Coffee: we drink it or we get angry.

You're not kidding on Kansas City. I frequent P.Ts when I'm in town but I know there are a couple others.

 

I'd be more worried about eating too many regular strawberries, Soft flesh fruit with highest pesticide use. At least with coffee we get to coax some of the garbage out with roasting, still best to have no pesticides, Agreed. Yields on organic as little as 3 years ago have been less and the higher prices for organic not taking up the slack in many growing areas. I am sure in 2017 that may have changed. But even the behemoth SB only sold 1.1% of their total output as organic a few short 3 years back.

 

With coffee, "organic" doesn't mean much (maybe controversially) and the best thing to do IMO is just buy coffee from Ethiopia where the plant is naturally pest resistant and nobody can afford chemical farming ... and it's about one of the best beans you can buy anyway so for me it's no compromise ... I'd buy Ethiopian anyway.

And it's so easy just going to place like Redbird where you can buy 5lbs for about $11/pound. I usually get mine 1-2 days after roast so too fresh to use. Even after a month in the freezer I still get plenty of outgassing and I don't even vacuum seal. Still, it's best about 4-7 days fresh in my experience, but I'll take the 5lb discount.

Plus they throw in a few free chocolates, so ...

Ooo! Looks like they have a new one, but I just got 5lbs

Malawi Mzuzu AAA/AA GrainPro comes from the Republic of Malawi which is a long, narrow country near Africa's eastern shoreline. Much of its eastern border is actually along the shores of Lake Malawi, the southern most African Great Lake. Lake Malawi is home to more species of fish than any other lake in the word.

The coffee is sourced from family-owned farms organized around the Mzuzu Coffee Planter Cooperative Union. The Mzuzu Cooperative provides support to 3000 members in six regional cooperatives where the average producer cultivates 5 hectares of land.

Sable Farming is a Rainforest Alliance Certified Company and its entire Coffee Crop is RFA CERTIFIED.

Cup Characteristics: You will enjoy the tastes of Pear, Tropical fruits and Lime.​

I've never had tropical before so I'd be all over this one

​

 

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I’m a long-time fan of African naturals as well. Counter Culture has had some fantastic selections in that regard lately and one of my local roasters (Pinewood) has an Ethiopian Beriti that is one of the more blueberry-bursting coffees that I’ve had in a while.

I have really missed those great, funky Yemeni coffee in recent years since they’be been in conflict there. I used to roast them quite a bit along with the Ethiopians.

 

I do have a recommendation in that price range. Though there is a small shipping fee. Spread it out by ordering 7 or bags at a time and then keeping the unopened bags in the coldest part of your freezer until you’re ready to open each one. I like this method better than ordering one big bag though there is some cost savings with one big bag. Anyway - check out the coffees from El Salvador here:

https://topecacoffee.com/shop/page/2/

In my opinion Topeca is the shining example of what can be done with a good seed-to-cup program when a very knowledgeable roaster (such as Ian Pico at Topeca) works with specific farmers over a period of years to develop the best possible product and to improve the farmers’ profit and livelihood. That is the case with their El Salvadoran coffees.

 

oh man, I'd be really interesting in trying the blueberry bomb - I filled out an inquiry great recommendation!

 

Cool, hope it works out. I've found their online communication lacking in the past (they were closed for a few months while they left an old location and built up a new location so couldn't just stop by) but hopefully they've improved. I think they adjusted the roast on this Beriti since they first got it. It was way fruitier the last two times I've been in. My car smelled amazing after I got an Americano to-go on Saturday!

 

Interested to see how the blueberry bomb works out. One thing I miss about home roasting is I used to have more variety in my coffee as I had a lot of different greens I had accumulated.

On coffee beans, my standard advice is only buy beans where you know the roasted on date. Most supermarket beans have an expiration date, which is basically useless. I have seen good beans in supermarkets and specialty stores with roasted on dates, but the dates were usually too old

There was a Consumer Reports article recently rating Ethiopian beans. I would normally ignore CR's advice on coffee, but they rated Stumptown and Intelly among others, so I decided they might know what they were talking about. Their budget pick was Trader Joe's Ethiopian Fair Trade Shade Grown Organic Coffee, its $12/lb. But I don't think TJ has roasted on dates. I have been thinking about buying a pack and trying it out just to see. Top pick was La Colombe Ethiopia-YirgZ

 

Intelly and Stumptown have both been bought out by large corporations. That doesn’t automatically make them horrible but just something to know. Also Blue Bottle was bought out by Nestlé. Intelly was never big on natural Africans anyway. I pretty much ignore CR when it comes to such subjective things as “best headphones” coffee etc.. I rarely agree with theM on such things.

My local grocery store in Waco carries 4 different Counter Culture blends (one of which is Hologram which is wonderful) and 3 different Intelligentsia blends. If you catch them in the right week they’ll be fresh but then they’ll sit for a while. I always walk by and check. Sometimes I get lucky and find fresh Hologram for $11 a bag.

Surely in LA you have plenty of good roasters though!

 

We have roasters around, but either too far a drive or too expensive, although I really haven't looked recently.
Hard to beat free shipping to your door though. 5 pounds just fits in a med size usps box, makes it easy for them to ship.
I'm cheap lol.

Up north, bay area and beyond they have better roasters.

 

Ha, well I can get lots of craft roasters but I still get the 5lb of Redbird - tell me if there's anything better than the smell that comes from that box! It freshens up the whole house!

 

My mother in law always like when I get a shipment in, and open the bag, love that freshly roasted coffee smell.

So I was at a supermarket, Ralphs, at lunch. Of the coffee they have, only Peets had a roasted on date. Surprised me.

Unfortunately the most of the peets was roasted a month ago. They had some from mid oct, but it was decaf. In case you didn't know, decaf goes stale faster than normal coffee, so you have to be even more careful with roast dates with decaf.

 

I recently tried these guys out because I usually drink Decaf and it's gotta be fresh and "mountain water" processed to taste it's best IMHO. This is the best decaf I've ever had for those of you that drink it like me. The regular stuff is amazing as well, but not as unique etc.

http://coffeebytheroast.com/

 

Is there any evidence, though, that the harmful chemicals in any pesticides used wouldn't just be burned off in the roasting process? I remember that was a thing with the Bulletproof Coffee guy, claiming all sorts of things about a lack of toxins when in reality, if you analyzed the chemicals involved, they would be destroyed during roasting.

 

I’m skeptical as well. Aside from the roasting issue the bean itself is well-protected by the several layers of fruit, parchment, etc..

 

Ha, yeah, that guy ... anyway, well these things, like audio, are all just a weird mix of opinions, facts, hype, innuendo, and outright falsehoods.

I won't try to convince anyone other than to say that I've seen enough to be convinced and add that, if concerned, even if you don't know anyone that can do chemical testing it's not impossible to send a sample off for testing.

In general, I don't buy coffee that I don't know the origination of and somewhat trust the source. That said, it's not also not an inconvenience for me because the bulk of coffee I get is mostly exactly what I'd normally get any way ... and I do buy the odd bag of mystery beans if they seem tasty so I'm not psycho about it.

The most important thing is to enjoy it, and I really f'ing enjoy coffee.

 

I got my Redbird Coffee. First up is Brazil Full Bloom. Purified water, hario hand grinder, beehouse pour over, about 14 oz. total. I appreciate that it was roasted a short 3 days ago. But upon drinking it is smooth round, but almost has no flavor. Upon cooling down a bit I can possibly detect some honey or fruit maybe mango or papaya notes.

My guess is I need to go a bit finer on the grind to get more extraction. Following that guy Rao s advice trying to get the bed to look like wet sand not mud, but maybe somewhere in between. And I do short small almost constant pours totaling about 3+ minutes.

Maybe two big pours to almost fill the beehouse instead?

Any thoughts, and don't tell me to buy new equipment, haha.

 

Are you using a scale? What is your ratio of coffee to water?