insects and Coffee

I’ve had this idea to make an espresso based drink with Bee Pollen in it… and today was the day. Took some pollen down to the cafe and worked on a few different ideas. Alas, none of them turned out good at all. :(

The pollen mixed with the espresso turned out a drink that was just too pungent, earthy, and well… the idea of “Here, drink this! It’s good for you! ”

Not what I’m lookin’ to make.

What I am after is a drink that brings my to worlds together… that of Bugs and Coffee, and tastes great. Well, it’s back to the drawing board for me.

so… here it is the makings for Cola.got to it last night and today made Cola Cappuccinos in the Cafe. over all response was good to excellent.

I think I’ll try tweaking the recipe, making it a little spicier using some hot pepper, maybe a little more black pepper(spicy Cola—just sounds good to me).also tried this syrup in seltzer water! Zing!!! it was great! hand crafted Quick Cola. twas good, real good, much better that trying to make it in to a coffee/espresso beverage. then again I’m just not a fan of sweet flavored coffee beverages, so I’m not the best judge of my Cola creation.

Notes: for this Cola batch I used the Ethiopian Limu, I was looking to put some of that coffee fruitiness in the Cola.

Update 02/27/2008: got to thinking about this recipe… I think there is too much vanilla in it… could not place my finger on the flavor that I was tasting… but now I know! Cream Soda! this recipe was more of a cream soda syrup than a cola syrup. >>> if I make this “cola” again it will be a lot different… I guess that would make it not this recipe at all.

To the Point: Too Much Vanilla.

that’s all I had to say. sweet, heavy, cherry, chocolate, bright and
wonder-full.

elvin iPod message

A long drive to Portland last night, down… back to Oly almost as I reached the bridge, just as I was smelling the Espresso that I would have the folks from Albina Press make for me (forgot something, one of the reasons for going to PDX in the first place… Ok, so we forgot the Cello we were dropping off with the Tour Van, Mira’s crew would not have been happy at all, for a band without their instruments in no band at all). …and then back to PDX again.

Alas, woke this morning a few blocks from Extracto and got an Espresso from them (they were top on my list for this morning). Currently serving Del Sol (Vita’s Blend), looking to start roasting there own soon: it was nice, no complaints, it was like Chocolate-Cherry Water. Sweet, delicate, lighter bodied than I prefer, but no complaints, served right about an ounce in volume.

I hope I did not come across as rude for my lack of excitement to the news of them having Vita’s Del Sol, until now it has never been so good. Could be most of Vita’s Espressos have been served to me at restaurants, and we all know how that can go.

…and back to Oly again.

Got the IC I ordered from Australia tonight. I was so excited about
this I almost drove back to the LAB at work to install it in my
TimerMod that Is conected to the MDL grinder.

Alas I did not.

Tomorrow tho… I’ll have the MDL dialed in to the one-tenth of a
second. So sweet!

Oh! And yes, I am sending this post from my iPod via wifi email (got
a new iPod Touch this last weekend, hacked it with JailBreak, added a
bunch of applications one of which is email… So Sweet… Such a Geek).

elvin iPod message

It has been not quite three weeks of my return from Mexico, and alas… we are in the cafe steaming up some LAC DEL; Mexican Box Milk.

Steams and froths real nice… passed out some macchiatos and cappuccinos to some customers.

I thought it tasted of Blackberry, but I think K.MED nailed it with “Fruit Loops Milk.” That is exactly what it tastes like steamed up. Fruitloops!!

Quite lovely in a cappuccino.

K.MED enjoying a Box Milk Cappuccino Treat.

Holidays are tough on getting good coffee…

Things are pretty square at the new job, rather easy that is. Nothing new; banking, paper work, scheduling, covering for the folks that don’t show up for work (what is that about?). I do miss hanging about that LAB though… it has been over a two weeks since my last cupping. I have been sick, and on holiday… but none-the-less two weeks!

I did pull a few shots of Ritual Cafe’s Red Flag Blend last week in the LAB; Oliver was down that way and picked some up to bring back>>>

Notes on Ritual’s Red Flag Blend:

Roast Date 12-06-07 : Extraction Date 12-18-07

18-19 grams : 200F : 1.25 to 1.5 oz. : 24-30 sec.

Fruit, Fruit, Fruit… Papaya with Lime… Lemony, Bright (not like a lime bomb tho), Light Body, Tropical fruit, pineapple, thin, Touch of earthiness >>> like oak or peat? Big African flavors. Overall pleasant.

It was literally a few shots, only had enough to pull three doubles and it was gone. First shot 12 seconds, second 29, third 25. Not the best scenario to judge an espresso blend. That and I got it nearly a week and a half out of the roaster.

Over all thought: Liked it, not my favorite… need to give it another go under better conditions. Oliver took similar notes the week before.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way… Years ago I decided to stop having favorite coffee cups because all of my favorites had very short lives; dropped in the sink, dropped on the cafe floor, left on the bumper of my truck, on and on. So, no favorites no pain (easy to say, I still have secrets tho).

So, my favorite Tamper, the old model Compressore (slightly different than the new ones you can get now), which I hide and lock way when I’m not workin’ the machine, the Tamper I told Ellie she could not use because she was a porta-filter tapper (sorry Ellie)… well, it flew out of my pocket while running from the cafe and bounced down the sidewalk. :( drag! Handle beat to hell and the piston is all nicked up on the edge. :(

<<<

>>>

The good news is my Special Lady had a demitasse picked up for me from Grumpy’s Cafe in NYC. I brought it to work today to christen it. I did that with a single origin Brazil that we had in the LAB. Peanut butter and grape jelly, on whole wheat honey toast, with hints on almonds and unsalted french butter. So, good! Nicely balanced.

…and here it sits in my new Grumpy’s cup (not my favorite cup!). >>>

Other bad news… did not get to the Dominican Republic coffees today… going to have to get second hand notes from the roasters upon my return from Mexico.

Bob sample roasted up some coffee from the Dominican Republic yesterday. One of our colleagues (Byron) from the Atlanta roastery bought a farm there this last year, and one of the many things that is growing there is coffee. You guessed it, he sent us some samples.

We did not get it to the cupping table today as planned, at least I hope we did not get to it, for I did not get to it. If we do cup it tomorrow I’ll post some notes, if I missed out I’ll post the notes of someone else.

I’m very curious to see how it comes out.

We’ll, i’ve moved things to a new host… and so, starting over with the blog.

Going to jump straight into things and if i find any thing from the old site that may be interesting i’ll try and move it over into the archives at some point.

On to the exciting things!

I just got a new grinder from the folks at NUOVA Simonelli, the MDL… at first I thought that it might be too much of a machine for me to handle: on, off and that is it — 19 grams in 3-4 seconds, or there abouts.

The first stumbling block with this grinder was all the coffee spraying out into the dosing chamber leaving all the fine particulate stuck to the sides of the chamber, every once in awhile dropping to the bottom effectively changing up the grind on me. With NUOVA’s MDM the same thing happens. This is easily fixed on the MDM by holding your fingers in front of the throat of the grinder until the it clogs up and starts dropping the grounds straight down in to the doser. This was not the case with the faster MDL. With the MDL this clog would blow out very quickly. I messed around with a lot of ideas and finally came up with this…

I modified the throat of the grinder with this bit of plastic (from a milk jug) to stop the coffee from spraying out of the burrs, now the coffee drops straight down; no more static, no more spray.

Hands down my new favorite grinder.

Fast. Very fast. Too fast. I am now working on installing a digital timer.

—elvin