gettin my inner Jew on at Kenny and Zukes.., where have you and your pastrami on rye been all my life.
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Well it has now been 40 days since I wrote about swapping coffees to get a chance to try some new coffees (here), well it has been awesome. I have got sent in coffee from 9 different roasters and all regions. I hope to continue to do this with people, it has been enjoyable for me and quite informative. It is amazing how much you can learn just from tasting the coffees.
The really exciting and impressive thing to me was the fact that I enjoyed every cup. My favorite so far from this experiment was sent to me from the smallest roaster, it was the Kenya Kiambu Riuki Peaberry (meyer lemon, candied nut, and a great chocolate finish) . I am not sure if Gary is still carrying it, however I think it is probably in your best interest to go check out this guys offerings (here). I also really enjoyed the Bali Kintamani (Sweet rum, with great super bright fruit notes) from Blue Bottle Coffee awesome cup of coffee. I could probably rattle off every coffee I tried and talk about how much I enjoyed them but I think that may get redundant.
In the future I feel like I should have a standard way of tasting these coffees the first time, then going into whatever brew method, with these coffees, I just sort of brewed it how I felt like that day (everything from siphon to chemex). I also noticed how much I can fluctuate in my press pot ratios, I have been recording exactly how many grams of coffee and h2o, and I really need to be better about being the same every time, to the gram!
Well enough rambling today, I am certainly still open and wanting to trade more coffees, so if you want to trade again or know someone who might want to, please let me know.
Some of the coffees I have had the privilege of trying this last month.
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So it has been a while since I have had time to jot down some thoughts, but trust me things here have been crazy. I have tried some great coffees over the last couple weeks, and have a stack of probably 10 different coffees to try in the next couple of highly caffeinated days. But other than trying coffees and working normal life, I have been giving a lot of thought to brew methods and how I can get them to work best for the coffee.
What if instead of making the coffee fit the brew method (like a coffee for espresso, drip etc.) we make the brew method fit the coffee? Part of this has been discussed over at James Hoffman’s blog with regarding single origins and espresso. But how do you practically do this, we all know some coffees really thrive in a french press, while others come out not so bueno.
Is it possible to completely reinvent the coffee shop? Would a shop where you ordered the coffee not know how it would be prepared succeed? Imagine walking into a shop and ordering a Indonesian and having it show up in a press pot, or maybe a Panama that comes to you in the form of a cappuccino.
I don’t know where I am heading with this for the business.., all I know is that for me I am going to focus on making sure I am brewing the coffee with the method that best fits the coffee no longer the other way around.
