dustinfluke.com

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about roasting coffee, coffee shops, selling coffee, designing a new coffee roasting apparatus for personal use, etc. etc. No – I’m not considering attempting such a venture, but I’m certainly thinking about it. If I could, I’d consider opening a coffee shop / roasterie, but I have little savings, no net worth/assets etc. So there’s no way. Besides, it’s just not the right time, and I have a pretty damn good job that I love (most of the time). Although it does keep me plenty busy, at least busy enough to avoid updating this site. I also have an awesome family that comes first.

While I’ve been thinking about all these things, two goals have come to mind.

1. I want to learn more about coffee roasting, so I’m going to need to do it more often.
2. I want to experiment with creating a fluid bed coffee roasting machine, so that may be a summer completion type project. (For now, the heat gun and bread machine setup will have to work.)
3. I want to establish relationships and face to face contacts for people already in the industry.
4. I want to share my knowledge in hopes of creating a network of people to share knowledge about various aspects of coffee.

I did some searching this evening and found quite a few nice websites devoted to such things. Why, while it’s a pretty stagnant group, I’ve been collecting resources via ma.gnolia on the home roasters group I started. While I will need to think about the direction I want to go with everything, I do want to do some coffee tasting/cupping sometime so I can refine my tastes in order to perfect my own blends.

All in all it’s a lot of stuff, but I’ve decided at certain times of the year, I’ll need to focus more intensely on my various hobbies, namely professional fireworks, coffee, and recently, Christmas light shows.
I’ve also gathered enough knowledge by working at Mediaphormedia about django and Ellington (the product I directly support) that I’ve decided it’s time to ditch Dreamhost (eventually) and have signed up for a Webfaction account.

I’m not really certain what I’m going to do, but I’ve got some ideas, most of which will likely come at the aid of the pros I work with. And most likely I’ll find some new domain name for my coffee ventures, or at least segregate it largely from my personal site, just because it’s more about providing a resource. I’ve seen a lot of coffee related resources out there, and most are largely un-eventful, stagnant, or just plain boring (hey wait, I just described this site). I feel that mixing something I’m really in to along with something else I’m very interested in, I’ll have a nice end result. I guess we’ll see.

So with that, I’m sure that over time I’ll begin to post more and more. I’ve already got some stale videos I’ve been waiting to edit. Here’s to having a nice vacation from work to accomplish some things next week!

Merry Christmas!

I roasted some coffee tonight and thought I’d start reviewing coffee or telling what my experience was. I plan to review mostly coffees that I roast at home. Sometimes, I can imagine that based upon my experience I might review the same coffee, but at different roasts. I don’t know if this will be a regular thing or not, but we’ll see. I can’t drink all the coffee I purchase very quickly so these reviews are likely to come once in a while. I’d suspect that the reviews will increase as the new coffee season comes next year and as it gets warmer. It’s hard to roast in cold weather (or at least I haven’t found the right trick or equipment) and the family doesn’t really appreciate the fresh smell of roasted coffee, so I tend to roast outdoors whenever possible.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased 4 green coffees from The Roasterie, in Kansas City. They air roast their coffee just as I do, only on a much bigger scale. I had the privilege last time of seeing their warehouse when I went to pickup my order. It was pretty cool. Maybe some day I’ll have an official tour. I purchased Indian Monsooned Malabar, Papua New Guinea Kimel Estate (again), Costa Rican Brumas Del Zurqui (again), and Mexican Altura. I’ve had the Kimel Estate and still have a lot of the Del Zurqui (at about 12 bucks for 5lbs who can argue? And, they’re for gifts this season)

On to the review! I wasn’t sure what to expect from this coffee. It had a unique description. Here’s an exceprt from theroasterie.com:

“The meticulously prepared dry coffee slowly yellows and expands, taking in the smooth earthy texture of the environment. It is this process that makes Monsooned Malabar so special. This is undeniably the most unique and eye opening coffee to be found. A testament to the way things were, and to they way they can become.”

See what I mean? I can truly say that it’s eye opening, because I only had 2 cups and I’m wide awake at 12:30 in the morning.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the bag of green beans, was that the smell wasn’t like other green coffees I’ve roasted in the past. I think this has to do with the fact it is unique and probably something to do with the region and monsoons there, hence the name. The green beans seemed like they had a spicy / pepper type smell. They were also a little more yellow than other beans I’ve roasted. I know it’s weird, but that’s what I noticed. The roast took a little longer, but in a few minutes I was stirring to cool the beans anticipating the tasting.
The overall taste of the Malabar was very earthy and smoky to me. It was kind of like a Sumatra, but there was something different about it I still can’t figure out. It did have slight nutty tones, but I mostly noticed how smooth, dark, and bold it was. I tasted this just after roasting, so we’ll see in the morning if I’ve changed my mind. In any event, I think it’s going to be a fairly promising coffee. It’s also a special offering by the Roasterie, so I’ll have to be sure to grab some before they stop offering it.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the first review. There wasn’t much review as there was talking about the review process. Hopefully next time around I’ll have something more to say.

So I’ve decided to embarrass myself by putting together an extremely amateur video on roasting coffee. In any event, it’s my first video so I guess it’s not that bad. I’ve also documented this with a flickr set called coffee roasting. It’s probably better than watching some video of me :)

At any rate, here you are for your enjoyment.
(and sorry for the bad thumbnail image. I’m going to fix that. Apparently youtube uses the middle frame of the video for the thumnail image, of which is a picture of my sink…)

Last night I polished off my bag of Papua New Guinea Kimel Estate coffee. I decided to do a medium light roast. While I was previously roasting on my back deck in heat of summer I noticed there was a significant increase of roasting time in my kitchen this time of year. Speaking of which – if you wife doesn’t really like the smell of coffee it’s probably not a good idea to roast in the kitchen :)

It wasn’t that bad. I tried my roast this morning and forgot how awesome my home roasts are. Compared to Archer Farms (Target) whole bean coffee, my roast was obviously better. This morning when I got to work I had already polished off my mug, so I grabbed some of our Folgers. At first I didn’t even know I was drinking coffee! Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but I just have a new appreciation for my own roasted coffee today.

While looking for sources of additional green beans I some how ran across a “What type of coffee are you?” web page:
***You are a Black Coffee***
At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable
At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty
You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it
Your caffeine addiction level: high
What Kind of Coffee Are You?

This seems to be an improvement over my 11% How Web 2.0-aware Are You? score.

I guess to sum up my entry today, if you’ve never tried home roasting – you’re missng out!