Mere hours to December…I could be lazy, not post this, and count it as my December post, but I’m not going to! Because it’s so short as is. Anyway. Life continues. There will be a good bit of December travel, possibly a bit crazy making, but overall, I think it will be some good visiting time. New sofa arrived, which raises the question of what to do with the old one. We had the fairly obvious idea of putting it in another room, but it turns out it simply does not fit through any of our normal doorways. Like, really not. The downstairs main rooms have some bigger entryways, so it wasn’t an issue, but …yeah, no. Of course, being un-careful in this instance, we didn’t choose to measure the doorways until after we wrestled that thing upstairs, so now it is, ah, overfilling the landing. Nothing to see here, move along. Anyway! This intro par got longer than anticipated. Below the cut – some brief notes and a few photos of a coffee cupping we went to in September 2011!
Freshly roasted beans cooling
Laurence told the two of us about a coffee cupping, where Klatch Roasting was going to be laying out some Geisha coffee varietals. It was fun! First we got a bit of a tour of their location (well, it was all one room, basically, but anyway). They showed us their storage, and their roasting system. They discussed a bit the way they can program the roaster, using different heat / time profiles for different types of beans and different types of end results. It seems to be a nice mix of art and science, as many good things are. They also did some roasting while we were there, and we got to see beans turn from green to brown, smell the aroma change, and hear the ‘crack’ as the beans get to, well the point at which they crack during a structural change, as per : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_roasting
Coffee sacks. Jute, and the less picturesque plastic , for, you know, actually sealing.
Coffee grounds awaiting
So then! To the cupping. We each had a spot at the table, on which we had three drinking bowls of ground coffee. These were on a mat telling us information about each type of bean. The process in brief is to smell the grinds themselves, followed by adding water and letting it sit for a bit. The grinds will form a bit of surface at the top, the crust. After a bit, you break that, and the grounds will drop, and you smell again. Next step is to take some up in a spoon and basically mega-slurp it into your mouth. The internet informs me this is to evenly coat the interior of your mouth to get the flavor everywhere. Then you think about and mark your observations. Easy! It was kind of fun, both because I like coffee, and also because anything where “the process” matters is always entertaining to me.
smell
crust
our host, demonstrating the slurp
