Tag: gift

Context

New Coffee

• Coffee name: Finca Los Angeles
• Bag notes: Blackberry cobbler
• Components / origin: El Salvador - Finca Los Angeles
• Roast date: Not visible on bag as far as I can see.

Many thanks to JB and LS for this new coffee that just arrived as a gift. It is a light-medium roast, and I am interested to see how the grind setting will shift for it. The roaster description is compelling; see finca-los-angeles for more info. I want to visit the farm.

Setting

In the pre-dawn kitchen this morning, NPR Morning Edition from yesterday’s broadcast played in the background. There was a segment about memory and RAM shortages, then conversation with 🦄 moved in and out of the brew flow.

A nor’easter is coming. New bag, opened into darkness.

Brew Notes

Preference is to only change one variable in each experiment. So the plan was to hold the recent baseline technique for this brew and only change the beans.

• Water was purified.
• Preheat: 310 g poured through filter into the mug, then reheated.
• Three mists of RDT before grinding.
• Full pour, with an accidental overpour of 1.8 g for a total of 257.8 g water.
• Immersion held until 2:30, then drawdown.
• A clean clockwise spiral ring appeared at the top during immersion.

Observe

Sniff, sniff the grounds

so potent, fresh, electric, I’m seeing a gold color. — 🦄

What is the right word? “Aroma” sounds like chemistry to me, “aromatic ring.” “Smell” always sounds like it belongs to stink. Still thinking about how strange it is to smell with intention. I hold a bit of silence, listen to the molecules, and wait for words to bubble up and form an exoskeleton around the experience. It reminds me of trying to capture the butterfly of my dreams in a net of words.

Nose in: it is layered and expansive in there. telescopic, like peering into another dimension that’s opening. Blackberry cobbler actually detected! Exciting.

The filter bed looks

Pay no attention to the glaring numbers on the instrument panel. It was neither 6:29AM nor was anything measured as 26.9g. That said, the bed did look like this.

Each coffee roast leaves a signature look in the spent filter bed. Brews with coffees like the Parable Coffee Co Mocha Java leave a dense black hole at the bottom of the filter bed, very uniform, unpenetrably dark.

Others like Ruby Colorful Coffees Organic August — Seasonal Blend have left tiny patchy holes in the filter bed.

I also want to compare this pattern against Parable Guatemala ACODIHUE Heuheutenango Organic on a future brew.

The spent bed for Finca has a high dark ridge ring at the top water mark, then more of a blank ring, then a bed where the grounds crawl up the sides, forming a bit of a valley out of the cone.

The phrase “lunar halo” popped up:

Tasting

A bit of sweetness on first sip. Sparkling acidity by sip two.

Around the edges, a slight bitter curl in a good ornamental way. Third sip lifted: what the bag calls sparkling fruits lands accurately. Honey showed up as a thin sweet rivulet and a lingering sugar drizzle. Delicious.

Could these be first hints of this single-origin’s capabilities? Gentle power.

This was, without a doubt, the most exciting cup of coffee to date. Long after the sip goes down, little sparkle pops of taste emerge on the tastebuds. That’s the “sparkling fruits” on the bag, certainly.

Listening

Perfect for this moment: “In a Landscape” by John Cage, Alexei Lubimov, from album Der Bote.

Spooky. Other-worldly tone helps get into this new world of coffee. The rest of the album plays in familiar ghostly nostalgia.

Reflect

Prior days have included measured Folgers instant coffee, moving attention from beans log entries to less austere routines. It has been useful contrast against these stronger cups.

What a bag this will be.

[ cup/1 · coffee/new-bag · gift · weather/noreaster · weather/storm · listening ]