I've just had a super evening roasting coffee with my friend Anders Gulden Olstad. After visiting a really nice italian restaurant (and skipping their espresso..hehe), we went to my house and fired up the poppers.
Well, before that we sampled some espresso beans that I had roasted four days ago. It was a preblend of the ottolina classica, one of my favourite espressi. I think Anders likes it a lot too. I was not expecting that much since the last roast I did with it was not up to par compared to the original preroasted beans. They were just too dark. Probably because I used the old, more aggressive popper. With the new popper and its longer roasting time (8-9 mins for espresso) and better circulation, I really noticed a difference in both how the beans looked and the way the espresso tasted. Really good! Maybe a bit less body, but surprisingly close to the shots I make with the preroasted beans. I really liked that since I am in general a fan of underdogs performing well :). I mean, look at the picture of my modificed scarecrow popper below. Just 249 kroner and an illy can do an impressive roast! The capacity is larger too. Anders roasted some costa rican with it and got 130 grams of roasted beans with a normal load. That is close to 150g capacity!.
We roasted various beans and tried them as drip after a 30 min rest. The Ethiopia Sidamo was especially good. We could clearly smell and taste flowers when sampling it. The melange blend (50% light, 50% dark) of the mexican liquid ambar was interesting, but not as good as the sidamo (I didn't expect it either).
I had a great time and now I just hope the caffeine load won't keep me from getting some sleep tonight :).
Setting up the poppers and other stuff
Breathing in the popper exhaust and stirring tze beanz
