on coffee brewing

 - receive coffee

congratulations on your choice of coffee! 

- smells

if it has started resting for a good time, whether peak or not, you will notice the aromatics through smelling the bag of beans.

1. somehow sometimes, a bag of coffee can degas for a long time and peak at 3 months post-roast. generally the lighter the roast, the longer the resting period. but i still digress. 

2. then, there was this nestor lasso bourbon aji thermoshock, which dan purchased along our apollons gold groupbuy. 3 months into the rest, from smelling the beans, we got laksa leaf, lemongrass, torch ginger, kind of aromatics, but when he started pouring water, and brew, the brew was nothing like the smell, it was watermelon, some exotic layering, beautiful coffee.

3. generally you would be able to smell if a coffee is kind of ready to brew, when the inherent aromatics start to come out which is, although, when it starts to smell akin to raisins, it is probably starting to stale. but i have yet to find a proper guide for this.

4. during my time at doublecheck, we had afloats coffees on the bar, three espressos and three filters. for the espressos, at one point that i had a big mindfuck was when we had their thailand white honey, aboriginal project pink bourbon natural, and ethiopia washed something.

the shock was: 

the pink bourbon pealed 2-3 weeks in and started going downwards 1-2 months in

the thailand, which i dontk now how to calibrate, tasted really muddy and flat and chlaky and grainy, i tried to go 1 minute shots and it still hardly worked, it was weird, and the only good few times it was successful, it was quite nice, like a nice kenyan.

the ethiopia, now, was quite grassy and low clarity albeit okay to drink from 1-2 months.

halfway through the 2nd month, the coffee suddenly showcases a beautiful orange peel, mandarin note, the aromatics were very good. i even tried doing turboshots with it and turns out good too.

if i were to approach in a roasting perspective, purely guesswork as an amateur trying to ddissect this:

the pink bourbon was very nicely presented, albeit a funky, wine note, it is high sweetness and full bodied. the off peak starting 1-2 months in would be interesting to note in an inventory management perspective. i guess this was roasted quicker and a standard development, maybe 1 minutes -2 minutes.

the thailand however, i feel it needed a harder drying, and a shorter maillard, maybe even a short development, to highlight the teroir.

the ethiopia, i am curious to the roast approach, how to roast in a way that it peaks so nicely 2-3 months in. 

- looks

1. looks can deceive, but not so often in coffee, now look at the bean shape, the size. a lighter color would point towards a lower solubility, which might need you to push the brewing. the opposite is also true. 

2. memorize the bean: the telltale varietal shapes and sizes, the processing affecting the bean, thus affecting how iit would respond in the roasting process, which you see as marbling on the coffee bean.

3. varietals give you an approximate guide on what to expect flavourwise, but generally requires much experience to truly be well adept on this part.

- bites

now, through biting the coffee, you get a gist of its:

density, soft/hard, flavour, porous or not, acidity, sweetness.

and before biting the bean, you can see the cross section of the bean to give you an idea :

a homogenized color would tell you the flavour profile is probably more fixed, while a gradient whether outside-in dark to light or otherwise, may hint at you on the larger range of compounds that makes the brew easily change depending on brewing.

if the bean is easy to much on, i suggest a 1;30 minute to 2 minute brew.

if the bean is not easy to munch, i suggest an extended brewing time.

if the bean hits you with flavour up front, you have an idea on what to expect in brewing, the opposite is the same.

- create brewing draft

so, whatever brewing draft youve made, you can make live adjustments in response to the coffee bed smell, although the smell has much to do with water chemistry, which selectively binds with certain volatiles, while others not.

1. one handy tool i use is to smell the bed approaching the end or halfway through, on rare occasions, i had to cut at 1:10 because the bed started smelling empty. i separated the brew into a different server to finish dripping and tried tasting both, evidently, this coffee was extremely easy to extract and had not much to offer afterwards, unless youre a fan of chaffy water. i ended up liking this approach. lastly bypassing with 20-50ml of water, or more.

- adjust or not.