Post for the hay of it . . .

Well, as with most things in life I find myself lacking commitment to this blog. Since it's just for me, I'm only disappointing myself. I've roasted quite a bit of varieties since last posting. All of which have been good, but haven't noted the differences. Today I'll roast for my out-laws' church event next week. Hopefully I'll get some feedback. When I went to Austin, I took some coffee, but haven't heard anything back there. Could be a sign that I need to keep my day job. :-)

Sumatra Classic Mandheling

So, I roasted some Sumatra Classic Mandheling yesterday. Very nice. Went with an FC+ approach and imbibed within 8 hours of roasting. Suprisingly it did not smell like tuna when I ground it. Right now I just finished roasting some Congo Kivu Peaberry, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway, the Sumarta is very good - classic : earthy, low acid, yummy. Not much more to say. I'll cup some more here in a bit and try to describe. Just finished the Congo and it went darker than I was anticipating. I love being able to set and forget the iRoast2 when I'm on baby duty, but I definitely get inconsistent results that way. I went with setting 5, a 9:30 profile, and it's in the upper 80's outside. I'm thinking that Peaberry's may get darker quicker. Anywho, not much to say at this point. Just trying to keep up with my personal log of what I'm roasting. If you've stumbled upon this page - my apologies. :-)

First & Foremost

Welcome to my blog about coffee, technology, and lactation - or more likely the delivery devices for lactation. Anyway, I needed a place to log my coffee cuppings and I thought, "what better place than a searchable, readily accessible blog?" And I couldn't think of a better place, so here I am. Hopefully you have gone to another website by now. If not, I welcome you on to boredom.

First things first. I roasted some Mexico FTO (Fair Trade) Chiapas -Special Lot from Sweet Marias (http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.central.mexico.html#ftooaxaca). This is from my Christmas bunch - which I believe I need to get on the ball and roast like crazy to get through. I'm afraid that I'm going to let the coffee go stale. Anyway, I was attempting to roast at FC (full city) on my new I-Roast2 that I purchased recently. Roast was done on Sunday night, 06.03.07 - I used my handy setting lucky number 7 (will spell out my profiles in another post), but had to walk away to watch Aidan. Anyway, it was rather hot outside - ambient temperature in the 90s and by the time I got back outside it was into the second crack. So, this 150 gram batch went a little darker than I wanted. I had my first cup tonight. Used my single serve pour over drip.

Sweet Maria's bag says complex fruits, mango, green pear, starfruit, arise. Well, I've never been much of a fruit person, so I need to taste those fruits to know. My opinion - dry fragrance was not very appealing - harsh. Wet aroma however is very nice - almost a vanilla, sweet smell. Taste is interesting - strong on the palate, bitter, almost like bark; much like people expect in a typical cup of coffee. However on the front end I do get hints of fruits. Will need to brew a few more cups and come back to it. Overall though, a good cup of Joe. Need to roast it lighter and see how it goes too.

So, this is my first attempt at cupping. It's quite mockable, so I'll finish by saying, "boobs!"

- Jon