WE GOT AN OVEN

Yea, the oven we ordered from St. Paul Mercantile came yesterday! We set it up and immediately proceeded to do our best to burn a loaf of bread. Here's a helpful hint, the temperature gauge is widely inaccurate. Don't trust it!

More later,
Morgainne

Roasting Your Own Coffee

This particular post was driven by two factors:  One is, we love to play with stuff in the kitchen.  The SECOND is that virtually all the coffee around the Marina here is very high in the suckage coefficent, is expensive, and more than often, stale.

Full disclosure.  Morgainne and I ran a coffeehouse for a number of years before venturing back into Academe.  We're coffee snobs.  We know the stuff.  So the prospect of dealing eternally with underroasted low-quality beans or stale pre-ground coffee was NOT an option.

Casting about for a solution, we were faced with a couple of problems.  The nearest decent roast coffee was quite a distance away, and once roasted, coffee hits it's peak in about 14 hours and begins to fall off rapidly after that.  After a few weeks, you've got something that is a long way from as good as it could be, though drinkable.

Green beans, however, will literally keep for YEARS.

Looking about on the internet, extremely high quality green beens were readily available even in small lots, and at a lot less than we were paying for crappy supermarket roasts, even considering the freight.  So we bit the bullet and decided to do our own roasting.

Mungo and a bag of fair trade, organically grown, anti global warming,
radiation resistant, non-GMO, magically enhanced, highly literary,
multi lingual, trendy, style conscious, student loan deferring, internet friendly,
and possibly immortality conferring green beans, which, as you can see
are also highly effective at preventing hair loss.

Now, if you're thinking "how nice, the wonderful odor of fresh coffee throughout my vessel," uh, think again.  Roasting coffee REEKS.  It smells like 40 pounds of burning popcorn, and smokes up the place something awful, but honestly, guys, it's worth it for the result.

Here's how to start:  Rinse the beans in a colander, removing any remaining chaff and dust.  We recommend 8 oz. to a pound, max. They don't need to be dry to do this process, in fact, it's better if they start a bit damp.  Take a heavy vessel (we strongly recommend a cast iron dutch oven.....okay, so we pretty much recommend that for everything) and put it on the heat.  You want this thing screaming hot, around 500 degrees F.  Once you get it there, put the beans over heat and begin stirring (or shaking) and don't stop.  You don't need to be too aggressive (which would damage the beans) but you want them to heat evenly and to brown evenly.

Stir stir stir cough cough cough stir stir cough.....

You'll hear coffee roasters speak of the "first crack" and the "second crack."  These are literal noises made by the coffee as it roasts.  At about 5 minutes you'll see the beans begin to become golden brown, you'll see some smoke, and you'll here the unmistakeable "first crack" from the beans.  At this point, you have a very light roast, and the beans are palatable, so if that's what you like, you can stop there.  If not, proceed, dropping the temperature a bit to around 400 F. and continuing to stir or shake.  As the beans darken, the flavors become enriched and you'll begin to see oil coating the outside of the beans.  After about another 10 minutes you'll hear the "second crack" which, like popcorn, can actually be a bit violent, catapulting beans out of your pan.  At this point they'll begin to glisten with oil, and you're in the territory of the richest, darkest roasts.....you're also in the territory of charcoal and of ruining your coffee if you're not careful, so pay attention.  As soon as the beans are just shy of the way you like them, take them off the heat and spread them on a plate to cool.

Now THAT is coffee!  Oh yes.

And there you have fresh roasted coffee, fresher than anything you can buy and bring home. . .

. . . and a galley full of smoke, but trust me, its worth it.

If you find the roast isn't deep enough for your liking, you can simply put the coffee back on and roast it some more, even the next day if you like(by the way, this trick also works if you've bought store bought roasted beans and find them not roasted enough for your tastes).  The roasted, cooled beans can be bagged and should be stored in a cool, dry (or dry-ish, we do live on a boat after all) place.  Wait to grind them until just before you use them as whole beans stay fresher.

There you have it.  It's simple and makes a superior brew.  We recommend the French Press for coffees, but any method will taste better with fresh roasted beans.

Enjoy.

M