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New Products from Flair, Fresh Roast, Bonmac and Airscape
If coffee products were movies, these would be great sequels
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Coffee Tasting At Sweet Maria's - Feb. 28th
Sign up and taste the difference between coffees roasted in different machines
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New Postcards. Quakers: Resistant to Roast
Our new postcards. Look for one in your next order.
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How to roast your own coffee
Home coffee roasting is as fun and easy (or as exacting and technical), as you want to make it. Whatever method you use, you will be on your way to drinking much better coffee.
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Product Guide: Our Roasted Coffee Explained
We aren't trying to be a roastery but that doesn't mean we can't roast a few large batches for you every two weeks.
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Roasting for Rustic Sweetness
I've been thinking about coffees that take a little more work in the roaster - coffees that many of the coffee folk these days who are more interested in brighter and more acidic coffees frequently dismiss.
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Roasting Washed Coffees from Ethiopia
Roasting coffees from Ethiopia can be incredibly tricky.
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Latest Posts
Roasted Coffee Comparison: Surface Color and Texture Versus Ground Samples
| Here is a comparison between roasted coffee surface color, surface texture and ground coffee samples. What you can see is that this coffee, our special 2006 selection of Costa Rica Peaberry from Dota, Tarrazu, has a lot of surface color patchiness, and a lot of surface texture at the lighter City roast (first crack completed, roast progress stopped immediately, 426 degrees finish temperature as measured on the Probat L12 roaster. Keep in mind these pictures are taken under 4 strong lights on my photographic copy stand, so in "normal" lighting the surface blotches would not be so extreme, and the overall roast colors would look darker. |
 OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASurface texture influences how you perceive color. So even the fineness of grind influences color perception. Notwithstanding, ground samples provide a much clearer method of evaluating color, which is why roasters use ground samples when implementing a color measurement system like Agtron, or the like. |
 Here are swatches taken from the same photo above. Note the extreme difference in patchy surface color from lighter to darker roast. This specific lot of coffee is quite nice at the darker roast levels (pungent spicey/pepper notes with intensely tangy bitter-sweet chocolate). But it is at the "ugly" City roast where this coffee has true Dota Tarrazu "origin character", i.e. winey fruited notes with interesting almond and hazelnut roast taste, grape, grape skins in the finish, cherry. Roasting is not a beauty contest, and many commercial and home roasters make the mistake of roasting coffee until surface texture is even, and variation from seed to seed is more uniform. You need to roast it for cup flavors, not for roasted coffee appearance. What that specific cup character is, you decide. But at the Vienna roast pictured above (448 f finish roast temperature in the Probat L-12), tangy roast notes have eclipsed the "origin flavors" of the coffee. I would also say that this lot of our special peaberry selection is less uniform than even I expected ... but I was happy with the cup, and that is what counts! Coffee makes your constantly overcome your prejudices and re-eavluate your own "received wisdoms" when it comes to judging cup flavors. -Tom |
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This page is authored by Tom Owen and Sweet Maria's Coffee, Inc. and is not to be copied or reproduced without permission. |
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Sweet Maria's Coffee Library
Coffee Travel Pictorials, New Product Reviews, Roasting Pictorials, and more |
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