Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Got the new decaf coffees that are ready up for sale on the web site. The last of the previous decaf from Ethiopia was roasted today so I've removed that from the site, but I have the next decaf Ethiopian ready to figure out. I'm still sorting out how I want to roast the new coffee from East Timor, so once all of that is done there'll be a blurb on the main page mentioning all of the latest arrivals.

Making burritos for dinner. Vegetarian curry.

It's 3:38AM. The cat has declared it cuddles time.

Tonight the cat mostly wants chin scritches.

February 2020 was the worst month for online sales since I started taking those. It won't take much more for February 2021 to be the best so far.

Today is a good day for online sales. New orders coming in while I'm roasting to fill the ones I already have. Keep em coming.

https://wilsonscoffee.com/

Had to do bird removal at home today. How did a full grown bird get into the house? Don't know. It was smart enough to fly out when I opened a window. The cat was interested in seeing what was making the noise but too lazy to hunt the bird.

One of my customers is moving to Thailand for a few years and wants to know where he should buy coffee in Bangkok. I've mostly used Pattaya as a home base while there so I'm not really up on the scene, but I don't expect he'll have too much trouble finding a good place. Any recommendations for me to pass along here?

@Gina If you're on a budget, Bodum makes a drip brewer (Bistro, but double check the product category because they use the same name for several completely different things) that's quite good for the price (has a hot plate, but does get the water hot enough).

@Gina The most common flaw in an auto drip machine is just not getting the water hot enough for proper extraction. If you're trying to choose in a store, look for the one that uses the most power but that just makes the coffee (if it grinds and brews then when it breaks you're out both). Another good feature to look for is brewing into an insulated carafe instead of having a hot plate, though the hot plate isn't a deal breaker if you decant to a carafe right away.

Anyway, this one is going to be labelled Decaf French Roast and it's consistent with that. I considered the Peruvian for this role as well, but the Brazil holds up better at my darkest roasts.

For those wondering about the difference between the two decaf processes, MWP is using the expired SWP patents and both have developed slightly different variations as trade secrets (the main difference from a sensory standpoint is that they're running at different temperatures and the resulting chemistry is discernible if you know what you're tasting for). One is done in Canada, the other is done in Mexico, but they're basically the same that just need to be differentiated because trademarks.

Next up is a test of one of two roasts that I'm going to be doing with a Mountain Water Process Decaf Brazil. With this coffee I'm leaning toward doing dark and darker and it's the latter that I'm tasting today. This is intended to be good on its own for people who enjoy a very dark roast, but it's also useful to have this available for the couple decaf blends I make here.

During product development, this consistently tasted as if I had roasted it about 10F° hotter than I did, which was interesting when I started comparing my cupping notes to my roasting records. I wanted a medium roast flavor profile, but this peculiarity massively compressed the range I had to work with there. This one has a little less body than I usually get out of a Peruvian coffee but a lot more sweetness.

Trying production test batches of some of the new coffees that arrived recently. First up is a Swiss Water Process Decaf Peru that's Fair Trade Certified and was organic until I touched it (not because I'm doing anything that would sensibly make the coffee not organic but because Congress botched the law around how that works and I refuse to support something that's equivalent to a mob protection racket in the US.

Tasted 37 cups of coffee. I think I'm done with that for the day.

My mother has an appointment to get vaccinated. I'll have a bit of a wait because on the one hand the federal government considers my work essential for national security and the state also considers me to be an essential worker, but not so essential to get me protected earlier. (It's okay, I can wait)

Coffee delivery arrived. Should have some new stuff on the web site over the weekend.

@mhoye This reminds me of when I played Final Fantasy 8 and kept wondering if they just forgot they were trying to make a video game.