Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Working on web site updates. Lots of coffees to put on the list. Once that's up there'll also be a mailing list update. That had been going out on Tinyletter so I'll have to sort out what I'm going to switch that over to before Tinyletter goes away, but I don't have time for that today.

The darkest thing on my tasting list today is a new lot from Sulawesi. A roaster friend who enjoys dark roasts and has been looking forward to this thinks, just based on the Agtron numbers, that I may have pushed this one a bit too far, but tasting it, it's come out quite nice. There's a lot of body, some nice dark spice notes. I might push the end a little faster for the next batch to maybe get a little more sweetness back, but I do like how this turned out as is.

Next up is a Fair Trade Certified decaf Sumatran coffee. This doesn't taste as dark as it measures, but is coming in sort of right on the edge between what I'd consider a medium and a dark roast. Will probably label it a dark roast since anybody sticking it in a degree of roast analyzer and looking at the number would put it there regardless of how it tastes. This is going to have to be my most expensive decaf.

Continuing darker the next batch is a coffee from Papua New Guinea taken just a bit into 2nd crack. No surprises here, nicely balanced. Should work well in the blends I wanted this to go in.

I feel like this is one of the more accessible Kenyan coffees I've had recently because there's still a lot of flavor to it, but it's not punching you in the face with it.

Moving a little darker but still in the range that I'd consider a light roast is the new Kenya AA. Here I made a couple plan tweaks against the initial exploratory work (CRUCS makes that sort of tweaking so much easier, definitely worth the time I invested into porting that to the web). Here I wanted to bring the sweetness up a little more and moderate the acidity. It's not a total acid bomb but still vibrant with floral aromatics, super juicy.

Tasting production test batches of the new coffees today. Starting with the Ethiopian. This is the lightest of my test batches and I was a little worried as the initial exploratory work lacked intensity. I pulled the data from the lab roaster into CRUCS and edited a plan that pushed the roast faster, just a tiny bit out past a standard cupping roast. Bright, sweet, much better intensity, quite aromatic.

Production test batches of new arrivals cover a nice spread of roast levels. Assuming they taste right tomorrow I'll have a 61, 53, 44, 34, and 27 hitting the shelves. (Agtron gourmet scale, ground)

I hadn't asked the espresso machine technician to do anything with the brewer, but he did, meaning I didn't get all of my cupping done and I haven't gone home yet because I can't leave until the brewer is back to dispensing the right amount of water.

What I'd really love to run into some day is a match for Y2K MAO Harar Horse.

Exploratory work on the new Ethiopian coffee was quite good. I'll want to adjust the timing a bit to give it an intensity boost, but I'm getting the flavor profile that I asked for. This was a national jury selection out of Cup of Excellence (so it didn't go to the online auction, but was picked out as very nice), grade 1 natural, I'll be going on the lighter side with this. I can actually coax a bit of blueberry even out of a dark roast, but the overall flavor profile works better light.

Coffees to taste tomorrow.

One of the coffees had the oddity of the price I'm paying being significantly less than what I know the farmers were paid for it. I don't know how much of that is my supplier wanting to get rid of it while it's still delicious and how much of it is their hedge people just being that good, but this lets me charge less for the finished product as well.

Today's coffee delivery is in the building. One of the coffees is the same lot as our previous shipment so unless something weird happened in the warehouse I should be able to get that back on the shelf tomorrow.

Finally identified, found, and fixed a problematic setting.

It's the time of year where I get to roast some of the same coffees every day. One of today's is on the list again because after roasting it yesterday I got an order that used most of it.

For my birthday, WI DOT sent me a letter letting me know that they're not sending new license plate stickers until I get emissions testing done on my car. Usually if they think I need that they bother to mention it before taking the renewal money, but I guess that slipped through the cracks this year.

Today is unusually productive for me so far. Knocking tons of stuff off my list of things that need doing. People are mostly just staying out of my way and letting me get stuff done.

Glad to see the toy drive box getting filled with actual toys. The first thing in the bin was a book with pictures of old toys that I guess the kid who gets it could look at the pictures and maybe pretend that they were playing with those toys.

I have "birthday cake". Except it's still a few days before my birthday and it's one slice because the rest of it got sold. I don't really care, but my mother is not good at birthdays.