Coffee, YUM!
One month ago, I made a post about Coffee Making Technology. One of the things I spoke about was the mediocre, at best, quality of the coffee I was using. Well, I was pretty much out of the Kona roasted on some nondeterminate date in 2010, so yesterday I walked over to the Blue Bottle coffee kiosk nearby to buy some beans. ( For those that don’t know, Blue Bottle is a ‘microroaster’ of coffee. They roast their coffee across the bay in Oakland, and have several shops around San Francisco, including a funny little kiosk in a converted garage on an alley like street in my neighborhood. )
The coffee I bought, their Three Africans blend, was roasted on Friday (March 4, 2011) – so it’s about as fresh as you can expect coffee to be. I used it this morning to make coffee and I noticed that it bloomed phenomenally when I put the initial small but of water in it. I almost wish I had filmed it, so I could show the lovely swelling and bubbling of the grounds. The coffee it produced was very good, as well. I can help but think there is a lot I could do to improve my technique, and there are two accessories which I could get to improve it too. One is expensive (a good grinder) and one is probably cheap at the restaurant supply store (a long neck kettle). I think I’ll get the latter first, as controlling the pour seems to be important to the process, and my research says that for drip process like chemex, blade grind is usually ‘good enough’.
I’ll finish this post now since I finished my coffee, and it’s time to make some breakfast.