Cool kettle!

Very nice! I’d love to see the brew if you figure it out. Maybe try posting a picture in the comments? I know with Voyager it’s really easy to to multiple pictures or pictures in comments but I’m not sure on other clients.

I had a bag like that recently too. It was not a pleasant experience at all.

Yeah I decided to change things up a bit, I’ll probably change it again soon to a bit of a better picture of the robot but I plan on keeping the robot the profile picture for a while.

That’s what I thought too. But I’d read it on many different places, so maybe there is some merit to it. With that being said, I’m still not wasting 3kg of coffee. I’ll just see it as my cups getting better with time.

A bit similar, when I got my new grinder I read you should grind ~3kg of coffee to season the burrs before actually drinking anything from it. Well, that’s massively wasteful, so I didn’t do that, but for my first maybe 300g I mostly just did cheap coffee and continued to use my hand grinder for nicer beans. Not sure if it made a big difference or not, but I’m happy with my cup quality now.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! I hope any Canadians who are celebrating today have a great day doing whatever it is you love to do on Thanksgiving.

No surprises to anyone here, I’ve been mostly brewing soup and now my red, tea-like pour overs. They’ve been very fun and really highlight the best parts in light roasts, in my opinion.

Weak and sour definitely sounds like under-extraction. If you want to give lighter roasts another try, aim for a higher extraction. Hotter water, longer contact time, more agitation. These can all help. Don’t be afraid you might be bringing out the sourness more, the sour compounds are always the first to be extracted, just as bitter compounds are always the last to be extracted. Ideally, having a bit of both will balance out the cup and it shouldn’t taste bitter or sour in the end.

The nice thing about light roasts is it doesn’t hide anything in the coffee. Dark roasts have a lot of roast flavour, and that can hide the more delicate, floral, fruity notes that coffee is capable of. Plus if you’re drinking single origin, medium to dark will also mask what makes those beans unique. Not to say dark roast single origin taste no different than a blend dark roast, but it will be much closer to each other than with light roasts. I’m currently bouncing between two beans right now, one from Ethiopia and one from Costa Rica. Now, they also have other things going on, different processes and elevations, but all that uniqueness would get masked if it was roasted dark. So to me, that would kind of be a waste, and there would be no reason to spend a little extra on these beans if they’re not going to taste much different than commodity coffee.

Hopefully that helps a bit.

Yeah that’s definitely fair. I’d actually describe the flavour as quite tea-like too. I’m not sure this would taste great on a dark roast but for something this light, it’s actually a lovely cup.

I’d love to hear how you get on with it!

I find soup does a better job complimenting really light roasts, compared to traditional espresso. To my own tastes, I’ve found light roast espresso, when brewed normally, tends to be quite sour. The response to that was turbo shots, but soup is kind of the extreme of that, and I personally prefer it. Dark roasts should absolutely be thick and goupy and syrupy with a nice layer of crema on top, and medium roasts should lie somewhere in between. Again, in my own opinion.

Yesterday’s was Ethiopian:

Today’s was Costa Rican:

Both very light roasts, both excellent.

When I started brewing V60’s I was only drinking dark roasts and mostly stuck with 85°C water. As I got lighter, I got hotter, but now I’m starting to get cooler again even with really light roasts and I’m really enjoying that combo.

Yep! Hatch and Pilot have become my go-to roasters as of late. Pilot is from Toronto, Hatch is just outside Toronto.

Yeah sort of, actually! I hadn’t thought of it like that but that’s definitely what it is. I guess it makes sense I like it so much then, given my recent obsession with soup on my Robot that I keep posting about.

Hatch was recently selling a TNT Lab Geisha for $85/100g and I was really tempted to try it just because, but decided against it. I’d still be curious to pick it up if they get it again the next time it’s in season. But that’s the most I’ve seen from a roaster in my local-ish area. For the most part, I’m content with my $30/300g bags. I’ve gotten some really excellent bags at that price.

I just paid $30 CAD for 250g of the bag I posted a couple days ago (Pilot’s Black Moon). I thought that was on the higher end of acceptable. The equivalent of nearly $45 CAD for only 200g is definitely quite steep. It does sound really interesting, though.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Sorry for taking so long to get to another bean review post. I’ve been distracted playing with my new Cafelat Robot and DF54. I’ll try to get the rest of these posts out soon.

I’m wanting to experiment more with ferments, good to know that’s something of a specialty of theirs.