Seth with a 30-day old Goshawk. By late July when I visited it was 60 days older & learning to chase game. Tomorrow we hunt the giant clam.
Today we roasted my 3rd through 7th batches of coffee. Once again, a shortage of daylight was an issue. In theory, the window on the stovetop roaster allows one to view the beans as they roast. In practice, the smoke is obscures things -- and then it gets dark. We had some success when Molly used a flash light and I pulled the beans off the flame so we could take a look. However, that also meant I had to stop turning the coffee & that leads to an uneven roast.
Here is the score card:
First batch: Pretty good. A little like Peet’s -- a bit burned, but quite a good cup, of course, I like Peet’s.
Second batch: Burnt to a crisp. We left them on about 30 seconds too long and the fire was a tad too hot & the beans just crumbled in my mouth. We did not bother do brew. Now we know -- too much smoke means too much heat.
Third batch: We overcompensated. Beans had a distinctive bitter flavor. We did not brew, but instead roasted again. That really worked pretty well, but we left them on a bit too long, but the damage was not great and on Sunday morning we were pretty happy with the brew.
Fourth batch: Good, not as good as the first, but good. It is very clear that one can have much better coffee than most people w/o little skill, experience, care, equipment or daylight.
Can hardly wait to get bigger quanties of each bean so that different batches can be examined. Still, I'm happy with this super low tech approach so I can focus on color and smell initially.
