Kens Espresso Fueled Ramblings

Today I had my first ever fire when roasting with the gene cafe.

Good thing I always watch my roasts or this could have been a disaster. I was standing there watching and all of a sudden I see a piece of chaff burning. It went out immidiately so I think nothing of it. Then a massive smoke plume bellows out the chaff collector.

:siren:  OH SHIITTT PANIC!11one :siren:

I yank the power and pull of the chaff collector and it’s jammed with chaff causing the temp to rise and set fire to the chaff inside.

Since I reacted so fast nothing happened, or the plastic stuff the chaff collector is made of can stand extremely high heat.

I always empty the chaff collector after 3 roasts. The problem was that the last 3 roasts was all dry processed coffees (DP Brasil, Yemen Mattari, DP Sidamo) so they released way more chaff than normally.

Just goes to show you that you should never leave the roast, this all happened over the course of 20 seconds.

I love a good coffee and I love a good wine.

On the topic of wine almost everyone drinks wine for what it is, the aroma, the flavour of the wine. Yet coffee has to be endlessly basterdized with milk, syrups, whipped cream and who the hell knows what else..

WHY?

You don’t see people mixing all kinds of crap into wine.

Wine is enjoyed for what it is, why can’t people enjoy coffee the same way?

There’s so many single origin and single estate coffees, just as many as there are grapes and the wines they produce.

After roasting on the Gene Cafe for about 6 months now I think I have a good generic profile that works as a great starting point for most coffee beans.

I started out using a drying stage, about 5 minutes at 180, then ramp to full blast until 1st crack, then back of once 1st was rolling, useually landing me at around 16 min total roasting time.

This profile gave me a flat taste on most coffees, just generic “coffee” taste. Slow ramp to first crack washes out fruity tastes most, probably because these are the least dominant and easily lost. Continue reading New generic Gene Cafe coffee roasting profile

Lots of times I see people say that a ristretto is simply a normal shot of espresso cut short by a couple or seconds or more.. wrong.

Ristretto means restricted, not short. A ristretto should run the same time as a normal shot.

So in order to get a proper ristretto shot grind a hair or two finer and let it run for about 22-30 seconds depending on taste.

The finer grind means you get less volume because you restricted the shot.

I’m heavily lactose intolerant. Just a little bit of milk or other dairy product, butter etc.. and I’m in agony for the next day or two. But I love my lattes and cappas. Lactose free milk that you buy is stupid expensive ( Gotta make that cash of the unfortunate and the sick, wonderful companies aren’t they? ) and mostly only come in bad tasting 1% versions. Continue reading How to make home made lactose free milk

I don’t have my la Pavoni Europiccola anymore but upgraded to a Domobar Super, but I noticed a lot of visitors looking at the pages I wrote about the Europiccola so I thought I’d write some of the tips down while I still remember.

The key tip for better milk steaming on la Pavoni Europiccola is to plug 2 of the holes in the steaming tip.

Make sure the 2 holes you leave open is not pointing into the side of the milk steaming pitcher or else you won’t get as fast a swirl to your milk.

When I started steaming on the Europiccola I had problems because it just heats the milk to fast when you are new to frothing milk. Plugging up 2 of the holes took care of that perfectly.

The Europiccola sure has powerfull steam for such a small machine.

You can also have a look at my page about steaming and frothing milk

Many people use the Brita water softener jugs for thier espresso machines but they are not adequate. After only a couple days use the abillity to remove most of the calcium from the water drops to 1/3. it’s easy to test using test strips or if you purchase a pH meter.

Another clear sign that the Brita brand is not al they are hyped up to be is that they are not allowed to advertize in the US where the strict FDA rules applies, because they just don’t work as advertized.

Get yourself something like the DVA-LT4 or DVA-LT8 ion exchange water softener instead. They are cheap and can be recharged easily for the price of a kilo of salt.

I have the DVA-LT8 and have been using it for about a year now. It’s very easy to recharge and one charge using a kilo of salt allows me to decalcify about 500 liters of water before a recharge. I check once a month using a TDS/PPM/PH Hanna meter. If you get a meter make sure it can measure pH as you can’t use TDM/PPS meters on an ion exchanger as TDM/PPM measures dissolved solids and ion exchangers works by simply swapping calcium ions for natrium ions so using TDS it looks like the filter isnt doing anything. Using a pH meter reveals the true story.

If you like me got yourself a DVA-LT water softener and are now scratching your head about how to charge or recharge the damn thing here’s my attempt of explaning it a little better than the confusing manual in ingrish translated through babelfish or something, maybe the asked a tourist to do it? Continue reading Recharging a DVA-LT Water Softener

Here’s a chart of Coffee Roasting temperatures for those that have a home roasting machine that shows the temperature of the coffee beans. Continue reading Coffee Roasting Temperatures

About a week ago I roasted my same old batch of Monsooned Malabar.

The next day I do my useual routine and pull a shot.

WOW.. I swear it was like someone dumped peanuts and almonds into the beans while I wasn’t looking, it was amazing.

I try and pull another later and… nothing. :wahhhhh:

Been trying all week to replicate it, but I can’t. I can get hints at the same peanut and almond aroma but nothing like that shot, it was so in my face you know like those sirups with peanut and almonds only this was straight up the beans real taste.

The variables I’m missing must have been in the dose, distribution, or temperature. The roast was my exact same profile for MM. I think I’m gonna have that temp. probe mod done to my Domobar Super, then at least next time I would know the temperature.

It was soooo good, the quest continues.