar to Bakers Chocolate.  The acidity was also a notch lower.

The darker that coffee is roasted, then the greater the caramelisation of sugar that takes place (so it tastes less ‘sweet’).  So these results would be expected if our coffee had been roasted to a different ‘end-point’, but not necessarily by simply using different profiles.  But what we think had an even greater impact was moisture loss – Speedy Glaze was roasted using a lower airflow setting, meaning the beans got hotter more quickly but with less overall moisture loss.  Loosing less moisture seemed to help retain more ‘brightness’ in the espresso.

So just like brewing techniques, two different roast profiles also created two subtly different espressos.   What next? 2 roasts, 4 extractions, 1 cup.  Plus, one confused and caffeinated roaster.

In the midst of the Christmas rush we received a delivery at the roastery of some new stock.  This included one of the most distinctive coffees we’ve roasted in a long while: Sumatra Lintong.

Due to the Sumatran system of mixing batches of fruit prior to final processing/drying there can be quite a bit of variability in the cup.  When it’s good, Sumatran coffee is pretty hard to beat though – amazing body, smooth mouth-feel, and a complex earthy/spicy character.  Our Lintong is grown by small holders in the clay soils of the Lintongnihuta district, in a small area to the south-west of Lake Toba, and is Grade 1.  Like Mandheling (which we also roast), Lintong is best described as ‘semi-washed’, a process that gives the coffee much of its character.  With such a distinctive coffee we thought it would be good to have a “Sumatra Lintong showdown” – the same batch of beans, from the same roast (3 days old)…but using four different extraction methods: cafetiere, pour-over (Hario Dripper), Aeropress, and espresso.  With such a distinctive coffee we wanted to find out how the cup would differ using these different methods.

Cafetiere (AKA Plunger or French Press):

Extraction ratio: 6% (60g coffee / 1000g water)

Brewing time: 4 minutes 30 seconds

Tasting notes: Exceptionally smooth with full body, low acidity, malty, cocoa, only slight sweetness, minimal bitterness.  Rounded and lingering finish maintains spicy character.

Pour-over (Hario® V60-02 Dripper):

Extraction ratio: 6% (24g coffee / 400g water)

Extraction time: 2 minutes 45 seconds

Tasting notes: Full bodied with slightly less smoothness and mouth-feel compared with cafetiere, touch of sweetness but overall ‘dry’ (in same sense as wine), slight fruity acidity.  Moderate but clean aftertaste.

Aeropress®:

Extraction ratio: 6% (18g coffee / 300g water)

Extraction time: 20 seconds (plus 15 seconds steep) (We also used the inverted method with a 1 minute steep time… this produced a more complex coffee and the tasting results are based upon this)

Tasting notes: Full bodied, mellow and earthy.  Almost buttery.  Slight cinnamon spiciness.  Quite clean aftertaste similar to pour-over, but longer lasting.

Espresso (Izzo Alex Duetto Mark II®):

Extraction ratio: 55% or 1.8 (18g coffee / 33g liquid / 60ml double espresso including crema)

Extraction time: 31 seconds

Brew Temperature: 94°C

Tasting notes: Good body with creamy mouth-feel, syrupy fruit (fig, prune), underlying marzipan sweetness, hint of liquorice, Baker’s chocolate finish.  Complex.

Outcome:

Whilst the four different extraction methods resulted in broadly similar dominant features (as you would expect from Lintong – full body, smooth, low acidity), discrete differences were also found.  Perhaps unsurprisingly the espresso produced the most complex coffee, with a syrupy fruitiness that the other methods failed to demonstrate.  At the other end of the spectrum using a cafetiere resulted in a super-malty and chocolatey coffee, with a lingering spicy and cocoa finish.  The pour-over and Aeropress were both ‘cleaner’ (as expected using paper filters) with a consequent loss of the malty cocoa tastes present in the cafetiere, but with more complexity and slight acidity gained as a result.  The Aeropress also had a hint of the complexity from the espresso, but nothing near the real deal.

So what did this all prove?  Well, that four extractions don’t really make one cup! A distinctive coffee like Sumatra Lintong is identifiable no matter what brewing method is used, but there are sufficient differences to influence the chosen method based upon particular tastes and therefore personal preferences.

A few late nights roasting this week have been accompanied by the sound of a rolling ‘second crack’.  This isn’t something our roaster has been used to – the majority of our coffee leaves the roaster before the beans start making their second crackling noise whilst tumbling around the hot drum.  But the latest edition to our ‘Signature Range’ is a deeper roasted coffee and therefore needs to spend a bit longer in the drum to develop those distinctive flavours.

Black Chough (pronounced “chuff”) is named after a bird, once common in Cornwall but sadly now found in only a few isolated spots on the Cornish coast.  The good news is that it’s making a return – you can read about it HERE.  Our Black Chough blend uses Latin American arabica beans which are micro-roasted to bring out a rich and intense flavour, whilst at the same time minimising smoky tastes that sometimes dominate darker roasted coffee.  But the Black Chough name isn’t just inspired by the darker roast; this blend is influenced by the ‘west coast’ coffee roasting style from the USA, characterised by a caramel bitter-sweetness.  With a hands-on twist coming from Cornwall’s own remote west coast, we’ve developed a roasting profile that gives the intensity of a dark roast whilst still maintaining a very well-balanced taste.  Darker roasted coffee doesn’t have to taste bitter!

Black Chough can be enjoyed as a brewed coffee, and also makes for an enjoyable espresso. Expect a medium bodied espresso, with an acidity that’s apparent but not overpowering, plus light smoky notes on the aftertaste.