intrepid510's Coffee Blog

I had a rather busy yet unproductive weekend. I drove around with the family getting a few errands done in San Francisco, and took a few longer drives to go out to a few places to eat. All of that car time really adds up, especially when a drive that normally should take 15 minutes, takes closer to 45 minutes. However, that is beside the point.

When brewing espresso there is one critical element to the puzzle, and it is grinding it fresh to a nice grainy powder. To do that obviously you need to have a grinder in your home, the problem being most grinders that are designed for home use don't do a great job of grinding for espresso. Probably, the best line of home grinders on the market are by Baratza..

While I would say that I have not been wow'd lately by a lot of coffees, I have gotten use to getting lots of good coffee so perhaps that my problem! The good coffee has just kept coming from Mtn. Air Roasting and of the three that I got the Rwanda Coko Coop was my favorite.

I have had a lot of good coffee lately between the new lot of coffees that I have gotten from Mtn. Air Roasting Company and all of the others. And I have found that the amount of bad coffee that I have gotten so far this year is probably limited to two or three bags, however the amount of coffee that has wow'd me is probably even less.

So what I am wondering is; what coffees out there that have been wow'ing you?

Summer is here and if you are a coffee fiend like the rest of us you are probably drinking your coffee a little bit more often on ice lately.

I have talked about iced coffee in the past, and I know there have been others here that have done the same. I just wanted to share how I have been brewing my iced coffee recently as I have updated it a bit from what I was doing before. Now as with everything your tastes and results may vary.

I am of course referring to Williams and Sonoma, when it comes to coffee they are a very cruel cruel dispicable place. If you don't know Williams and Somona is a kitchen supply store, and carrying a wide variety of mid to high end kitchen goods. They also tend to carry a variety of different food stuffs, mainly stuff with long shelf lifes; mixes for batters and some different pickled goods, and of course coffee.

There is a pretty great trend out there among cafes that I am really liking; carrying multiple roasters. I would say that most independent shops tend to have a strictly monogamous relationship with a specific roaster and carry only their beans, however with so many great roasters out there some shops have started carrying more than one roaster and I like what I am seeing.

Well about a month ago I attended a get together with some other home coffee enthusiasts and learned about a company for home roasters called, the coffee project. Now if you have an exceptional memory and you hang on my every run on sentence you will know that I sent away for a sample of green beans to do a very small sample of home roasting!

Over the past few months I have gotten away from posting too much about the coffees that I am currently working through at home. I have done this for a few reasons, most of the coffees here on Roaste and else where are all really good, and while I did say all of the coffees that I have been drinking lately are really good, nothing has really wow'd me either.

Right now I have headed my way from AJ's Coffee a bag of Musasa Coop. I really enjoyed the previous coffee that I had gotten from AJ's and the description looked very enticing, "clean, juicy mouthfeel, sugar sweetness, cherries, dark fruit." Sound good right? Well I ordered it, and then it hit me like a sack of bricks, I've seen this coffee around.

I have been thinking a little bit about extraction times ever since making a mildly unpleasent pot of coffee last week. The pot of coffee was mildly over-extracted, I had forgot to adjust the grind on my grinder going from a Hario v60 to my auto-dripper with a Melitta cone. The V60 with it's large hole requires a finer grind to slow down the water, however the adjustment in grinding really got me thinking about extraction times. 

This video has been out there for almost two months now, but I just happened to come across it yesterday and thought that I would share. It's part of a video series highlighting different people/businesses in various cities that are typically consider as hipster, it just so happens that specialty coffee tends to be one of them.

I got the Vibiemme Junior HX three months ago from saving up a massive amount of ebeans, and the people at Roaste allowing me to receive them from these blog posts.

So now after three months time with this espresso machine I feel like I have gotten to know what it can and can't do pretty well, I thought it would be a pretty good time to revisit it here.

The Basics

Thankfully I got in my order from PT's yesterday and I got the Burundi that is featured on the front of the website right now, along with their Flying Monkey Espresso. I have yet to take a taste of the Flying Monkey blend, but have already had the opportunity to brew up the Burundi twice, once as a Hario v60 pour over and the other time in my auto brewer.

I just wanted to talk about my morning experience at Peet's this morning, and what I am going to talk about is probably not going to surprise anyone. However, I have a feeling that I am being a little critical in my thoughts here and would appreciate it if someone would say so or if I am just right on point. You see I do have the nasty habit of being able to think/say things that are just the right amount of joke and truth to be mean, now I am also horrible at retelling thigns so this is going to probably be no where near amusing.

I had mentioned in my last post about the coffee shop SubRosa, and that for their pour over method of choice was the Clever Coffee Dripper with a gold mesh filter. I highlighted it because I believe like a lot of others out there that the Clever Coffee Dripper is a easy hard to mess up way to make coffee that turns out really well. So if I should feel that way and another quality focused coffee shop would put their hat in the ring with the Clever Coffee Dripper.

So I was out this morning as my wife had some business to attend to, i.e. I was just roaming about while I waited to pick her up and of course I ended up at a coffee shop. So this lovely Sunday morning I found myself at SubRosa Coffee in Oakland, Ca. Sadly with child in hand I was not able to take some pictures, however there are nice ones on Yelp that I am using to illustrate my experience.

I am getting to that point in probably a few days that I will be picking up another bag of coffee either on here or through various local means of getting some nice fresh roasted coffee. However, one of the biggest problem is that there is a lot of coffee out there especially when you consider all of the roasters that you can pick up here on Roaste or anywhere else on the internet for that matter, really sometimes it feels like decision paralysis.

One of the interesting things about writing a blog here on this site it has made it incredibly obvious to me that coffee has long since gone from beverage to hobby for me. I assume this is the case for a lot of people that blog on this website and those that I talk with over some of the online communities that I visit in regards to coffee. However, I am not quite sure when that change from coffee the beverage became coffee the hobby, I guess the best way I can describe is like when you fall in love with a friend.

The obvious answer to that question is, never.

However, what I really mean by that is when do you stop drinking coffee during the day. This is all pretty much up to yourself and how you body handles caffeine. It seems like from talking to people that there are a few different variables that really do into this question, how much coffee you normally drink, your age and your own disposition to caffeine.