Home Roasting in a Drum

This post has been a long time coming.  For now I have begun roasting in a somewhat crude drum roasting setup.  I bought a coffee drum from the internet after much deliberation on whether or not I should make my own.  It turns out the time invested and the cost of materials made more expensive to try to make and probably less effective (for a small drum, ~1lb capacity).

The drum I bought is a Behmor 1600 plus replacement drum for ~$30.  Going in I had assumed I would have to do lots of modifications to.. just about everything.  The initial setup was going to be done with a turbo convection oven, which I unfortunately bought, before I realized that I should just use my grill. Luckily the turbo oven is pretty sweet as a random kitchen appliance, so I'm still using it.   In order to mount the drum, I ended up using some parts from an electric rotisserie attachment that didn't end up working out for the grill.  After that all I needed to do was attach the drum to an electric drill and voila, a roasting setup!

Weird coffee

Tonight I tried a cold-brew that I steeped for 24 hours.  It was made from a bunch of mostly failed Yirgacheffe test batches, some Guatemalan  I got from Whole Foods I didn't care for, some old Tanzanian peaberry I roasted, and finally some random bag I had in the shelf that had been sitting.  I've decided that one of the best ways to get rid of my extra inventory is to make a cold-brew out of it and the results are usually surprisingly good.

Tasting it hot without sugar or cream, it tasted rather flat with a light floral note at the end.  When I added sugar and milk, it tasted relatively plain with a little bit more of the coffee and floral taste.

After up-dosing it and adding more sugar, and subsequently letting it cool, it tasted like a mouthful of flowers that ended with a milk chocolate flavor.  While when I normally read descriptions like this, I tend to think the writer to be exaggerating (AKA full of crap), it really did taste this to me.  Before anyone uses my typical assessment against me, I have other people who agreed with the weirdness of this coffee.  After more sips and digging through my memories for a familiar flavor, I landed on rose-water.  It really tasted like coffee, then a strong rose water flavor, and then chocolate.

In conclusion, coffee is weird and I don't understand it.

Home Roasting Coffee (the ongoing experiment): Pan Roasting

Recently in an attempt to "just see" how hard it is to roast your own coffee, I have fallen into the proverbial rabbit-hole.  As it turns out the process of roasting coffee can be pretty complicated if you decide to take it that far.  In my opinion the pros outweigh the cons for home roasting.  The benefits being that its cheaper (if you get decent coffee normally), you get fresh coffee essentially whenever you want, and hopefully it will be an enjoyable learning experience about something that you are probably addicted to.  The cons are that it can produce a fair amount of smoke (so either do it outside or have a really good range hood), and getting good roasts can and will take some practice.

However, the core concept of roasting coffee is really simple and anyone can do it.  Blast the beans with heat until brown.  My first roasts were done on a stainless steel pan on a propane grill side burner and not only was it really informative, it was pretty fun.




This roast turned out pretty well (yes I know, this pan needs some maintenance).  I don't remember where the coffee came from, oops.



I believe this roast is from Brazil.  These beans are large and have particularly flat sides.  This makes it more difficult to keep from scorching if you are using a pan.  Scorching imparts a wonderful... charcoal.. flavor at the end of the taste profile.

What I've learned so far is that its easier to use a whisk instead of a wooden spoon for agitating the beans in a pan.  This allows the beans to flip more readily preventing some of the burning of the flat sides.

Even better than that is using a cast iron pan with a lid.  After heating the pan up to around 500F, dump the beans in, keep the lid on and shake it!  This results in much more even roasts. Unfortunately its a bit more energy intensive and the lid keeps you from experiencing the color and smell changes as clearly, so I recommend the stainless steel pan for at least a few roasts first.

Some coffee comic strips for Monday.

From http://www.threepanelsoul.com/

From http://sarahcandersen.com/

Smoked Salmon

One of the main reasons I ended up getting a smoker is because I like smoked salmon (cold)  and it costs too much.  After some research I figured I may as well give it a shot and see what happens.  The smoked salmon I prepare is also known as "Nova Lox".  This is in contrast to "gravlax" which is not smoked.  In general the two have slightly different seasonings too, but that is the main difference.  "Smoked salmon"  is a somewhat general term that can also encompass hot and cold smoked salmon which as the names imply, use different temperatures.

This is a generic rundown of what I do to make Nova Lox.  After trying a few different methods from online, I found this one to work out best for me.

Step one:  Be attractive Curing

After cleaning the fish and removing the bones, the first step is curing.  The cure is made from salt and brown sugar and this helps preserve the fish as well as add flavor.  The process draws out the water in the fish resulting in a much more dense protein.



Step two: Brining

Remove the cure (which most has turned into a syrup from drawing out the moisture from the salmon) by rinsing.  Afterwards find a container to brine the fish in salt and sugar solution.  This will make the fish taste less salty by putting some water back into it.  I ended up just using the bottom tray of the fridge because I'm lazy and its easy.



Step three: Rinsing and resting

After the brining, I rinse the fillets off with water and allow them to soak a bit in water.  This will draw out some of the salt so that its not too salty.  After drying I season, in this case pepper and dill, and let them rest for a while.  Then its on to smoking!



Step four:  Smoking

The salmon is smoked at a low temperature in order to keep its texture. I have been experimenting with different woods and Alder seems to be the most traditional route.  It has a light mellow flavor which is nice.  However I tend to like things to taste a bit smokier so I may add some oak and apple in next time.





Step five:  Storing (sometimes in stomach)

I find that vacuum sealing and freezing almost immediately results in the best flavor if you aren't going to eat it within the first day.  After thawing, the texture and flavor both seem very well preserved.  As for slicing, I usually slice at a slight angle and then scrape the slice off of the skin with a horizontal motion.  This usually gives a nice clean piece with little waste and picks up some of the tasty stuff near the skin.




















For people who are looking for more details, I got most of my info from this page:
http://playingwithfireandsmoke.blogspot.com/2006/08/thirdeyes-nova-lox.html
I tried various different recipes and methods and decided I liked this one the best so far.  I've tweaked things a little bit to fit my personal taste, as should anyone trying any sort of food really.

Hello to whoever finds their way here.

This blog is more or less a way to keep track and document some of the random fixations that Matt and I find myself falling into.  As of now, I am mostly working on roasting and tasting coffee, but I'm sure there will be lots of sudden changes in direction as my mind wanders.

Steve

Test post, please ignore.