Boy, isn’t blog an awful word. Then again, blogs can be kind of awful. I’ve been thinking a bit lately that this weblog isn’t what i wanted it to be. I have been using it to announce new coffee arrivals, which is fine. But with our new site improvements, i feel like that is a redundant use, and not very exciting anyway. So I am going to return to the original idea – the day-to-day at sweet maria’s … and just post what I am doing here and thinking about on a routine basis. The good thing about my role here is that it changes, and some of it can be mildly interesting. For example, today I am roasting samples from a SumatraIndonesians are available as a unique wet-hulled or dry-hulled (washed) coffees. Giling Basah is the name for the wet-hulling process in Bahasa language, and will have more body... cultivarCultivar is a term used interchangeably with Varietal in the coffee trade to indicate plant material, although there are distinctions.: The naming of a cultivar should conform to... experiment, the work of a coffee researcher named Tony Marsh. He painstakingly went through the AcehThe northernmost district in SumatraL Aceh District is north of North Sumatra and produces some very classic Sumatra coffees. The center of coffee in Aceh is Lake Tawar... area to identify unique tree types, many at an existing but abandoned government research station in Bener Mariah area. Then they produced 2 samples from each cultivar they found, aq wet-hulled sample and a wet-process sample. So I am roasting them all (I have nothing but codes to cup by – it’s a fully blind experiment) and will log my cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... results. I’ll write more about it later. We also have been testing some SO coffees as espressoA small coffee beverage, about 20 ml, prepared on an espresso machine where pressurized hot water extracted through compressed coffee.: In its most stripped-down, basic form, this is..., including the dry-process Centrals we roasted for our Coffee Pairing this week. The Mex Nayarit Dry ProcessDry process coffee is a method for taking the fruit from the tree to an exportable green bean. The whole intact coffee cherry is dried in the sun... was nice – the Guat Oriente DP as espresso was too, too fruityIn some coffee taster’s lexicon, “fruity” means the coffee is tainted with fruit, and “fruited” means a coffee is graced by positive fruit notes. We don't exactly see.... That coffee really sits on the edge of fruity and over-fruity, an interesting lot to taste, if nothing more than to define where that line (fruity-overly fruity) lies according to your palate. For me, it depends on the roast. A bit darker and it is positive fruity chocolateA general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of chocolate. But what type? Usually described with more specifics.: Chocolate is a broad, general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of...; but lighter and it has the sourness of overripe fruit. After I finishSimilar to aftertaste, but it refers to the impression as the coffee leaves the palate. Aftertaste is the sensations gathered after the coffee has left the mouth. We... roasting, I am going to Costco. Woo Hoo. After that I will be cupping the first Main Crop KenyaKenya is the East African powerhouse of the coffee world. Both in the cup, and the way they run their trade, everything is topnotch.: Kenya is the East... Auction samples, not expecting too much though… Tom
