Dark Roast Coffee: September 2011

Videos For The Weeks Of September 19 and 26, 2011

I failed to get my video of the week post out last week, so I decided to give you a complete set of videos on Home Coffee Roasting. With a few simple tools, and some green coffee beans, you too, can roast your own coffee.

Disclaimer - roasting your own coffee can be hazardous, due to the high temperatures involved and the fact that the chaff that is released from the beans is highly flammable - do this at your own risk!

Simple Pan Roasting Coffee

In this video, you discover that all you need is a pan, some green coffee beans, and a colander to make your own dark roasted blend.

Roasting Coffee In a Hot Air Popper

This method uses a modified hot air popper to roast your own dark roast coffee. This is much simpler than using the pan method and disposes of the chaff automatically - into the sink.

Roasting With the Gene Cafe Roaster

For those who can afford it, there is the commercially-built hot air roaster. It comes complete with automated temperature control, a countdown timer to track roast time, and an automated cool-down system. My only complaint on this ready-made system is that it won't cool the beans down quickly - which is key to optimum coffee roasting.

I hope these videos have helped you see that you can roast your own coffee - with a little time and effort.

As always, thanks for stopping by and may your next cup be your best!

Starbucks Anniversary Blend - Review

Starbucks Anniversary Blend

The first taste of this coffee has a lot of depth. This is an extremely smooth dark roast blend with a really great mouth feel. The unsweetened brew is very enjoyable with no noticeable bitterness. Starbucks rates this as an "Extra Bold" coffee, which definitely classifies it as a dark roast coffee.

Coffee drinkers that don't normally drink a coffee without sweetener could probably drink this very easily as it is such a mild blend. As the coffee cools you notice a definite bitterness that hits the tip your tongue. Even though that bitterness becomes a little more noticeable as the coffee cools further, it is still a great coffee for those who normally take sweetener in their Joe.

When this coffee is sweetened, it takes on a very friendly character. It is such a smooth blend that one would consider having it as a desert by itself.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this at 9.8 as it is such an excellent blend. The folks at Starbucks did an excellent job of getting the most out of these coffee beans. My complements to them for a really top-notch coffee.

Since this is a limited-edition coffee, I recommend that you go to Starbucks or go online and order some Anniversary Blend - you won't be disappointed.

Thanks for stopping by and as always, may your next cup be your best!

Blended Coffee

Why Is Coffee Blended?

You may have noticed some of your dark roast coffee says that is a particular blend of coffee. Coffee is blended for various reasons. It is often blended to get flavors and characteristics from different coffees, thus creating a cup that has the best characteristics of each of the coffees that have been blended together.

Another reason for blending is to get a flavor that fits a signature coffee type such as Starbucks, Folgers, Seattle's Best, Izzy or any other well-known brand.

Sometimes blends are used to make a coffee if that is fairly low-grade taste better than it actually is by putting in some better grade beams with the lower grade ones, producing a better cup.

One thing that must be decided when making a blend is whether to put all the green coffee beans together and roast them or to roast them separately and then blend them together.

One type of blended roast is in called a melange. In this type of blend you have some beans dark roasted, some medium, and some light roasted to get the best characteristics out of each of the different coffees in the blend. You may be trying for the boldness of the dark roast the smoothness of the medium roast and perhaps even some of the higher flavor tones from a light roasted coffee.

Blended coffees offer us a greater variety of coffee choices and give us many opportunities to experience more of our favorite brew.

One school of thought on blending is that you have signature blends in which you want to produce a consistent flavor to be sold exclusively at a particular chain store or Café - Starbucks and Gloria Jean's are in this category. There are consistency blends which have a very large number of bean sources in them - this makes it possible to substitute another kind of bean in place of one that is not available without the consumers noticing the change. Low cost beans - basically you're adding robusta beans or cheaper arabica beans to produce coffee at a lower price. Then there are single origin blends - they will get coffee from different parts of a certain region and put them into a blend.

In most cases, blending gives you a coffee that brings out favorable characteristics that are not available in an unblended one.

I hope you found this information useful and thank you for stopping by.

Feel free to comment, and as always, may your next cup be your best!

Videos For The Week Of September 12, 2011

Roasting Stages and Using a Homemade Coffee Roaster Videos

Sometimes you just can't make up your mind. That was my problem when I was trying to choose a video for this week, so I chose two distinctly different videos. The first one shows some of the color changes that coffee goes through in the roasting process. It gives you information on how the coffee beans develop in color and how their chemistry changes as they are brought to your favorite roast - be it light roasted coffee or dark roast coffee.

Coffee roasting is something that can be done at home, and there are several methods of doing it - roasting in a pan, roasting in a popcorn popper (don't laugh, its good stuff), or building and roasting in a "custom" homemade coffee roaster - using an old gas grill for the heat source. One disclaimer - if you do your own roasting, I am not responsible for your injuries you may incur - you are supposed to use common sense in handling hot stuff. Enough said, enjoy the videos, and as always, may your next cup be your best!

Roast Development Stages For Coffee Video

Watch for the second time he samples the roast in the first crack stage - one of the beans actually pops out of the sampler!!