Quick!

Since my last post forever and three and a half hours ago, much has happened.  Delicious coffees have been roasted and brewed, questionable coffees I wouldn’t feed the imaginary dog next door were tasted and spit out, and at least one blog post was started and left unfinished due to Life happening.

Sometime within the past week, however, fun things — coffee-wise — have taken place, and I’m going to share a couple of them here.

First, I’d tinkered with some coffees I have had lying around for some months now, and put together a little espresso blend.  I mentioned this on my Twitter feed, with the current working incarnation being a blend of Guatemala Huehuetenango La Maravilla, Kenya Gichathaini, and Ethiopia Beloya Selection Eight.  I’ve since run out of the Gichathaini, but the blend seemed to work quite well.  I sent some to Kasey Klimes of PT’s, and he informed me that he was able to coax notes of blackberries and dark chocolate out of it, with hints of grapes in the finish.  Still, it was, as he noted, “A bitch to pull.”  We discussed this at length, and from my end, I told him that my experience led me to believe that the Maravilla would be the densest of the three coffees, and since it served as the base, would require a vastly different touch than most Brazilian/Indonesian-based blends.  My thought process going into the blending was that the Maravilla, if roasted in a certain manner, would give off a nice base-layer of dark, bittersweet chocolates, and that the other two could serve to accent that base.  I don’t think the results were far off, and when we pulled it here, I noticed a crazy floral aromatic aspect to the shots that made me smile, over and over and over again.  More to come, you can be sure of it.

Second, I signed up for David Walsh‘s amazing little “coffee chain letter.”  Looks like I’ll be sending some coffee to Germany, but I think it’ll be worth it.  Mr. Hunt Slade, with whom I’ve communicated for a short while now via Twitter, is the kindly soul that will be sending yours truly something delicious.  Excited?  Yes.  I look at this as yet another way the worldwide coffee community gets to commune, and I’ve no doubts whatsoever it will be a success.  Many thanks to Mr. Walsh for putting this together!  Perhaps this will spawn — from those involved — a series of blog posts, Twitter posts, or perhaps even articles concerning this ongoing exchange of deliciousness.  We’ll see.

That’s all for now.  Go enjoy some wonderful coffee.