Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

There weren't a lot of people at the Aldi while I was there but apparently we all wanted eggs. I don't think I've ever waited in such a long egg line before.

The time is 2:26AM and the cat is requesting chin scritches.

@Alonealastalovedalongthe #2 is true and quite common. It can be pretty cheap and easy for an individual to incorporate and do business as whatever (even multiple) identity they choose. Maybe call it a lifestyle brand. There are, however, still some rights reserved to humans where that won't help. Also your taxes get harder to do. (Not a lawyer, not legal advice, do own a couple businesses.)

UPS still thinks they're delivering my sister's computer on Wednesday, but it's close enough now that I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up tomorrow. I have everything at the shop already to upgrade that as soon as it arrives and she'll probably want to feed me a pizza after work while I help her get things set up software side.

Today's sensory work is a little more varied. Still some coffee tasting because someone labeled a bag in a way that cannot possibly be true (not customer facing) but also some egg nog tasting because stores in the area are not stocking enough egg nog.

Got the new coffees on the shop's web site along with holiday hours. Apologies to anybody who may be trying to reach me by email on my personal account. I haven't had the time to look at that for a few days now, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up on that over the weekend.

It seems that all my Texas customers are getting in their orders now. All the boxes I'm sending today and all the boxes from the previous 1-2 shipping days have all been going to Texas. Kind of wish someone would open a shop with my stuff in Austin so I could save these people some shipping (especially the people having me send chai concentrate which is crazy expensive to ship).

Test batch of the new coffee from Sumatra exceeds my expectation. Pushing that as dark as I did was the right call.

Working through production test batches and blend reworks today. So far things are coming out as expected.

The 8th and final coffee I'm working with today (cups 77-88) is very juicy, better on the light end. I wouldn't mind more intensity on the acidity for this one, but checking against the roasting data I don't think a profile change is likely to get me an improvement if I go for that.

For the 7th coffee I was hoping to do a couple different roasts, but the differences in cup character are so subtle across the tested range that there's no point. It seems to taste about the same no matter how you roast it (there are differences, but the intensity of flavors where those differences are detected is too low to try to build distinct products around).

The 6th coffee is going to need a profile adjustment to get what I want out of it, but what I want is definitely in the realm of the possible.

The 5th coffee had amazing fragrance running through the grinder. This is another one where you just kind of need to decide where you want to balance the cup as it was nice throughout the range I'm testing. This is one that I like to use in blends so I tried to keep that use case in mind while making the decision.

I wanted to get a couple things out of the 4th coffee. The lighter of the two roasts I hoped to get is pretty straightforward, but for the darker roast I'll need to make some profile adjustments instead of just replicating the product development batch to one of these end points.

3rd coffee wants to be quite dark.

The 2nd coffee is more narrowly delicious with the lightest cup and the darkest 2 cups coming out rather poorly. I can see someone deciding to do something on the lighter or darker side within those bounds, but I think it's best within just a few degrees starting at the start of 2nd crack. There's a very dramatic shift in the overall balance of flavors right exactly at the start of 2nd crack where everything nice about the coffee has both been developed and not been destroyed.

First coffee I need to taste today is quite good across a broad range of roasts. There are a few different kinds of flavor that can be pulled out here, but I can only pick one and it'll be something on the lighter side, though if any home roasters decide to pick it up, they can probably do whatever they generally like and they'll get something pretty good out of this one.

Life is better with cats and I'm pretty sure that's not just the mind control parasites talking.

Tomorrow I need to taste 88 cups of coffee.

It's now after noon the day after my sister was told the coffee would arrive in the morning. The tracking page at least says it's out for delivery.