Category: Coffee

  • Lola Savannah Wylie Blend Cold Brew

    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. 😛

  • CafĂ© Medrano Medium Roast

    • Beans:
      • CafĂ© Medrano Medium Roast Organic (Kensington, MD)
      • Origin: Honduras (CopĂĄn)
      • 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 CafĂ© 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/cafĂ© 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

    • 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

    • 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)

    • 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

    • 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

    • 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)

    • 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.

  • LostDogCoffee Peruvian

    • Beans: “Peruvian” from Lost Dog Coffee (Shepherdstown, WV)
      • Roast level: Medium/Medium Light
      • Origin: Peru (Chanchamayo)
      • Grade: Screen 18/19
      • Tasting notes from bag: Huge body, intense aroma, caramel & smoky wood burnt sugar
      • Purchase date: 9/14/2024
    • V60:

    I hadn’t been to Lost Dog since May of last year, when I was just getting started with this new hobby. This place has a great selection of coffee beans, all sold by the pound, and my only complaint is that they don’t put the roast dates on the bags. Since they’re a small batch operation, though, I’m just kind of giving them the benefit of the doubt that the bags they have for sale in their store are pretty fresh. Unlike last time, I only bought 1 bag, as nowadays, I only like to buy what I know I can brew and drink in a month or less (plus, it’s highly likely that I’ll end up going back within the next several weeks).

    The beans looked lightly roasted (as advertised) so I brewed them exactly the same as I brewed my last bag, which was also a light roast. The first two cups have been pretty good. Not sure if I’ll try tweaking anything going forward, but I don’t necessarily need to. Will add notes here as I use up more of the bag.

    9/25: After several weak/watery/acid-y cups, I have figured out that these beans like a very fine grind. I kept nudging it finer and finer, until I finally got what I consider to be an excellent cup this afternoon, at grind setting 1+2 (or 1.67) on the Ode, which is just two clicks past the finest setting. I used 21.5 grams of beans or so, poured maybe 50g water to bloom (vs 60), and made sure to slosh it over all of the grounds. I finished pouring right around 2:00, and it took until 3:15-3:20 to fully draw down, which is a lot slower than I’m used to, but apparently the ticket for getting good extraction. No hint of bitterness at all, unlike some other beans where I’ve struggled to find the sweet spot between weak/sour and bitter/over-extracted as I’ve adjusted the grind.

    9/29: I had 15.5 grams of beans left at home. I bumped the Ode to setting 1+1 (just 1 click past finest setting) and brewed with 248g water (1:16) and ceramic size 1 V60, preheated with insta-hot water. I used about 40g bloom water and otherwise followed the recipe linked above. The draw-down finished at 2:45, which is 30 seconds faster than my larger cups in the size 2. This produced an excellent cup. It was very well balanced and lacked the acidic aftertaste that my stronger cups have had. I have 21-22g of beans left at the office, and once they’re gone, I guess it’ll be time for another trip to Shepherdstown.

  • Rise up Pura Vida (bags #2 and #3)

    • Beans: “Pura Vida” from Rise Up Coffee Roasters (Easton, MD)
      • Roast level: Light
      • Origin: Costa Rica (Finca Las Gravilias)
      • Tasting notes from web site: Complex and very well balanced; bright with hints of honey and orange citrus. Light roast, sweet cup
      • Roast date: 8/13/2024
      • Purchase date: ~9/3/2024, 9/10/2024 at Green Valley Marketplace in Elkridge, MD
    • V60:

    I have a new grinder this month. I’ve been happy with my 1Zpresso JX hand grinder, but got tired of hand-grinding beans twice a day. I also wanted something that could grind enough beans for more than one cup. For now, I’ve taken the JX to the office, so I can grind beans there instead of pre-grinding at home. I’ll also continue to use the JX as my travel grinder. My new home grinder is a Fellow Ode Gen 2. I initially had my sights set on a Baratza Virtuoso, but I had a 25% off coupon from Fellow which brought the Ode 2’s price down enough for me to pull the trigger. (Sometimes it pays to take surveys. 😀)

    The Pura Vida have been my favorite of the beans I’ve bought (at least locally) this summer. They have also been the freshest Rise Up beans available at the local grocery store for the past few weeks, so I’ve bought 2 12oz bags from the same batch this month. I’ve brewed a few cups with the JX at setting 18 (same as July) and a bunch in the Ode at setting 5, most of them with the size 1 ceramic V60, and this morning’s with the plastic size 2 V60. The JX cups have been fine, but the Ode cups have been better. The grinder has been the only variable, so I’m curious if the difference has to do with grind size, grind consistency, presence or lack of “fines” in the coffee bed, or all/none of the above. As I’ve noted before (more than once), with identical grinds, the size 1 V60 consistently drains faster than the size 2, and today was no exception. With the Ode at setting 5, my brews in the size 1 are always finished by 02:30, but today’s brew in the size 2 finished at 02:35-02:40. Not a huge difference, but it seemed like this morning’s cup was a tiny bit better extracted than some of my previous cups. Just something to keep in mind when I’m trying to dial things in, as one size might work better than the other, depending on the beans and various other brewing parameters.