Lee: “Nov. 29.” Me: “Yeah?” Lee: “The last time you wrote a blog post.” Me: “2. That’s the number of stores Quills has opened since that date.” I’m sitting in the second of those two stores right now, a disarmingly beautiful space that is at once both cozy and comfortable. We opened this space on… [Read more…]
July 23, 2011
“Tipping, more common in softer coffees, can be related (to) the same inputs as scorching as well as being an airflow issue… it’s moisture escaping from the weakest point of the bean, where the taproot would be if it were used as a seed.” -Christopher Schooley Tipping is one of those relatively easy defects to… [Read more…]
July 4, 2011
“Molecules in solids cannot move readily and collide with one another. Reactions are much faster in solutions and melt. Therefore, as coffee and bean temperature rises, reactions speed up when chlorogenic acids melt (around 300°F) and sucrose melts or dissolves in molten chlorogenic acids, which occurs well below sucrose’s normal melting point, 340°F. Similarly, prior… [Read more…]
June 15, 2011
“With great power comes great responsibility.” Though it seems others before Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben employed this maxim, I do tend to think of its influence upon my thinking as being rooted in Spider-Man. These days, I certainly feel it; Peter Parker I am undoubtedly not, but greatly responsible? Absolutely. I’ve been blessed and tasked… [Read more…]
June 13, 2011
Since Mr. Darren Middlename Jennings not-so-subtly hinted that I need to blog more, I’m going ahead and writing. A while back, I wrote about how I was going to blog, every day, some little tidbit I’d learned about coffee that day. For a while, I kept that up on my tumblr site, but I’ve dropped… [Read more…]
February 3, 2011
While some of you sit at home, contemplating the snow that has built up and is keeping you locked in, I give you some links to stir your thoughts: $2.45 is cited as the closing price in the article, but yesterday that was up to $2.50. Eesh! Clean and simple. I like. Aaahhh, but what… [Read more…]
January 15, 2011
“Mmm… kind of.” That’s my standard response to the question, “So, are you excited?” About the roaster, that is. In case you haven’t heard, Quills acquired a roaster a couple days ago, a Diedrich IR-3. When it’s (un)officially fired up for business, I’ll be there, doing most of that firing. Lots of folks know this,… [Read more…]
January 12, 2011
I’m not a mean guy, really. Okay, sure, there was that time I laughed when I ran over Pablo’s ankle… with my car… but that really was funny, I promise! Maybe that’s a bad example. It’s just that I have a hard time not having a knee-jerk response in my mind every time I hear… [Read more…]
December 19, 2010
So, after thinking about it a bit last night and this morning, I decided I could have pulled that blend at a slightly higher temp, maybe 200° or 201°, which might have helped to take the edge off the brightness a bit and bring out more of the middle and lower-toned notes in the coffees.… [Read more…]
December 18, 2010
Last Saturday night, I roasted a few batches of coffee with the intention of blending them together and pulling them as espresso: Guatemala Huehuetenango Finca La Maravilla; Kenya Tegu AB; and Ethiopia Guji Oromo. All three coffees are washed, and I developed all three of them to a roast level just shy of second crack…… [Read more…]
January 18, 2012
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