Ethiopian Coffee Part 1

Derek: Often we start it off here with a Harrar which is the birthplace of all the coffee. This is the region where it actually still grows in the wild. But the Ethiopia, the seed had been planted throughout the entire country and some of the region that are more famous now would be one like the Ethiopian Yirgacheffee. This one really holds the title as being the top of all Ethiopian coffees but again, we wouldn’t want to say that because there are many other coffees out there, some of these sidamo’s carry a little bit more body, and if you like body, this sidamo may be you’re top choice. Male: It such a personal tasty flavor. Derek: It is very, very personal. Now this is French roast. Does it in five minutes, it’s a very good little roaster. It can teach you anything that you would want to know about coffee because it really has nothing more than an on off switch with the fan. Technology is that of the harder popcorn maker. If you’re roasting in very small micro-batches, you’re able to play around and truly find what that coffee flavor is your like relatively quickly rather than being that long drawn out process. So you can see the coffee changing its color, and I kept off the lid of there but most people rate when they start with putting a lid rate on and that just catches the chaft that comes off the bean. And that chaft it’s good to see because it actually has a little bit of a protective layer of the bean, although as you process coffee more you tend to find less and less of the chaft. Male: Less of the chaft. Derek: Yeah. Male: So you hear the second crack, you switch it over to cool, you don’t want to roast it any further because that’s going to take you beyond premium. Derek: Yes, what we could’ve done is we could’ve paid a little bit more attention and stopped its rate before the second crack. We could’ve stop its rate or we could’ve gone a little further, all of them are good. The one thing that you’re just doing is you’re using really the three indicators of coffee, you’re listening to the crack, you’re smelling the bean, and you’re actually looking at it. And you can see we brought some of the oils towards the surface. Now that tends to happen with the smaller denser bean like this one. Male: Okay Derek: So I would say I went just past the medium roast on their but not too much, and there’s the coffee. So this is an easy place to start, we could’ve backed it down a little bit but you don’t want the it as lighter than the cinnamon, and this would be an example of a bean that for some reason, it may be just really got stacked in the chamber or it could be just an anomaly in the roasting process but that would greatly affect its flavor. That would be the lightest you would ever see coffee. Male: Okay. Derek: And you will find in some Arabian Type Shops that you can actually buy under roasted coffee and so it’s one thing to say this is how you should roast coffee and this is good for you but there are so many different ways to start tasting the region. Now we had just boiled our water but we will just check. Male: What level of grind is that? Derek: What I did is, we’re using a Ditting grinder over there that gives us full range of it. The easiest way to learn about grinding because grinding is very important only from the perspective of matching the brewing device you’re using. The best grind is as fine as you can make it but fine grinds tend to clog some filters and so what we’re really saying is you’re playing with it and exploring but once you figure out how you’re grinder matches your machine, it takes nothing more than just repeating that over and over. And how fine of a grinder would say that the easiest universal grind is often described as the extra fine that you would see on a lot of packages. And what we would say is a better descriptors, if you take ionized table salt, that’s all similar in size, about that size. If it’s any coarser than that, you’re not getting the flavor of the coffee. The brewing process will take too long. Any finer than that and you typically will be clogging whatever form of device you’re using. We like the cotton filter around here to again demonstrate the idea of reusing it and you don’t really need that much but on the sort of the hidden secrets to the cotton filter is that it doesn’t care about the grind, it does a better job than anything. So we have our boiling hot water, we just made sure it was at temperature and we pour it. If someone wants to brew it a little lower temperature, then just basically—there’s little adjustments that you can do. Male: Sure. Derek: Pour your water slower, let it just serve as stream. This container is at room temperature, in 212º by the time you are brewing together, it’s at 200 which is pretty much a perfect sort of universal for brewing. Male: Okay.