Month: October 2024

Foxtail Brazil (Cerrado)

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Brazil (Cerrado) from Foxtail Coffee Co. (Winter Park, FL)
    • Roast level: Medium
    • Roast date: 10/4/2024
    • Purchase date: 10/21/2024 at Foxtail Coffee in Mount Dora, FL
    • Tasting notes: Almond, milk chocolate, toffee
  • V60:
    • 19 to 19.2g coffee / 300g water (1/15.6 to 1/15.8)
    • Ode: 4
    • Water at 95°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – typically finishes at between 02:45 and 03:00

I bought these beans while we were in Florida visiting friends who had just moved down there. The above settings produced a nicely flavored cup. 19.4 grams was a little too strong-tasting, so I think 1:16 may be the sweet spot.

I seem to get more consistent brews with the Ode than I do with my hand grinder. It’s not that I can’t brew good coffee with the hand grinder, but it does seem like I have to play around with the brew parameters a lot more to get things dialed in. On the other hand, with the Ode, I’m finding that I’ll often go through an entire bag of beans without tweaking my starting settings at all. In light of this, I may rethink how I do these blog posts at some point. I want to continue to track how I’m brewing various beans (mainly to have something to refer back to if I buy them again) but I don’t want to fill this space up with repetitive posts. Maybe I could start creating pages instead, or take them out of WordPress entirely and move everything into a spreadsheet. I will have to think on this a little bit.

Rise Up Organic Decaf Coffee

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Organic Decaf Coffee” from Rise Up Coffee Roasters (Easton, MD)
    • Roast level: Medium (3/5)
    • Origin: Ethiopia (Yirgacheffe)
    • Roast date: 9/24/2024
    • Purchase date: 10/9/2024 at Green Valley Marketplace (Elkridge, MD)
  • V60:
    • 19 to 19.2g coffee / 300g water (1/15.6 to 1/15.8)
    • Ode: 4
    • Water at 95°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water

This was my first time brewing decaf coffee with the V60. I brewed it using the same settings I would start with for any other medium roast, and it turned out well-balanced and bright. Most of the decaf I’ve had over the years has been akin to brown, vaguely coffee-flavored water, so I was pleasantly surprised. I bought this mainly for my better half, but I may occasionally sneak a cup for myself if I find myself wanting coffee later in the evening. We’ll probably freeze some of the beans to try to keep them fresh for longer, as I doubt we’ll go through them as fast as I go through a typical 12-to-16 ounce bag. I’m sure I’ll buy these again.

11/21: I froze what we had left of these on around 10/19-10/20, and took them out at the beginning of this week. They seem to have survived the freezer just fine, as the above settings produced another good cup (from what I could tell from the sip or two I took of it). That said, I think if we buy 12 ounces of decaf beans at a time, we should have no problem going through them fast enough to avoid having to freeze them. It’s good to know that we can, though.

Lola Savannah Texas Pecan

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Texas Pecan” from Lola Savannah Coffee (Houston, TX)
    • Roast level: Light
    • Origin: unknown (Arabica)
    • Roast date: unknown
    • Purchase date: received as gift on 10/12/2024
  • V60:
    • 19 to 19.2g coffee / 300g water (1/15.6 to 1/15.8)
    • Ode: 3+1
    • Water at 99°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water

I received these as a gift from family who live in Texas. Started out at grind setting 4, but have been nudging it finer with good results. Currently at 3+1. I have also been using less bloom water recently. As long as I get all of the beans wet, and the water stays in the cone long enough to swirl a few times, I’ve been getting good results using a little over 2x the coffee weight. It also worked well with my last bag of beans.

I’m not normally a flavored coffee drinker, but I do like these quite a lot. The aroma is fantastic if you like pecans/pralines, and the taste is very smooth with no hints of acidity or bitterness. Also, when the bag is gone, I’ll have an excuse to learn how to tear down and clean the Ode, as I kinda don’t want my next several bags of beans to taste like pecans. 😀

MTB Season Again

lpaulriddle

I haven’t been doing much biking lately, outside of commuting to the office once or twice a week. My weekend biking/geocaching excursions have become fewer and farther between, due to a combination of busy schedule, running taking priority over biking, and lack of interesting caches being hidden within biking distance of home. I expect I’ll get out on a few more weekends this year, particularly with the pool now closed, which removes swimming as another exercise option. I’ve been splitting my commuting between road and mountain biking, with a strong preference for the latter. Every time I commute on roads, I wonder how I did it 3-4 times a week “back in the day” without going insane. It’s just a pain dealing with all of the annoying people who are out on the roads. Mountain biking is much more peaceful and enjoyable, though more so in the mornings when there are fewer people on the trails. Other than a week or two at the end of September, we’ve had great weather for mountain biking so far this fall. This morning was in the 40s and sunny, which is just about perfect. I’m taking advantage of it as much as I can, before we start getting hard freezes, which lead to muddy trails in the afternoons.

One thing I’ve been rather unhappy about this year is my lack of kayaking during the second half of the season. I was really good about getting out in the spring, but haven’t been out since probably June. The brutally hot summer was the culprit early on. September and October are my favorite months of the year to kayak, but this year, schedule and transportation issues have been my undoing. I like to go out on weekday mornings, but I need a car to do that, and this year, my son has been taking the car to college most days. I’ll probably have to break down and go on a Saturday or Sunday morning if I want to get out before the season ends. I suspect that a drysuit is in my future at some point, as I’d love to keep paddling year-round. Not sure if that’s in the cards for this year or not, though.

Early fall running report

lpaulriddle

I finally feel like I’m back in the swing of things with running. Cooler weather seems to have been the ticket. I’m back to running around 20 miles/week, and have not had any recent issues with low energy or “hitting the wall” similar to what plagued me over the summer. I suspect these are related to dehydration and/or electrolyte insufficiency, both of which are bigger issues during the summer heat and humidity. I will say that it’s great to be able to finish a 7-8 mile run and not be completely drenched in sweat. Physically, I am 100% right now — a welcome change after spending most of the summer favoring my left big toe. I have yet to do a 10-miler this fall, but may try this weekend. Earlier this year, I set a goal of running a half-marathon in 2024, and I think I still have an outside chance. I’ll try to pace myself and see how it goes. It will depend on weather, health, and schedule (not necessarily in that order).

I picked up a pair of Xero Mesa Trail WP shoes this month. I was looking for a mostly-waterproof shoe that I could use for running in wet/rainy conditions. Last winter, I ran in my Xero Terraflex shoes when it was too cold for my Vibram V-Runs. Those work well for dry conditions, but I didn’t have any shoes suitable for cold and wet weather. The Mesa Trail WPs work well as everyday shoes when I’m out and about in the rain, but I haven’t yet gone running with them. I will report back when I do. They have the same sole/tread as the Terraflex, but are a little roomier inside and not quite as thick. My thinking is that I’ll wear them with wool hiking socks and possibly gaiters (they have hooks for them). Looking forward to trying them out.

Zeke’s Hippie Blend (bag #2)

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Hippie Blend” from Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
    • Roast level: Light (2/8)
    • Origin: Sumatra, Peru, Papua New Guinea
    • Roast date: 9/23/2024
    • Purchase date: 9/27/2024 at Green Valley Marketplace in Elkridge, MD
  • V60:
    • 19 to 19.2g coffee / 300g water (1/15.6 to 1/15.8)
    • Ode: 3+2
    • Water at 99°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 50g bloom water

I started off brewing 21g with 300g at grind setting 4, but I like these beans much better at 1:15 to 1:16. I’ve brewed 4 or 5 cups at this strength, and they have all been pleasant: not too strong, not too weak, not too bitter, not too acidic.

I bought my first bag of these around the beginning of 2024, and according to my notes, I struggled to get the grind size dialed in. I eventually ended up grinding rather coarsely, which is interesting, because this time around, the cups are turning out nicely with a much finer grind. It appears that I was brewing at the same ratio with the same water temperature, so the main differences seem to be: Ode grinder vs 1Zpresso JX, and plastic size 2 V60 vs ceramic size 1 V60.