Blazin' to a ghetto near ya'alll - now this is badass!

www.ethoscoffeecar.com

Dare you to send back yo' s'pro for being too short from deez bad azz g's. Keepin' it gangsta all da wheeey! Fo shiz aiiight!

And just in case you loved that background tune so much, here are da boyz in all their glory!

What to do with bags of leftover coffee husks?

Well apparantly if you live in south australia the thing to do is roll em up and smoke them.
FIRST OFF: I DO NOT CONDONE OR ENCOURAGE THIS IN ANY WAY, AS IT MAY LEAD TO SEVERE HEALTH ISSUES (Who knows?!)
Anyhow, a rather annoying by product of roasted coffee is the amount of coffee husks that split off from the bean (they're the yellowish flakes in the photo above), and how these then need to be collected from around the drum and discarded. Without roasting with the aid of an afterburner, there can be quite an amount of this stuff to be getting rid of on a weekly basis.
On a sunny morning's roasting (at a coffee roaster who, for now at least, shal remain nameless) a small particle of coffee husk lodged itself against a heating element and a perculier smell gave way.
Now i'm not sure what prompted this (probably a curious persona and living in SA was enough), but the nameless roaster felt the need to roll up some husks into a cigarette and smoke them.
What's followed is a small following of folks who are really enjoy this "disgusting habit". And so with the absence of nicotein and the other 52 chemicals added to regular cigarettes (of which i'd never personally touch) i thought i'd give it a shot.
The flavour is quite clean and very smooth. Mildly earthy, and actually (dare i say) quite enjoyable. Around 2 mins later you're met with a slight head buzz, not unlike the kind of head buzz after drinking a little bit too much coffee, which fades soon after.
While this is not something i'd do again, it was certainly an interesting experience all the same.
It does make you wonder though what was going through the persons mine who first lit fire to tobacco and put that in his mouth.

Microwaved Coffee Roasting pt.2

So after a quick revision of the rum used, i've switched to a thicker plastic container, which has been used many times for heating up my sons baby food, and therefor shouldn't melt (should it?!)

This time the whole was placed in the base of the container with the lid affixed after the raw coffee is inserted.  Don't know if you can see them, but i've also cut small holes into this container.



This time I roasted for 2mins checking the roast every 30 seconds.

I hit the first crack at around 1:30 and finnished the roast at 2mins exactly. This is what came out.



By no means perfect, but no too bad for a second attempt. This however, is what the container looked like.



Clearly some more work is needed here, but the coffee didn't look all the bad. So I removed the obviousely scorched beans and ground the rest in the k10, set for a cupping.



As the coffee was some really old green beans that had been lurking in the back of my coffee cupboard, i'll save you from any tasting notes as they'd really be of no use, suffice to say that the coffee tasted like coffee. Just as it should. Nothing deeply culinary about it, but not too bad at all.

The next step will be getting some fresh green whose profile I understand, and so will be able to compare against. And yet another revision of the drum. It seems that it was the direct heat from the actual beans that melted the plastic, and not the ambiant heat of the atmospere or gas. Consequently i think the next revision will be cutting out some silicon based bakeware to fit into the plastic drum/container and thus, remove any direct contact with the plastic. Hopefully this'll help distribute the surface heat more evenly and result in less scorching of the beans, but only time will tell.

Microwave roasted coffee (it was only a matter of time) pt.1

Spawned by an interesting thread at a local forum, and after being unable to find much on the topic, I thought it might be interesting to investigate the possibilities of roasting coffee in a microwave. Really it doesn't seem that crazy an idea (to me anyway), and after a quick wiki search the following description is found:

"A microwave oven, or microwave, is a kitchen appliance that can come in many different sizes and styles employing microwave radiation primarily to cook or heat food. This is accomplished by using microwaves, almost always emitted from a magnetron, to excite water (primarily) and other polarized molecules within the food to be heated. This excitation is fairly uniform, leading to food being heated everywhere all at once (except in thick objects), a feature not seen in any other heating technique."

Hmm, sounds promising, so it's off to the drawing board to figure this out.
In order to roast coffee you need heat, and aggitation.  Obviousely the heat comes from the microwaves, and the only form of aggitation available (without shaking the whole microwave) is a small rotating wheel at the base of the Microwave.
The answer seemed simple, turn the microwave on it's side and rig a small 'drum' to the rotating wheel.  The 'drum' in this case is a small sour cream tub (with a few divets cut into it to further agitate the beans and allow for some air flow) with the lid attached to the base wheel.



Now beans in the container and the whole thing is fixed onto the lid in the microwave.
 


I shut the door, set the timer to 8mins and away we go...

Thirty seconds later I open the door (the smell tipped me off) and discover this



Hmmm, clearly this drum has some flaws ;P Here's a shot of the beans to illustrate the consistancy and roast level at 30 seconds.



Clearly some work is needed, but at least we've seen that it is posible to use a microwave to roast beans.

Pura Milk Jugs

Now I know these aren't new, but I haven't seen much posted about them so I thought I'd comment my two cents worth.  Now these have been designed with the aid of David Makin (the current Australian Barista Champion) and so when I first heard about these I was very excited.  However, to be fair, these have been design for the masses, and not specialty coffee nutters so I have to keep my judgment fair.

The first thing I noticed about these (besides how colourful they are!)  is the damn size of them.  AFAIK they only come in 1ltr, which is absurb, even for those 16oz buckets of coffee.  And though they are fairly forgiving in terms of different quantities of milk to be textured, they do work best foaming 600mls at a time.

The next most noticable thing is definately the shape (for which many jokes can be made).  This shape does however make it almost impossible not to create a fantastic tornado effect while texturing your milk which is fantastic for awesome microfoam.  The spout here does let the whole thing down however.  It makes precise latte art hard, but for traditional cap's the foam falls into the cup quite well.

On to the 'ergonomic' handles.  Hate them!  I've seen these on quite a few different milk jugs aimed at the domestic market and personally find better control of the jug with a closer hugging handle.  Personally I don't see what positive function these handles achieve, but it's probably related to minimising RSI.

On to the overview;  They make suppurbly microfoamed cappuccino milk, aided by the shape of the jug and and sheer volume of the milk being heated.  However, I would have loved to have seen these jugs with a phat, alessi stlyed, pouring lip to aid with the latte art, and smaller sizes available.  But they certainly serve their purpose well, and I think they're a great step towards to the systematic genocide of the old school westfields/90's/sea froth that we're all down right scared of.

Here below are some pictures of the jug in action and the quality it produces plus a short video (I must apologise for the quality, i shot the whole thing on my phone with one hand while trying to do the rest with the other ;)



--