roaster's blog
6 October 2010 | 12:34:08 PM
Bill
I’m loving Orange at the moment. The buzz of Spring has brought renewed energy to town, the flowers are out, birds are chirping and crops are looking great.
A big thanks to Shaun Arantz owner/chef of Racine Restaurant for sharing a bit of passion and knowledge lately. Greatly appreciated, and besides, I’m loving the food.
A great mention in Delicious Magazine and The Good Food Guide 2011 has fired us right up to go one better again.
Also we are all very proud to be part of the Evocities Project, we love this city and to anyone contemplating a move here… we say ‘do it’.
So what's good in coffee this month…?
'El Salvador San Emilio'
It’s back by popular demand (but this time from a different grower). A pulp natural RFA certified coffee. It’s lip smacking fruit and black currant notes combined with a rich thick body is perfect for espresso.
However, milk drinkers refrain! This is a stand-alone espresso and does not deserve a fusion of dairy to spoil its great character. But, if you need to, well… I suppose that's ok too.
Buy it online by clicking here.
15 August 2010 | 1:23:19 PM
Bill
‘Sumatran Lintong’
Lintong properly describes only coffees grown in a relatively small region just southwest of Lake Toba in the Kecamatan or District of Lintongnihuta. Small plots of coffee are scattered over a high, undulating plateau of fern-covered clay. The coffee is grown without shade, but also without chemicals of any kind, and almost entirely by small holders.
The coffee is ‘wet processed’ and looks damp and blue-ish green on arrival to our roastery.
This a wonderful coffee full of depth in its body and taste with a very high sugar structure, its rich taste is just so full of molasses type flavours and dark unsweetened chocolate notes.
Buy it online by clicking here.
A Little Bit About Production By ‘Wet Processed’
In the classic ferment-and-wash version of the wet method, the fruit that covers the beans is taken off gingerly, layer by layer. First the outer skin is gently slipped off the beans by machine, a step called pulping. This leaves the beans covered with a sticky fruit residue. The slimy beans then are allowed to sit in tanks while natural enzymes and bacteria loosen the sticky residue by literally beginning to digest it. This step is called fermentation. If water is added to the fermentation tanks it is called wet fermentation; if no water is added and the beans simply sit in their own juice it is called dry fermentation. The fermentation step is one of the main ways coffee mill operators can nuance the taste of the coffees they process.
I've seen this process on a few coffee farms and with fermentation comes the smell of wet old socks. Dry-fermented coffees usually are more complex and sweet than wet-fermented coffees, which tend to be brighter and drier in taste.
After the fermentation step the coffee is gently washed and then dried, either by the sun on open terraces, where the thin layer of beans is periodically raked by workers, or in large mechanical driers, or in a combination of the two. This leaves a last thin skin covering the bean, called the parchment skin or pergamino. If all has gone well, the parchment is thoroughly dry and crumbly and easy removed. Coffee occasionally is sold and shipped in parchment or en pergamino, but most often a machine called a huller is used to crunch off the parchment skin before the beans are shipped. A last, optional step is polishing, which gives the dry beans a clean, glossy look important to some specialty roasters. Other roasters condemn polishing as pointless and detrimental to taste owing to the friction-generated heat it applies to the beans.
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