Category: Coffee

Bean Alchemy Elysian Morning Blend

lpaulriddle
  • Beans “Elysian Morning Blend”
    • Roaster: Bean Alchemy Roasters (New Market, MD)
    • Origins: Bolivia, Colombia
    • Roast level: Medium
    • Roast date: 11/21/2024
    • Purchase date: 11/30/2024 at Sykesville Holiday Mart in Westminster, MD
  • V60:
    • 19.5g to 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15.4)
    • Ode: 5
    • Water at 95°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 02:45-02:50

I started this bag on 12/14, which is a little longer past roast date than I typically like, but that’s how the timing worked out with travel, etc. this month. It’s only a 10oz bag, so I’ll likely use it up within a week to 10 days. I brewed my first cup using grind setting 3+1, mainly because that setting had worked well for my most recent bag of medium-roasted beans. However, these particular beans seem to like a coarser grind. Setting 5 was a noticeable improvement on 12/15, and as of 12/18, my last 2 or 3 cups at setting 5 have been excellent.

With winter once again at our doorstep, and the house getting cooler, I’ve gone back to preheating my mug with insta-hot tap water prior to brewing. I used to also pre-rinse the V60 filter with insta-hot water, but lately, I’ve been pre-rinsing with heated water from the kettle. I also have consistently been using the plastic size 2 V60 for all of my brews, because, for whatever reason, I find I get longer draw-down times and better extraction than with the size 1. I still can’t explain this phenomenon, and there don’t seem to be many people commenting on it online. But, “it is what it is”.

Bean Alchemy Temptation Blend

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Temptation Blend”
    • Roaster: Bean Alchemy Roasters (New Market, MD)
    • Origins: Central America, Indonesia
    • Roast level: Medium/Dark
    • Roast date: 11/21/2024
    • Purchase date: 11/30/2024 at Sykesville Holiday Mart in Westminster, MD
    • Process: Washed
  • V60:
    • 19.5g to 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15 to 1:15.4)
    • Ode: 5
    • Water at 90°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 03:10-03:15
  • AeroPress:
    • 17.5g coffee / 250g water (1:14.3)
    • Ode: 5
    • Water at 95°C
    • Prismo with metal + 1 paper filter (not rinsed)
    • Pour all water at once / Stir back to front 7x / Steep until 02:45 / Stir 7x again / Press slowly
  • Hotel Room AeroPress:
    • 1 heaping scoop beans + (optionally) several more for a stronger cup
    • JX: 25
    • Hot water from single-dose pod brewer machine in room
    • Put Prismo + filters on, do not rinse, add grounds, and fill to 1/4″ from top of cylinder
    • Same brewing process as above

These beans are very dark and oily, so I’d say more on the side of a dark roast than medium. For V60, I brewed them with the same settings as my last bag of medium/dark roasted beans. The draw-down finished a little faster than those beans, but even given the (relatively) coarse grind, still slower than a typical light or medium roast. The result was a pretty good cup of dark-roasted coffee — robust and smooth, not bitter, and not all that complex.

My first attempts with the AeroPress were on the bitter side. I probably need to use a coarser grind and/or lower water temperature. I’ll get some more practice next week, as I’ll be brewing a few cups in a hotel room.

In the hotel, I filled the Keurig up to the “fill here” line using whatever water I had on hand (typically either tap or water cooler water). This produced just about the right amount of hot water for the AeroPress- with the Prismo, it filled the AeroPress cylinder to about 1/4″ from the top. The Prismo makes it possible to use a single paper coffee cup without the need to invert the AeroPress (which would also reduce the capacity). I used my JX hand grinder, initially at setting 20, but 25 ended up producing a smoother cup. I brewed 5 or 6 cups like this, and they were all consistently pretty good.

Lola Savannah Wylie Blend Cold Brew

lpaulriddle

I received a pre-ground bag of this about a month ago. Oddly, I couldn’t find any info about it online — it must truly be a local blend only available around Wylie, TX. Per the bag, it is “100% Arabica beans with rich coconut, pecan, and praline flavorings”. No origin or roast date listed — just a best by date of 7/15/2025. Unfortunately, I think they overdid the coconut flavoring. The coconut aroma overpowers everything else, and it’s it’s more of an artificial, chemical-y kind of smell than anything I’d call pleasant. I suspect it’s best brewed with an automatic drip brewer, but I don’t have one handy to use currently, so I tried a few other methods. It was way too coarse for pour-over, and too fine for French press. AeroPress worked OK, but the coffee was not fantastic, and (as with the aroma) the coconut flavor overpowered everything else. I ended up using most of it to make cold brew with this recipe. After brewing it in the French press, I filtered out the sludge by pouring it through a standard pleated coffee basket filter, which worked, but took a very long time. I got my best cup of it by diluting with about 2 parts unsweetened almond milk to 1 part cold brew, and adding a few drops of chocolate-flavored stevia. This coffee would be much better if they eased up on the coconut flavoring a little bit, but either way, it’s clear that coffee snobs are not their target market. 😛

Café Medrano Medium Roast

lpaulriddle
  • Beans:
    • Café Medrano Medium Roast Organic (Kensington, MD)
    • Origin: Honduras (Copán)
    • Roast Date: 11/14/2024
    • Purchase date: 11/16/2024 at Chestertown, MD farmer’s market
  • V60:
    • 19g to 19.5g coffee / 300g water
    • Ode: 2+1
    • Water at 99°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 02:45-03:00

I believe I had read about Café Medrano a few months back when I was looking for smaller local(ish) roasters. They seem to be unique in that a single family owns both the coffee farms in Honduras, and the roastery/café in the D.C. suburbs. Kensington is (unfortunately) not all that convenient for me to get to regularly, but I wonder if they are at any other local farmer’s markets. I will have to keep an eye out.

First and second cups (today) were very good at grind setting 3 and 95°C water. We’ll see if it will need tweaking as the beans start to age a bit. I bought a 1-pound bag, so I’ll have them for at least a couple of weeks.

11/28: After a couple of ever-so-slightly underextracted cups, I made a couple of adjustments, and ended up at grind setting 2+1 and 99°C water. I’ve been happy with the past couple of cups at these settings. It’s not that the previous cups were bad — I just felt that there was room for improvement. This is (coincidentally) the same as how I brewed the bag I finished just before these. The difference is that those were light-roasted beans, and these are medium-roasted beans. However, over time, I’ve learned that those terms are rather subjective.

LnB Organic Papua New Guinea Light

lpaulriddle
  • Beans:
    • Organic Papua New Guinea Light from Leaves ‘n Beans Coffee (Peoria Heights, IL)
    • Roast level: Light
    • Purchase date: 10/25/2024 at LnB Morton, IL
  • V60:
    • 19g to 19.5g coffee / 300g water
    • Ode: 2+1
    • Water at 99°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 02:45-03:00

These seem to work well with a rather fine grind. I started at setting 4, and worked my way to 2+1 over 3 or 4 cups. Seems to be pretty good at this setting. The bag advertises low acidity, which I’ve found to be accurate. My favorite cup so far was today’s, with 19.6g or so of beans. It was very rich and full-bodied, but a little bit more of a caffeine hit than I would prefer. 19.2g to 19.4g seems like a reasonable compromise.

11/19: I’ve been brewing most of my cups with 19.2g, which (with a couple of exceptions) has been producing what I would consider perfect cups of light roast coffee. I’ll be tempted to buy more of this the next time I’m in Morton, but the desire to try different roasts will likely win out. However, this does raise an interesting point. I should probably come up with some kind of rating system so that I can start to identify which origins/roast levels/processes/etc tend to produce coffee that I like the best. That will help drive my decision process when I’m trying to figure out what to buy when I go somewhere new. Will have to think on this for a bit.

Foxtail Decaf Colombia

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Decaf Colombia from Foxtail Coffee Co. (Winter Park, FL)
    • Roast level: Medium/Dark (4/5)
    • Roast date: 10/11/2024
    • Purchase date: 10/21/2024 at Foxtail Coffee in Mount Dora, FL
    • Process: Washed
  • V60:
    • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
    • Ode: 5
    • Water at 90°C
    • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 03:15-03:30
  • AeroPress:
    • 14.8g coffee / 210g water (1:14.2)
    • JX: 20 (2 rotations)
    • Water at 90°C
    • Prismo with metal + 1 paper filter (rinsed with insta-hot tap water)
    • Pour all water at once / Stir back to front 7x / Steep until 02:45 / Stir 7x again / Press slowly

This is a rather coarse grind setting for this particular recipe, but the beans draw down very slowly, which seems to balance things out. Fairly smooth cup with little to no bitterness. Very roasty/smoky tasting, which I guess is to be expected given that it’s a darker roast.

3/19: These beans aged well, as the last few cups were really smooth and tasty. I used up the last of the beans with the above AeroPress recipe, deliberately making it on the strong side, and it was a really excellent cup. Who needs caffeine, anyways? 😆

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. 😀

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.