Saturday, February 25, 2006


why does blogger hate my macintosh?

actually, i think it's ie for the mac that it loathes. sometimes it just refuses to let me log in, telling me erroneously that i have cookies disabled. well, ie for my happy mac is sure troubled in many ways, but it plays nice with every other site's cookie jar.

waaah! please nice google people, fix this because while safari is great, it also has its own bugs, and many sites just won't work on it. . .still.

but seriously, i logged on today to drink dougie's gmcr special reserve rwanda at 10 days old, brewed in the chemex. long-time readers know i love walking thru the lifecycle of a fresh coffee, and this is no exception.

i had a chance to chat with both catie baril and dougie about this coffee the other day. catie was sitting in jfk airport waiting for a jet plane; she talked to me about how long-time bccy pal, greenie, and former scaa prez david griswold had actually brought some of the farmers who grew this coffee to the u.s.a.

he showed them all the marketing materials, the reviews, the fancy packaging -- everything used to sell their coffee. the farmers, who live in little villages in the distant misty mountains, had never seen anything like it; they had never had any idea how their coffee was sold.

isn't that fantastic! finally we are beginning to close the gap.

readers will recall that i prefer this brewed at 2oz fresh ground coffee to 28 oz. water, which is maybe a tad strong, but did finally bring some of that dried cherry into the cup. as the coffee ages, i think the molasses and the malty notes are growing.

i would expect the cherry to decrease, but i was surprised to feel that some of the chocolate aftertaste had diminished too. this could be an artifact of the brew strength, perhaps?

dougie and i also had a little conversation about the coffee's brightness. it seems like i perceive this to be a bit brighter than dougie does.

he says he's making his in the basic melitta pour-over. so i wonder if this is a brew water temperature difference, or due to the differing qualities of the chemex vs. melitta filter.

i'm brewing mine at 195, just because pouring into the chemex makes it hard for me to adequately measure the water precisely and keep the temperature higher. i wonder what you're brewing at, dougie?

this is still a superb coffee. just beautiful!

catie and dougie both told me stories of how it practically blasted outta the warehouse. the founder of gmcr had wanted a case of this coffee himself.

however, it sold so strongly that even his earmarked case went before anyone realized it, and apparently he was left with only 1 or 2 bags!

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