Tasting Notes

Last weekend, I went to a wine tasting with my family at Naked Mountain Vineyard in Markham, Virginia (Visit them at: http://www.nakedmtnwinery.com). A disclosure, though: I have no developed palate for wine. I rarely drink it and know nothing about it, save it’s alcoholic and may have come in contact with some viticulturist’s feet.

Nevertheless, I was engrossed in the descriptions on the wine menu at Naked Mountain, noting the flavors within different wines, be it a Chardonnay with pineapple and lemon or a Merlot with leather and tobacco. In this way, being a dedicated coffee drinker and coffee roaster in training made me feel like I could get a grip on wine tasting. Simply, coffee and wine sales both rely heavily on marketing the differences in flavor between their respective varieties.

My impression, however, is that most people are the opposite of me, that is, the average wine drinker is more comfortable describing the taste of a glass of wine than the average coffee drinker would a cup of coffee. Bearing this in mind, I wanted to put together some thoughts about tasting notes for coffee that, while far from being universal, could help stimulate your coffee-splashed taste buds.

Here are, strangely enough, descriptions of common descriptors in coffee tasting:

“citrusy” – Tangerine, lemon and other citrus fruit flavors are easily detectable in high-acid, medium roast coffees, such as Tanzanian Peaberry or Kenyan AA
“floral” – Also common among high-acid, East African coffees, these lighter roasts flaunt their fragrance and may even have a chopped-up, flower-like residual resembling tea leaves when ground
“earthy” – Customary in describing Indonesian coffees, these low-acid, medium roasts can taste and smell like a day in the sun spent gardening amid damp soil and friendly fungus
“smoky” – Dark-roast coffees and their added carbon content should cleanse the palate with a bold, almost burnt finishing taste that defines traditional European tastes
“grassy” – Latin American coffees often carry this tasting note, evocative of something fibrous that a grazing animal would eat, like hay or roots
“nutty” – Like trail nuts, an oily or viscous feel can pervade the finishing tastes of many Asian or Latin American coffees
“spicy” – Reminiscent of baked goods or incense rather than Mexican food, medium roasts can tingle the tongue with cinnamon, clove or pepper
“sweet” – Coffees that fall between dark and medium roasts often carry a mellow, sweet taste without tartness, like chocolate or caramel

So next time you visit Blanchard’s and pick up a pound, make sure to give us some feedback on your own opinions, likes, and dislikes of the coffees you’ve tried…because no matter what the baristas say, at the end of the day, everyone gets something a little different out of their cup.

Post jotted by Java Junkie Jonathan

Caffeine Content and Roast Profiles

A few days ago, my sister called me out of the blue with a simple but important coffee-related question. She is a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and is in the middle of her finals week, meaning she's burning the midnight oil trying to finish up last-minute papers and projects. Faced with limited hours at local coffee shops, she needed bang for her buck and needed to know how to get the most caffeine from the bean. Her question: Is dark or medium-roast coffee STRONGER?

The tricky word here is stronger. Many people have a preference between dark roast and medium roast coffees, but many people also associate darkness with “strength” and strength with caffeine content. However, this is not the case.

The darker the bean, the lower the caffeine. So there is actually an inverse relationship between darkness and caffeine content. Dark-roast coffees may taste “strong” but they will not keep you awake for that cram session as well as a medium-roast coffee.

The reason behind this difference is dark-roast coffees are roasted longer and to a higher temperature in order to cook the beans to a bolder, darker taste. In the process, some caffeine molecules are physically burned out of the bean, becoming smoke.

If you come by Blanchard's coffee shop seeking a little (or a lot) more caffeine in your cup, follow this simple advice: Drop some espresso in it! That is, Make a Red Eye (coffee+one or more espresso shots)!

Article above written by "The Man, The Myth, The Legend - Jonathan Lesko".

Sucking Beans

The following post was written by Jonathan Lesko the roaster, rebel and all around good guy;
Keeping the Lab clean is an uphill battle. We got grinds, stray beans, packaging trash and chaff (a byproduct of roasting that is great for compost, causes fires and smells rank). No matter how careful I am around the roasting room, otherwise known as the Lab, I spill beans and grinds all over the floor. Every step, I hear the cracking of roasted beans underneath my feet. Green beans litter the floor as they spill out of the large burlap sacks that store them and which frequently bust open out of sheer wear and tear. Ground coffee also happens to have been our best selling coffee at Ukrop’s, now Martin’s, so it’s always being packaged and also, spilled.

Fortunately, however, we bought a new vacuum cleaner last week and it has made every day at work delightfully cleaner. One source of endless sonic enjoyment is sucking up stray beans off the floor. Our old one (insert shameless pun here) s_ck_d. It often made more of a mess than it cleaned. So I would like to commend it here with a Google image: