My machine is running and I’m drinking Joel’s espresso this morning for the first time in months. I seem to remember that the Sidamo takes a few days to mellow out as right now I’m pulling very bright shots. However, underneath this there seems to be a chocolate and biscuit character, waiting to come to the forefront. The coffee was roasted on the 8th, so it’s on day 2.
I’ve got my espresso machine up and running again! Today when I picked up some beans from Joel he was cleaning out his afterburner where the chaff collects. Apparently the garbage and recycling, or possibly the yard waste, was not being picked up by the garbage men. So I offloaded some chaff for him and threw it in the compost. As I shoveled, hot musty odors of compost were mixed with clean coffee drafts.
On my way back from a hike at Little Crater Lake I got a cappuccino at Mount Hood Coffee Roasters in Rhododendron. They proudly advertised their home made roaster and offered tours during which they would roast a small batch for you. I didn’t do the tour but I did marvel at the contraption. It looked like the kind of thing they might have on a battleship. The zinc box on the floor is where the coffee is roasted using an electric element. The large cylinder with the tapered bottom in back is the afterburner for cleaning the exhaust.
A page from Joel’s notebook. I asked him if this was a graph of flavor development during the roast, he responded obliquely, ‘there’s too much information for it to mean anything.’