Brewing on the water (and roasting) - Page 2

Want to talk espresso but not sure which forum? If so, this is the right one.
EbenBruyns (original poster)
Posts: 92
Joined: 4 years ago

#11: Post by EbenBruyns (original poster) »

I held off as long as I could. First shot was great. Back to good quality espresso. The blend is quite different and not as tasty as the first, but by all means a solid roast. I'll see if I can find a temporary storage vessel a bit later, but so far so good.

jpender
Posts: 3861
Joined: 11 years ago

#12: Post by jpender »

Humidity on a boat must be pretty close to saturation most of the time. And the salt too, how does that affect the coffee? You'd be a perfect candidate for the Coffee Freshness System except that it's expensive, requires a supply of CO2, and takes up some precious real estate. Desiccant packs might help but you'd go through a bunch of them so that's not all that attractive either. And they wouldn't get rid of the salt, assuming that is a factor. Do you have a freezer on your boat? I'll bet if you could keep your coffee in a freezer it would slow degradation down even with the moist salt air.

Interesting conditions for studying coffee storage issues. If it were me I'd just drink instant.

vickeryj
Posts: 76
Joined: 4 years ago

#13: Post by vickeryj »

jpender wrote: Interesting conditions for studying coffee storage issues. If it were me I'd just drink instant.
If it were me I would either figure it out or stop living on a boat. Instant is fine for staving off caffeine withdrawal, but not an acceptable long term solution..

EbenBruyns (original poster)
Posts: 92
Joined: 4 years ago

#14: Post by EbenBruyns (original poster) »

No real electricity to rely on so, no freezer, so that's not a viable solution.

I thought instant was a swear word on this forum? I went without coffee instead for the last 4 years we've been living on the boat.

Interesting conditions indeed. I based my theory on the fact that green beans was moved around the world by ship for many years, therefor it can't be out of the question to store them on a boat. I have to confess that I didn't realize how quickly roasted beans would go stale, but at the very least I think an air tight container would give me enough leeway to make it work. If the roast only lasts 3 days and I can drink it within 3 days, that should be sufficient. It takes about 20 minutes and a bit of sweat to roast a cup of green beans. Cooling them is a piece of cake in the cockpit by tossing them between a metal mixing bowl and a plastic strainer. takes about 5 minutes to cool them completely (the breeze seems to help too, so will be interesting to try it in the tropics with no wind).

I'm not unhappy with the first 2 days brewing on the previous roast, heck even the shots pulled with the beans in rapid decline was still acceptable. I'm pretty much at capacity for roasting batch on the Hive roaster so making them last much longer is not exactly a priority. Getting 2 or 3 more days would be good and I suspect a sealed container would provide that.

The more interesting experiment here in my opinion is the storing of green beans. This is something that's been notoriously difficult to research, especially in relation to the on the water aspect. If I can store greens for 6 months then I'd consider it a victory. We only store 6 months worth of food, so storing beans beyond that is kinda redundant...

Once I find a suitable storage container I'll report no the success rate with that.

Marcelnl
Posts: 3831
Joined: 10 years ago

#15: Post by Marcelnl »

If you can I'd roast each variety separately, my success with blends was not when roasting them together ( so I stopped doing that, it may be fine and I'm rubbish at it)

I'm sure the roasted beans should survive a few days more when stored in an airtight (glass) container.
LMWDP #483

EbenBruyns (original poster)
Posts: 92
Joined: 4 years ago

#16: Post by EbenBruyns (original poster) »

That would be a lot of hard work, it actually seems ok doing it the way I'm doing it. I think it depends on the beans you're roasting. What I want from it certainly works really well with the blend mixed before roasting. I've produced at least 3 shots that could rival what I did with my cimbali using a professional roaster's beans. Which is better than most cafe's serve and it will certainly be the best brew in the anchorage, unless there's another crazy like me on a boat...

The shots this morning was great again, I'm not a huge fan of this blend, but it's certainly not bad by any means.

jpender
Posts: 3861
Joined: 11 years ago

#17: Post by jpender »

It's not clear to me how you're currently storing your roasted coffee. If not in a sealed container is it just in a sack? In an open bowl? It could be that your problem will be largely, and easily, solved by using an airtight container.

If not then here's an outside the box suggestion. Grind your too-recently-roasted-but-not-yet-stale coffee and let it sit for 10, 20, or 30 minutes. Then make coffee. I haven't tried this myself but supposedly it's an effective way to degas coffee that is a little too young. You'd still have to roast frequently but you're living on a boat with a coffee roaster. What else are you going to be doing?

EbenBruyns (original poster)
Posts: 92
Joined: 4 years ago

#18: Post by EbenBruyns (original poster) »

It was just sitting in an open bowl, obviously the issue - didn't expect it to go bad so quickly. I've negotiated an air tight container from the admiral so I'll see how the current batch goes by tomorrow.

Pulled another shot just before I put it in the container and it was still great!

Marcelnl
Posts: 3831
Joined: 10 years ago

#19: Post by Marcelnl replying to EbenBruyns »

GOOD!

I'd be amazed if you are unable to make your batch last for a week before going stale (that is if you do not run out of the batch), My roasted beans typically keep for up to three weeks, yet I usually need to roast much sooner (going through approx. 1.5kg in 10 days or so)
LMWDP #483

jpender
Posts: 3861
Joined: 11 years ago

#20: Post by jpender »

EbenBruyns wrote:It was just sitting in an open bowl, obviously the issue...
Ha! Yeah, I wouldn't do that even on land where I live.