Flying Chaff

Another rainy, cold day.  The area trails were too muddy to be fun, so I walked again into Lodi and then back home again. The ground is still frozen so the water runs off the hills and collects in the ditches.  Just a little bit of snow left, and it isn't pretty.

I ran out of coffee this morning, so coffee roasting was on today's to-do list.  

 

In the commercial roastery, most of the chaff goes up from the roasting drum and through the chimney.  A small amount of chaff enters the air when the beans discharge into the cooling tray.  It's a relatively small amount of chaff because my commercial loads were 20 lbs of beans while my home roasting loads are only a pound.

Roasting in the bread machine is an open-air process, so when the chaff releases from the beans, it all tends to fly into the air. 

Roasting green coffee with a bread machine is as easy as it looks.  The chaff is fully released after about five minutes, more or less.  The beans turn a cinnamon color as they reach what's known as first crack, an audible sound similar to popcorn popping.  Most of my roasts stop just before second crack.  Roasting takes about fifteen minutes and then another four minutes for the beans to completely cool.

High Tech cooling tray

 

Dark roasts are usually taken to after second crack, which sounds like Rice Crispies and milk.  Coffee taken to French Roast is black and oily.  

At my coffee shop, the French Roast was called the BBB Special Blend.  It stood for badly burnt beans.  We still sold a lot of it.  People like what they like.

Indian Lake to Lake Wisconsin

October 2, 2017:  This morning, I started the day with a cup of Brazilian Morgiana 17/18, Lot 428, home roasted to full city (a few snaps into second crack).

I had errands to run at Costco in Middleton, so I took a slight detour and headed to Indian Lake County Park, located in the northwest corner of Dane County.  According to the calendar, fall has started, but the weather was pure summer with temps hitting 80. There are a few miles of trails, which become cross-country ski trails in the winter. 

The bonus is that the hiking is free, while skiing requires a $7 day pass.  I chose Trail #1, which follows the perimeter of the park about three miles, passing the lake, entering the woods with some ups and downs, opening into some nice prairie, and finishing up in the woods to the parking lot.

Later that day, after dining on Costco salmon and a freshly baked baguette, Julia and I dropped Justin off at musical practice.  We took the opportunity to test Julia’s new hiking poles at Gibraltar Rock.

The sun was still shining brightly when we started the hike.  But when we finished around 7 p.m., it was getting dark in the woods.

There was still time for a nightcap at Fitz’s On the Lake,  a bar and restaurant with  an outdoor deck overlooking Lake Wisconsin.  The Hacker-Pschorr Hefeweisen was the perfect way to finish off a warm night in October.

Close to Home

While other people sleep in on this Saturday morning, my body wakes with the sun and urges me up.  A few minutes after 6 a.m, Elvis the dog  and I hiked into town, up and down a few hills, and past a quiet Main Street.  The cafe was packed with old folks.  The more trendy coffee shop and cupcake shop were still empty, waiting for the upscale younger crowd to wander in.

Coming up the driveway, I noticed that the squirrel I accidentally hit yesterday afternoon was already gone.  Nature wastes nothing.  I felt bad about hitting the squirrel, although I have been at war with the long-tailed rodents for a few years.  I like to feed our wild birds, and the squirrels have been raiding my various feeders for a long time.  I have been known to take pot shots at the raiders with my one-shot pellet pistol.  I missed more than I hit, but I did manage to hit a few.

Recently, I purchased an overpriced squirrel guard for the bird feeder, which was simple but effective.  Since it worked, I guess it wasn’t overpriced.

Since installation, the squirrels have been content to eat the birds’ wasted seed on the ground, rather than climbing up the pole, lifting up the lid, and stuffing their greedy heads into the feeder itself  to eat like pigs at a trough.  I no longer feel animosity towards the grounded squirrels.

After arriving at home, I grabbed my bag of freshly roasted Mexican coffee beans.

Actually, the beans were baked, not roasted.  And that’s an important distinction.  Properly roasted beans undergo temperature changes from room temperature to over 400 degrees.  My heat gun crapped out on me during yesterday’s roasting session.  Beans that normally roast in 12-15 minutes took over 30 minutes with the dying heat gun.  Not a good thing.  Baked beans taste flat. Still, these fresh baked beans were still an improvement over anything that I could buy locally. And being the frugal guy that I am, I couldn’t throw away the baked beans!

There was a time when I would drink nothing but a ristretto (restricted espresso shot). Those days of purity are long past. Today, I opted for a simpler form of making coffee–a method that will serve me well when I begin travels with the Scamp.

Justin and I are taking it easy.  Julia is off in Nashville at a meeting.  She left me this cup from a previous meeting to remember her by–with a semi-famous Ben Franklin quote.