My Christmas Presents Indian Coffee from Karnataka Chikmagalur

I got 5 pounds of Indian Karnataka Chikmagalur beans from Burman to roast at home and give as gifts. I really like this coffee. It is very well described here in the paper I included with each gift. It is shared below. The region sounds very interesting. I would love to visit some time.

Check out the QR Code below for a great video.

Indian Karnataka Chikmagalur

Tasting Notes:
A great Indian coffee. The aroma is nutty, woody, and some slight smokiness. The taste is classic. Many of the notes in the aroma come through in the flavor like walnuts and some smoke. There’s dark fruit, oak, licorice, and some vanilla tones, like a good dry red wine. The finish has a subdued brightness to it with just hints of lemon zest. The body is medium to full depending on roast and brew. There’s a reason people keep coming back to this bean. It’s a smooth all around great cup of coffee.

The world’s best shade-grown ’mild’ coffees
Indian coffee is the most extraordinary of beverages, offering intriguing subtlety and stimulating intensity. India is the only country that grows all of its coffee under shade.

Indian coffee has a unique historic flavour too! It all began with a long, arduous journey around four hundred years ago... when the legendary saint Bababudan brought seven magical beans from distant Yemen and planted them in the Chandragiri hills of Karnataka. The sensations of aroma, flavour, body and acidity that you enjoy with each coffee experience is rooted in these mystical beginnings.

Coffee plantations in India are essential spice worlds too: a wide variety of spices and fruit crops like pepper, cardamom, vanilla, orange and banana grow alongside coffee plants.

Chikmagalur is a hill station in Karnataka, a state in southwest India. To the north is Baba Budangiri, a mountain range in the Western Ghats, with 3 large caves said to be holy. Trails through forests and grasslands lead up to Mullayanagiri Peak. The cascading Hebbe Falls lie in an area of coffee plantations. The forested Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary, northwest of Chikmagalur, is home to elephants, tigers and leopards.




here is the QR code linked video

Turkish Coffee

#butfirstcoffee I used my ibrik to make Turkish style #coffee. It is very muddy and flavorful with the addition of some cardamom and stevia.

It smells and tastes good.

My buddy Bill and I did some coffee talk the other night and his love of Turkish coffee came up.

You need a really fine grind on the coffee (I think a dark roast works best) and you make it in these little pots by heating and cooling the mix. Slowly pour when done and the grounds stay in the bottom.

Stop when they start to try to escape!

Add what you like and enjoy.

There is no exact way to do this. People use different variations of basic ibrik coffee brewing.

Good info at sweetmarias.com and at Illy.com

Thanks Ethiopian Coffee Growers For These Cool Beans! (cool videos)

Having some coffee? Me too. I am having some Ethiopian Natural Yirgacheffe (yer -gah - cheff - aaa). You can't get much more old school than Ethiopian coffee. It's where it all started. Here are my home roasted Yirgacheffe beans.

click for larger photo

Not all coffee tastes the same. It does has different flavors. While these beans make a very nice cup of coffee they do have some brighter flavors that you can detect. Burman Coffee Traders describe it as "...strong notes of melon and strawberry. Accompanied with a bit of blueberry in the aromatics. A bit of citrus acidity upfront at the lighter roasts but all in all pretty mellow in the acidity which gives it a very jammy body. Very clean cup which gives it a nice lingering finish that is not dry and earthy like some." That's pretty accurate just don't think "strong" means it tastes like a smoothie. It is still coffee but there these other notes in the flavors. I also taste a little mocha and the brewed coffee is very fragrant. I really like it!

It is a fascinating process to see how we end up with a cup of coffee. I respect the hard work and time that it takes to have that smile on my face when I take that first sip of brewed coffee.

Check out this video from Sweet Maria's. You can buy beans from all over the world and roast them yourself with what you can buy at Oakland's Sweet Maria's.

Here is an entertaining coffee crazed guy from Old Bisbee Roasters doing a review of a brewed cup

This is a longer video about the coffee trade in Ethiopia

Coffee Roasting Dominican Org Ramirez Estate Microlot and "Own A Tree"

Best Coffee I've Ever Had? Maybe!

I home roasted some great coffee beans today. Great flavor and a great story that goes along with it.

Wow this coffee is amazing. Smokey and chocolate flavors dominate with some toasted nutty almond flavors.

There is just a touch of lemon tartness at the finish.

It holds the unique flavors as the roast gets darker. A very very good bold cup of coffee.

I got it from Burman but I don't see it listed there as of mid September 2017. It is at Cafe Kreyol as a roasted coffee or if you roast your own as green unroasted beans. Cafe Kreyol  also has a way to help the coffee farmers with the Own A Tree program starting at under $2.00 a tree.

For the price of a cup of coffee, you can plant a coffee tree in Haiti, that will be nursed and given to a local Haitian in need of employment. All of our planting and nursing is 100% Haitian operated and your donations are tax deductible.

Cafe Kreyol Facebook link

Read this description and the interesting backstory from from Burman Coffee

A very cool single estate coffee from Cafe Kreyol (our Haitian Co-op friends).

Cafe Kreyol goes into some of the most impoverished and trouble areas that are within prime coffee growing territory, organizes farmers, teaches how to correctly process beans, guarantees purchase of the beans at way above market prices insuring it goes directly to the farmers and strives to really turn around some of the more trouble areas, putting people to work at well above average wages and insuring future livelihoods.

Joey, the head of Cafe Kreyol even strives for his US employees the above statement. He finds the hardest working individuals with great work ethics that for one reason or another have really been put down with employment and troubled times to help them recover and build a resume while also being able to help others.

One can feel real good about supporting any of Cafe Kreyols projects and for the most part – really tasty coffees as well.

Cafe Kreyol projects including this one are project coffees (although this is the nicest screen out of the lot), these are not a 0 defect beautiful large screen coffee. It takes around 5-7 years to really turn out a prime coffee operation and most of these are on year 2-3. Great tasting cups but keep in mind – not the worlds best screen.

In 1943, Mr. Belarminio Ramirez started a small company dedicated to the cultivation and marketing of coffee, which over the years grows into a family tradition involves three generations already. The Belarminio Ramirez Group was named in his honor.

Currently the company owns 350 hectares of coffee production, located in the mountains of the central range between 800 and 1500 meters above sea.

Tasting Notes: Very classic good tasting Dominican coffee. Thick and creamy with low acidity and very complex darker tones. Definitely one for you darker roast fans looking for something a bit more exotic. Chocolate, tobacco earthiness, molasses and smokey – it is one complex tasting coffee.

Roasting Notes:  Make sure to play around with the roast on this guy, medium to as dark as you want to go is the window to play within. You can really change up the coffee from borderline dark (accentuates a bit of earthiness) to decently dark (stronger but more down the chocolate smokey realm). A couple day setup time really smooths out of the tones.

Roasting Papa New Guinea Coffee

Coffee isn't just coffee. It all is grown and processed by somebody and it can come from all over the world. It has different tastes and flavors depending on where it is grown how it is processed and how it is roasted.

For many years now I have been roasting my own green beans I buy from various places. It is fun to experiment with the different coffees from around the world. It is easy to do details here.

This is a pound of Papa New Guinea (PNG) Carpenter Estates Sigri AA. The PNG coffee plants originally came from the famous Jamaica Blue Mountain coffees and they have a similar flavor. The Blue Mountain coffee can run up to $40 a pound. This is under $7.00 unroasted. It comes with a great story!

I got the unroasted beans from Burman Coffee and Tea and gave them a nice light roast.  They taste great.

here is what they say about it

New 2016 crop! Our newest relationship coffee and an Estate that is changing the game for PNG coffee.

These Sigri Estate coffees are gems - nothing like your traditional PNG coffees. Almost a 0 defect screen with immaculate processing. You can just look at the beans and see the care and time that went into them. Sigri has been in a game for a long time but within the last 5 years has taken quality to a different level.

As with all of our relationships coffees, not only are they changing the coffee game for themselves, but also the whole area and region they are in. They are raising wages and education (and quality) for every farmer around them - the big project this year to unleash for the locals

All coffee bearing the Sigri name is grown at over 5000 feet elevation. Sigri considers soil and water conservation as a priority, and, the plantation is bird and eco-friendly. The plantation employs a medium density shade strategy, using two types of shade trees. This promotes even ripening of coffee cherries and provides habitat for at least 90 species of birds.

Sigri is a washed Arabica coffee and undergoes a rigorous wet factory process. Quality Control begins in the field; Cherry coffee is hand-picked and carefully checked for uniformity; it must be red and fully ripe which allows for the correct balance of sugar and acid within the cherry. This selected cherry is then pulped on the day of picking.

A fermentation process follows, a period of three days broken every 24 hours by washing – but unlike most other brands, the Sigri process follows this by total immersion in water for a further day, which creates a superior coffee. Careful conditioning of 21 days is followed by hulling, grading, color sorting and finally hand sorting. This combined with rigorous quality control before packing produces the finest green been for which Sigri is renowned.

All grades are then continuously sample-roasted and liquored by experts. This provides a final check on the quality of the green bean product, and is a practice unique in Papua New Guinea.

Carpenter Estates talks about how they help the PNG community

Social Responsibility

Community Relations

We have several schools in our plantations which cater to the needs of pre-school children of our workers.

We run an HIV/Aids awareness program with workshops and seminars in our area.
We have our own medical aid-posts on our plantations.
We maintain local roads and bridges.
We help in tertiary education with bursaries. (a scholarship to attend a college or university)
We help church groups to help in the spiritual upliftment of our people.

Environment

We consider soil and water conservation as a priority
Our plantations are bird and eco friendly.

more from Burman

Tasting Notes:
Silky smooth and very clean. Lower acidity with good sweetness and balance. Very chocolaty/caramel type cup of coffee with some very cool nutty(almond) accents. If you roast before 2nd crack, which is preferred, one can balance in some orangeish soft fruit acidity into the mix which is a big plus to the depth of flavor.

Roasting Notes:
Good almost anywhere - i would still avoid real light roasts for you will find a bit of raw acidity and underdeveloped darker tones. City plus to as dark as you want to go. To see it shine, keep it before 2nd crack. Dark roasts will impress dark roast fans but will burn out many tones that make this cup pretty stellar.

The quick story of Papua New Guinea Sigri (one can clear up a lot of information when you get on the ground somewhere):

What I and many others thought was Sigri Estate is actually Carpenter Estates – Sigri being only one of the areas of the estate (easily the most famous). The other two are Bunum Wo and Kindbng (sounds like Kin ding). Each of the three produces a different cup quality; PNG being full of microclimates really puts a different spin on each section. Each one is like its own village situated right next to each other, with separate wet mills, drying fields, nurseries, living quarters, and schools for each of the three sections. But they do share a couple facilities (dry mill, bagging, trucking to port) and many staff.

Each of the three sections of Carpenter Estates has separate fields for different strains and top-notch agronomists to grow the best beans. Most of these folks have coffee in their blood. Being a part of the coffee here is a birthright for them (seen as a cradle to the grave philosophy). Great pride all around.

We will provide more information for each coffee from these areas and will share photos and videos. At least for now, you get an idea of where these beans come from.

LOCATION: Wahgi Valley, Western Highlands Province
ALTITUDE: 1550 m above sea level
SOIL TYPE: Volcanic
SHADE TREES:Old-growth trees
RAINFALLS YEAR:2200mm
AVE TEMP:24°C

That is a pretty interesting backstory behind a good cup of coffee

buy it already roasted for about $14.00 a pound here 

Home Roasting Coffee On The Back Porch

I needed some roasted coffee beans and just got a big batch of different beans from Burman so on a hot July afternoon I set up my Gene Cafe Roaster and did a pound of beans (but not roasted beans) in 2 batches with their BCT Espresso Blend. I gave it a medium roast, nothing too black or oily this time.

The roaster is pretty easy to use you just have to watch the amount you put in it to start and watch for getting the right amount of roast on the beans. Too little or too much is no good. Actually too much is a fire!:)

I have had this roaster for a long time and it suits my needs. You can get started with a popcorn maker. Here are the basic instructions on home roasting coffee.

Warning: it's as addictive as the end product!

Home roasting is fun and saves you lots of money buying coffee from all over the world at 1/2 the price per pound of what you find in the stores.

Espresso Machine Tune Up

Espresso Monkey is Happy!

My Saeco Aroma (now discontinued here is a similar budget priced option) got a tune up thanks to parts and instructions from Seattle Coffee Gear. They include a brew screen (the old one - YUCK) a brew head gasket and more. It took about 20 minutes + time to run some descaler.

Is it hard to do? No but it helps to watch this video or find one for your machine. When you are done there should be no leaks from your portafilter and the coffee will taste better!

They have kits to do this for lots of machines maybe give your machine a tune up as well. The end result is much happiness! Mmm the coffee tastes great!

They have some good videos on coffee machines. Here's how to descale mine