got milk?

sweet. salty. bitter. sour. savory (umami). what's missing?

calcium, evidently.

a couple quick, random notes about this.

one. why is it always such a big deal to re-inform people that mice, rats and the like share such similar biological makeups, as though the rodents are somehow more exalted than other vermin, or as though we humans are simply nothing special? funny.

two. i'm not sold on the whole "human animal's evolutionary makeup innately senses the need for calcium and thus seeks out food rich in calcium" worldview. for one, it's too darwinian for me. second, i've read the omnivore's dilemma and, heck, i can eat anything i want (even though pollan's descriptors of why we can eat anything we want are, well, a touch darwinian for me.)

third. while there seems to be a lot of scientific-like writing here to buttress these claims, in the end--well, so far, at least--they are still largely unfounded claims in much the same way as, say, phrenology was way back when.

this is not necessarily a coffee-related post other than to say i consider myself to be at least an average cupper but don't recall having ever attributed anything on the cupping table to "calcium." mineral, maybe. creamy perhaps. but milky?

one day mayhaps we'll all be hunting for calcium in our micro lots. but poor umami. no sooner does it don the mantle of lingual legitimacy than it has to give up the spotlight to a bunch of milk drinking rats. no justice in this world, i tell ya.

fruit

people talk about "fruit" all the time in reference to coffee. roasters and cuppers, especially, are particularly vocal offenders. as a retail coffee consumer it can understandably be daunting and a little bit intimidating hearing such nomenclature. to be sure, every area of study has its jargon but coffee descriptions can seem a touch over the top at times. and i seriously think that to be a good cupper is necessarily precluded by being a good vocabularist. with an alleged estimated 800+ identifiable flavor characteristics in coffees it's no wonder the two skill sets go hand in hand.

i know this because as both a roaster and a webtailer i am forever digging into the recesses of my tastebuds' memories for appropriate descriptor layovers for this new coffee or that. and while the bottom line is that in relation to good, clean fruit, good coffees have it and bad coffees don't, truthfully, there are layers upon layers of flavor complexities that the better coffees out there possess in spades. finding ways to capture lingually the essence of a substance that--quite literally--covers that very lingual muscle is an ever-elusive, ever-rewarding journey.

to that end, it makes imminent sense to your humble blogger that having a deep arsenal of "fruited" vocabulary can only come with an ongoing search for, well, more fruits to taste. real fruits. fruits you've tasted time and again (and can thus pull out when it's time to describe a coffee) and fruits you never knew existed. maybe that's the other layer to this onion of a scenario: maybe the reason a roaster or cupper begins to use the same fruit descriptors repeatedly is because he is only eating the same fruits repeatedly. over time, it becomes a little like the (old) adage that when the only tool you have in the toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

enough philosophizing. i've been buying weird, exotic fruits over the last several weeks with an eye (and a tongue) toward expanding my grasp of "fruit" as a coffee descriptor and refining my understanding of the sugar/sweet components in coffee--or, more appropriately, perhaps, how the brain perceives sweetness in coffee.

having access to a good produce market helps. dried up starfruit and bruised persimmons will never do. that's why--hate to say it, but--a place like austin-based whole foods is so helpful. they've been instrumental in this ad hoc learning journey of mine. not only do they stock a large assortment of traditional fruits, but they also bust out the fruits you've never even thought you've heard of hearing about. and let's not even get started on their extensive line of bulk dried fruits for everything from explosively sweet thompson flame raisins to curious acai and dried goji berries. (can't even begin to describe those. go. taste 'em for yourself.)

you're getting that the syllogism is simple: expand the base of knowledge your tastebuds have around the kinds of sugars that most prominently display themselves in fruits (of which coffee is one) and you'll likely be a more proficient cupper and thus able to identify more readily what is and is not a defect, overripe, etc. the goal is clear. it is to grow and mature as a coffee taster for the sake of unlocking ever more of coffee's myriad secrets. keeping sight of that goal each step will help the careful observer reference and categorize one's learnings into actionable thoughts and processes in the march toward greater coffee knowledge. couple that with a standard tool like the cupper's flavor wheel and you're arming yourself with knowledge at the cupping table that can help you better make those decisions of which coffees (if any) to buy and how best to market them after you buy them. it's both defensive and offensive in that sense. many wholesale dollars are riding on your decisions. many more potential retail dollars hang also in the balance. and between the two of those...you will be able to act with greater confidence as it pertains to sweetness and "fruit" in the cup.

has it really been almost a month?

i'm getting pretty bad at blogging. maybe i blogged so much in the early days because i didn't have any real work to do. in any event, i just wanted to highlight an event i participated in a couple weeks ago that ties in with another project i've begun work on.

not long ago i took a trip up the road to austin to be part of the Texas Coffee Think Tank. the name sounds auspicious, but it was really just an informal gathering of texas coffee professionals designed to share experiences and encourage each other around coffee. i was asked to lead a cupping session for our inaugural meeting and afterward we would share lunch, beers and conversation around what we wanted the group to accomplish coffee-wise.

i thought about all the regular cupping sessions i've done in the past (geography as flavor, how roast affects flavor, cupping for defects, pre-ground versus fresh-ground, etc.) but since it was august i realized it was a golden opportunity to undertake a very special cupping.

some of you who have read here for a while know i am participating in a two year study with some colleagues that focuses on packaging and storing greens in ways that can possibly help maintain freshness better than traditional jute/burlap. with my friend jaime acting as catalyst we decided to vacuum pack several samples of fresh greens during our january/february '07 trip to guatemala. the idea was to separate vac-packed samples into room temp green samples and frozen green samples, and then every six months for two years we would open the corresponding samples from each storage method, roast them identically, cup them and capture any notes. jaime and i have both blogged about this before, so i won't rehash it all now. but i did notice in the run up to my meeting in austin that since it was now august (six months after returning from guatemala) it would be a golden opportunity to utilize the unbiased palates of the others at the meeting.

for the meeting's cupping i decided to try something a little different. it just so happens that i have greens from the same lot of the same farm in guatemala from '06 and '07, as well as the frozen samples from '07. so it was the nearly perfect apples to apples comparison i was looking for to determine the affects of time on greens. i say "nearly perfect" because both the '06 and '07 non-frozen have been carefully stored at room temperature, but the '07 non-frozen has actually also been rebagged out of jute and into plastic. and of course, the '07 frozen has been removed from jute, vac-packed and frozen immediately upon my return home at a constant zero degrees fahrenheit. close enough for government work, i guess.

anyways, visually, the greens were easily identifiable. the '06 had a pallid color relative to the solid jade of the '07 non-frozen. but the frozen '07 looked so much richer jade than even the non-frozen '07 that it almost looked as though they were different beans altogether. the roasted aroma of both whole bean and ground was almost a dead giveaway. and finally, of course, the tasting was the real test. no surprises...the frozen sample ran away with it. unbelievably fresh, fruited and sweet with a high degree of jasmine-citrus aromatics and fragrance.

now, typically i'm a big fan of blind cupping; and normally i would have conducted this session blindly as well. but i felt it was more important to make it known which was which for the purposes of level-setting everyone's palate to what fresh tastes like. did i tip the jury? i really don't think so. half the group had to ask me which was which anyways because they were busy talking among themselves as i was explaining. but they were asking which was which because when they got to the frozen sample they were blown away and were only asking to confirm what their tongues were telling them.

the rest of the meeting was productive and fun. john from jp's java (the founder of the group and our host for the day) made lasagna for everyone and supplied the beer. some great ideas were borne from the meeting and everyone looks forward to september's get together at austin java, where we are trying to get a screening of the movie black gold. eventually brown will host a meeting, if and when we get our roasterie built here.

oh and by the way, the purpose of the frozen greens experiment is not to get everyone to freeze their greens (although that was a clear winning argument from our first cupping). the purpose is to open the conversation about moving away from storing in jute/burlap by giving viable alternatives. i do have some '07 crop from that farm that is being purposely kept in jute to run against our frozen samples a little later in the year and into next.

no news is bad news

getting new coffees is overwhelmingly fun, interesting and a little nervewracking.

this being the time of year to buy stuff (new crops coming online and all) i am giddy like a child at christmas as i visit my storage warehouse, get some samples and go roast them up to compare to the pre-shipment samples. it's always cool to compare notes with my earlier samples sent.

today i cupped three sample roasts of three coffees i just received: one each from mexico, java and sumatra. and despite the java and sumatra being close geographically (though obviously not process-wise), it would take some doing to find three more different flavor profiles at the table than these.

but the big deal here with this post is the huge difference fresh greens make. by the time it's time to reorder new crops the stuff you have left is getting a little long in the tooth. it's still good stuff; it just doesn't pop crisply. it's like those times when you've got a radio with a mute button that actually doesn't completely mute the sounds. you can still hear some of the tune faintly playing. well, maybe it's not that muted; but that's how coffees get over time. the other main thing you notice is the distinct lack of the now-famed cheerios effect. better quality beans account for this, of course, but also the freshness of the beans themselves is evident in the cup and especially at the cooler temps. no cheerios means more acidity, which i notice fades over time, even in climate controlled situations.

the almost translucent jade green of these beans is also a very happy-making thing. you can stick your nose in the bag when you first cut it open and practically smell the trees. or at least the mill.

those of you who know my business story know that this is the first year really that i'm in a position to buy with the seasons and let me just tell you what a huge difference it makes.

maybe i'll keep some of these back and freeze them right away. they can't be more than a couple months off the trees.

two surprises

i know. shut up.

through one of those quirky twists of fate, i was uber fortunate enough to have been the accidental recipient of two very different but very cool coffees. long story about the winding road of the u.s. postal service, taiwanese characters and confused identities. suffice it to say that the two coffees, one a 20% kona blend supposedly designed for espresso and the other a very cinnamon-ey ethiopia idido misty valley, were both right on the money in their respective ways.

a brief word about the two. i didn't formally cup the 20% kona (yet) but i tried it from the overcup pourover at cone filter auto drip grind level and 195F water. very slight agitation and just under a two minute dwell time created a smokey (it was roasted oily dark) but intensely sweet concoction. as in, i was wide eyed at the clarity of sweetness achieved from such a dark roast. was not put through the paces on an espresso machine; but i'd be insanely curious to see those results.

second up was the ethiopia idido misty valley. some quickfire thoughts: unusual coloration of the roast. very light; very uniform; very surprising for what (i assume) is a d.p. coffee. a tribute to fastidious pre and post roast sorting? i cupped a line of six of these in a row and found unrivaled uniformity in every cup. no sign of off or renegade defects in isolated cups. it was radically cool. another stunning thing was the clarity these cups had almost immediately. i typically expect and see clarification coming about a third of the way down the tasting cup as the liquid cools. these were straightaway clear as a bell. and also unusually and delightfully "backward." what i mean is that a typical cupping session might consist of coffees that sweeten as they cool, displaying molasses, honey and the deeper sweetnesses as the temperatures drop. this coffee was sweet from the get go with (i hate to use the tired description of) strawberries, butter/cream and jasmine. only as it cooled did the sweetness tarten out a bit into a faint hint of lemon, lemongrass, cedar or, OR! lime in that sweettart way. lemon is too strong a citrus. lime fits the bill for this much better. this coffee surprised me. the hot water smell was raisins and plums. the break showed that cedar/lemongrass sweet tart streak and the first slurps were mild strawberries and cream. strawberries and cream? it was very buttery/creamy, i say. and even now, thirty minutes after, what a pleasant leave. it still tastes like strawberry shortcake piled with sweet cream. i scored it a 91.

i guess that's what no defects and a light roast put to superior coffee will do for you.

i need more info on this coffee? is this bagersh? is it indeed d.p.? if so, how many fingers were ground down to the nubs to sort this coffee? i applaud simon (the aforementioned taiwanese source) for his tireless efforts at clarity through exhaustive de-defecting. superb job. superbness shows in the cup.

defecting, part two

inspired by actual events, your humble blogger has decided to sort a random pound of coffee for defects, roast the defectless batch against a regular, other batch and cup the results. defects were culled using the scaa's defects poster as a guide.

so far the defect picking has been completed and here are the results. there were 72 defects in all, with the most common (38) defect being partial sours. the second most populous group were chipped, broken or partial beans (17), followed by peaberries (10). the rest comprised an amalgamation of the other cat 2 defects such as partial insect bites (1) and (very) partial black bean (2). the rest were unclear as to which category they neatly fit into, as their defectiveness was minor at best and displayed the markings of at least two defects on the list.

in all, there were no death knell defects to be found in the sample pound and this made me quite pleased. not that i expected to see any from this source whatsoever. only that it confirmed the presence of good beans. using the system for adding the defects, however, gave me a total of 12 full defects, which is 4 more than should be seen for premium grade and seven more than for specialty grade.

if i can get this camera in line with the macro lens i'll try for some up closes of the defects.
i'll also mention that in this randomly sampled pound i did not count beans with silverskin on them, something the scca poster indicates as a sign of immature or unripe beans. i didn't count these as defects because i have a pretty good foundation for believing that this source of beans is not picking immature or unripe beans, and because i rarely have any quakers in my batches of this coffee. i'm not sure what causes the silverskin to stay on--a sign of fermenting/drying practices that need to be tightened? i would venture that it's not a dry mill issue, as the beans are already at their necessary moisture content by that point. and i would assume it's not a pulping issue, as a pulper wouldn't remove silverskin anyway, the beans still being in pergomino. the only solution that seems left is fermentation tank/drying.

i digress. next post should be about the comparison cupping. maybe some defect pics.

ah yes, one more thing. while not on the scaa poster, technically a peaberry is a defect. i counted those ten in my defect total.