Time To Cook

Time To Cook

I recently started watching ‘Breaking Bad’ on Netflix; I quickly became addicted and managed to watch the complete series in about 3 weeks, I loved it!  It got me thinking about my days of ‘cooking’ (roasting coffee) and I realised how much I missed it.  Now, I didn’t roast out of an RV but was not too far from it.   I use to roast in a little shed, out the back of my office, on a 1KG roaster.  Just like Jessie and Mr. White I had many an adventure learning the process (although mine did not include murder, hookers and millions of dollars) it was still a little adventure every time I fired up the Cafemino.  

It has been 6 years since I roasted any coffee and things have moved on a lot in that time.  After a bit of research I quickly realised there is only one ‘real’ home roaster on the market, the ‘Gene Café’. I ordered it from www.bellabarista.co.uk (great website) and it arrived two days later…oh the anticipation… it’s a long time since I was excited about new coffee equipment.  Coffee roasting is not like baking or cooking it’s more like alchemy and chemistry.  You have to take many things into consideration like ambient temperature, how and where your green bean was grown and processed, moisture content of the coffee and so on. You also need to take safety into consideration too as fires are easy enough to start when roasting.

Bella Barista supplied a great little guide to roasting which they wrote themselves, I studied this and decided on a profile that I was going to use. I cleared the kitchen, covered the fire alarm, found my old roasting log, weighed the coffee and most importantly sent my wife and child out; nothing more certain than burning down your house if you don’t pay attention during roasting.  I was prepared!

The most nostalgic trigger for me is smell, the right aroma can bring me back to any point in my life.  As I fired up my new roaster, the grassy aroma of coffee beginning to roast, started to fill the air and it  brought me right back to my little shed (man cave if I’m honest) and I quickly began to remember the little roasting skills I had, great!

My first roast was terrible, which was fine and expected, my second roast was better but still a long way off what I want. This is the beginning of a long journey, I’ll keep you posted!

Craig 

www.coffeeshop.ie

AEROPRESS - How-To Guide

AEROPRESS - How-To Guide

If you have read my blog post about the AeroPress you know that I’m in love with it. I think everybody who likes coffee needs to try the AeroPress, I promise, you will not regret it. The best thing about the AeroPress is how simple it is to use, so here is an easy to use guide.  As with all guides, that is all it is, a guide, I highly recommend messing around to find out what exactly works for you.

• First of all a list of things you will need. The AreoPress, freshly roasted coffee, a kettle, scales, grinder and, of course, a cup.
• Boil the kettle.
• Place one of the paper filters in the basket provided and screw the basket back into the cylinder, place on top of your cup.  Wet the paper by pouring boiling water through the filter, this has both the benefit of wetting the filter paper (removes that nasty paper flavor) and heating the cup.  Remember to throw out the water from the cup.
• Freshly grind about 18 grams of your favorite coffee; your grind should be medium-fine (finer than you would use for French Press but not as fine for an espresso machine) and place the ground coffee in the chamber.
• Pour a small amount of your hot water into the chamber and pre-infuse the coffee, use the plastic spoon provided to mix the water and coffee together, then pour in the remaining water.   The water should not be boiling, about 85dg is about right.  As a rule I wait at least a minute after the kettle has boiled before I use it.
• Quickly replace the plunger; this creates a vacuum and prevents the coffee from dripping into the cup.
• Let the coffee brew for 50 seconds to 1 minute.
• When ready press down on the plunger, not too hard.  I don’t push the plunger all the way down to the ground coffee as I find this can sometimes make the coffee a little bitter. Once I hear the first hiss (air passing through the grinds) I stop (I find that this method produces a cleaner tasting coffee).
• Remove the AeroPress from the cup, what you are left with is a strong tasty coffee.  At this stage I add a little extra hot water to water it down a little, but it’s up to you!
• Now you have tried your first brew in the AeroPress, don’t be afraid to play around with times, weights and methods, and above all enjoy!

Thanks

Craig
www.coffeeshop.ie 

We did it!

WE DID IT!

8 months ago, Catherine and I were talking about a non-existent coffee business that we would both like to run.  Without any real direction (and over a glass of wine), one evening we came up with the name, Coffeeshop.ie, and then we began planning what exactly we wanted to do! Usually it’s done the opposite way around but this time we just needed one small element of the business to exist (the name!) to give us focus.  Over the following months we developed the concept of what we wanted to do, where we wanted the business to go and how we needed to get there and by some miracle here we are, our new website and our new business! www.coffeeshop.ie

Both of us are passionate about coffee and all things coffee related so hopefully you will find something here that you really love, or just like! There will be something new and exciting every week. We are starting small and slow, so please bear with us, we are still waiting on a lot of stock to arrive but expect to be up and running properly by the summer. 

Catherine & Craig

AeroPress, feeling the love and the guilt

AEROPRESS, FEELING THE LOVE AND THE GUILT. 

Guilt is an amazing emotion, it can hit you from nowhere over something that seems irrelevant.  I recently felt a new kind of guilt, a guilt that I did not know was possible, I felt guilty because of a machine.

Let me explain.

I bought my beloved Rancillio Silvia espresso machine about 8 year ago. I can’t even imagine how many shots I’ve pulled on it, from my morning coffee, my excessive weekend coffee drinking, to my year with a 1kg coffee roaster when, in one day, I could put 20 shots through the machine.  I have never really thought about upgrading, well not seriously anyway, I love it. I look after it well, descaling and cleaning on a regular basis, and it looks after me well.  Only once, in 8 years, has it let me down; but it was only out of action for a few days and I reckon if I was in anyway mechanically minded I could have fixed it in 2 minutes.

A few months back I was in 3FE, one of Ireland’s best coffee shops for people that don’t know.  I’m embarrassed to say it was my first trip there, anyhow that’s a different story. I was really looking forward to tasting their coffee so went for the tasting menu which consisted of 2 different coffees. To my surprise and delight I noticed that it was being made with the AeroPress coffee maker. I had read plenty about the AeroPress but if I’m honest I had disregarded it as a poor cousin to a decent espresso machine, and never had any real desire to buy one. I was presented with my two coffees, one Ethiopian and the other was……something? I was blown away by the taste experience that I was having, two cups of the lightest, smoothest coffee I have tasted, mixed with these delicate but complex flavours.  One minute after finishing my coffees I was at the till buying an AeroPress and some coffees to match.

Over the following few days I made some of the best cups of coffee I had ever made. Four things really impressed me about the AeroPress, 1: the simplicity of the product, a simple design and really good value. 2: the smoothness of the coffee, for some reason I can drink a lot more AeroPress than any other kind of brew method. 3: the quality of what was in the cup, some coffees that I would consider undrinkable out of the espresso machine came alive with the AeroPress, and finally point 4, this is the most important one for me, consistency. Every cup I made was great; no over extraction, no under extraction, no dud shots, no real adjusting of the grinder.  All the variables are eliminated. 

This is where the guilt steps in… About 6 weeks after getting my AeroPress I had a hankering for a latte (I go through phases of drinking these). That’s when I realised I hadn't even looked at my espresso machine for nearly 2 months. Unloved, unused, it almost looked sad. As with all guilty situations I over compensated and went back to only using the Silvia but over time it’s balanced out.  I now use them 50/50, and almost to prove a point as I wrote this I’ve had two coffees; one from the AeroPress and one from my very much loved espresso machine.

So go on, get yourself an AeroPress and be prepared to taste some of the best coffee that you’ve ever made.

To finish, and Just to give a little balance on a slight negative note; no matter what people say it does not produce espresso like a proper machine, and I would never use it for a latte….to, of course, the delight of my trusted Silvia. 

Craig. 

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