Wednesday, July 26, 2006


another crazy mail-in post

yeh yeh yeh. so forgive the formatting in advance.

what's awesome about peter g's counterculture kenya aa nyeri, the thangathi, in the vac pot is that the black currant aroma comes clearly out in the cup. it's plainly there towards the coffee's aftertaste.

you'll have to take a gander at the scaa flavor wheel for yourselves on this one. . .both flament (in his coffee flavor chemistry, which you can find on google books) and lenoir (in his nez du cafe) talk about this delightful flavor, which is based in one of coffee's many natural components.

specifically, this fruity sorta taste is caused by a sulphur compound, one of the many mercaptans that can appear naturally in coffee. it's important to remember that much of coffee's delicious flavor is based in fragile sulfur compounds, which is why coffee stales so quickly in the open air -- oxygen just eats away at all these sulfur-based stuffs that makes coffee taste fresh and yummy.

lenoir loves this black currant flavor and praises it highly, noting that it's commonly found in kenyas. and i did find it today in peter's coffee when brewed in the vac pot.

i made this bean at 60g fresh ground coffee to 1 liter water, or about 2 oz coffee to 33 oz water. total up-n-down time was 4:35.

another interesting thing about this coffee is that the vac pot, which normally attenuates body, didn't lighten the mouthfeel of this kenya very much at all. a little, but i wouldn't call it marked over the chemex.

in other news, i've mentioned off and on my various adventures with the csa, picking up the local organic veggies. every week they toss something strange at ya -- but this week it was all good.

i mean, beets. specifically, heirloom italian chioggia beets -- ring-striped white and red! these from the csa are extra sweet and yummy too!

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posted by fortune | 6:26 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments