Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

While I'm out of town there's a coffee delivery that I was hoping to get before leaving town. Someone got confused as they tried to deliver coffee our coffee to a different roasting company, which refused to take delivery. Freight company then tried to deliver the coffee that other roasting company was expecting to us and we've also refused to take delivery of someone else's coffee. My sister can handle this and since I'm not there she'll have to.

Now that I've had some coffee, I've found the hotel room coffee maker. All the coffee is decaf.

I've been informed that the cat has moved to the top of the bed.

This is where I'd put my stem bolts, if I had any.

When I left the cat at my mother's house she hid under the bed and started making sad noises. But I can't take her with me, she wouldn't enjoy the car ride to New Orleans even if I could, and she would not do well if I just left her in the house by herself while I'm out of town. Her cuddle requirements are too high to not have a person around.

As expected, covid test came back negative. Don't have to make last minute arrangements for someone else to teach my class.

I was not surprised to learn this.

I have acquired a supply of driving snacks for the upcoming 12-15 hour drive.

While out running errands earlier today I saw someone completely decked out in Sailor Moon attire of the sort you'd expect to find for sale at a con booth. Complete with Sailor Moon face mask.

For these very dark roasts, most students tend to prefer the roast that looks like an S curve (get the coffee hot enough to get your dark roast flavor characteristics fast enough that you're not overly diminishing flavors developed earlier) and I suspect that will continue to be true this time around.

The fourth flight takes the darkest coffee from the first flight and adds variations where all the batches have the same total roasting time and match up to the start of first crack, but one goes faster through first crack and slower through second crack while the other goes slower through first crack and faster through second crack. Here again there are some clear differences in flavor.

This kind of exercise usually shows differences primarily in the intensity and expression of sweetness in the coffee. While an inexperienced taster might not know how to describe the differences on this one, they should be easily able to discern that there are differences among all the coffees in this flight, though they're more similar to each other than the coffees in the first flight due to the similar roast level.

The third flight takes the third coffee from the first flight and adds coffees that keep everything before the initial color change the same, everything after the coffee has turned brown the same, but goes faster or slower while the coffee is yellow in color.

(this is a practical example showing that DTR is a terrible metric that nobody should be using)

The 2nd flight might be the most difficult one for students. It's taking the lightest coffee from the first flight and doing two variations where the total time in the roaster is a minute less, but in one that's all front loaded where there isn't significant chemistry happening in the coffee and in the other it's divided proportionally through the entire roast so it looks the same in the percentage breakdowns.. There's a larger, but still subtle difference there.

The first flight is a basic roast level progression, and this is going to be an easy one for people to notice flavor differences. The third cup is a bit odd with sort of a bergamot-like flavor, but that's fine.

Tasting the coffees that I roasted yesterday for my next class. We're doing brewed pots of coffee first because that's going to be safer for everybody and second because we're dealing with roasting plans for production roasts and most people don't drink their coffee one spoon at a time out of a cupping bowl.

pre-trip covid test done. will get the results when I get the results. if negative, I'm all set. If positive, I'll have to run another instructor through my class. expecting negative. vaccinated, masked, mostly try to avoid people.

Why would I use a programming language to describe my presentation instead of using software designed for presentations? Mostly because that's just how much I hate dragging little boxes around on a screen.