Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

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.

Delivery window for coffee was "morning". The time is now 1:41PM and it has not yet arrived.

Was very disappointed in the gelatin cup selection at the grocery store. Prices were also way too high so I opted for pudding instead where the selection was also bad but at least it was cheap.

Disney's Gargoyles is the story of how Thomas Riker was transported to 1980s Earth where he used his historical knowledge of the future to get rich and meddle in the timeline. This precipitated the biggest cross over event in Star Trek history when an all star cast is assembled as undercover temporal agents trying to set right what once went wrong and save the Federation.

One coffee shipment has arrived. I still have 2, maybe 3 shipments to bring in before the end of the year. The uncertainty around the last one is that the shipping container arrived with damage so if it turns out that the coffee is wrecked my supplier will not be selling it to me. At least one of the remaining shipments is scheduled for Monday and that's the one that has the most types of coffee and the ones needed most urgently.

When I got to work I caught my sister about to go off and buy donuts. My previous stop was buying donuts so I just shared those. I have a coffee delivery to unload today so I want to get the calories in me for that.

The rice cooker has successfully cooked rice. There are still two features that I wish were standard:

1. An estimate of how long until the cooker thinks it's done so I can decide if I stall on plating other parts of the meal or if I rearrange the dish.

2. A proper off setting (rather than needing to unplug the thing). I'll never intentionally use the Warm setting. All I need are Cook and Off.

Also got a smaller rice cooker. Mildly disappointed that the included coupon for $1 off my next bag of rice expired 11 months ago, though I guess that goes a long way toward explaining the sale price.