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Iced Coffee, the Better Way

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Iced coffee is the summer alternative to hot coffee for some of us. To some it is a new idea. Drink it black or with milk, drink it with or without sugar, but drink it over ice.

This refreshing coffee treat can come in many varieties, flavor and price. You can get an iced coffee just about anywhere now and they are all made differently and the prices, WOW can that hurt!

Some places use powdered something and coffee that comes in a jug, some use a coffee syrup while others are really using fresh milk, fresh brewed coffee, sugar and flavoring. But I am suggesting a better way. Make your own and keep it ready in the refrigerator. It is ready in seconds to pour and go. Not only will you save a fortune but you know what is really in your cup. You decide if you only want good stuff or some unknown stuff. Here is our recipe that we offer at Tastings and fund-raisers (well not exactly, there is a secret ingredient).

MJ Iced Coffee

Make 1 gallon
3/4 Gal. Midwest Coffee Company Mocha Java Blend
Whole Milk
1-1½ Cups Sugar (your desired sweetness)
1 Tablespoon Pure Vanilla Extract

Dissolve sugar into coffee when hot, add vanilla, and pour into a gallon jug, fill the remainder with milk. Chill and serve over ice.
This will stay fresh as long as your milk is good.

I promise this will be the best Iced Coffee I have ever had. I think it is because it is just a pure clean, chemical free glass of Iced Coffee. And then there is the fact that our Mocha Java is in it, it really does make a difference. With a bonus of the dollars you save not buying out.

Here are some variations you can use to create your own personal Iced Coffee. If you come up with some other great creation, let me know.

Whole, 2%, skimmed milk
White Sugar, Splenda, Honey or Real Maple Syrup
Vanilla, Almond, Maple or Fruit Extracts
Try a different origin of coffee, such as: Colombia Sierra Nevada or Sumatra SWP Decaf

Using your French Press will allow experimenting even more.
Try adding spices, cocoa and/or orange zest.

My experiment today in the French Press was:
1 tablespoon of each MCC Organic SWP Decaf Sumatra and Mexico
1 teaspoon Organic Cocoa Powder
Pinch of Cinnamon

Chill

Fill a tall glass ½ full, stir in organic sugar, add ice, and fill the remainder of the glass with milk.

Oh! That was good. The only caffeine was from the cocoa powder.

Coffee in the Garden

Every day across America, millions of pots of coffee and tea are brewed, and the millions of pounds of wet grounds, filters and bags thrown in the trash.  This wasteful and could be put to so much better use.

Coffee and filters can be used in the garden and farm as follows:

• Throw it in your compost: Coffee grounds are 1.45% nitrogen and contain calcium and magnesium to add some trace minerals you may not get from your other organic material.  Coffee grounds are a green material (I know coffee is brown, but same idea as grass clippings) so you should add with at least equal amounts of brown material (leaves). Coffee filters and tea bags decompose quickly, so just put it all in the compost pile.
• Add it directly to your garden:   Coffee has an average pH of 6.9 so for all intensive purposes, it is neutral. It loses most (or all) of its acidity during the brewing process.
• Fertilizer: Sometimes your plants need a little boost in the morning as well.  Simply add a couple cups of coffee grounds to a bucket of water and let it seep for 24 hours and apply to plant in the same way you would compost tea.  If you are busy/lazy you also can use it as a side dressing on top of your soil and let the rain seep it for you. That is my preferred method.
• Annoy your pests to stay out of your garden: It has been said that coffee grounds can deter cats from using your garden as their own personal commode.  There are also reports that it can deter slugs as well.  Coffee grounds may annoy ants to convince them to move their home elsewhere.

You can usually get coffee from your local coffee shop. But here is another thing to think about. Has the coffee you are using been grown organic. No chemicals used on it before, during or after the growing process. If you are trying to truly keep you garden chemical free, consider the coffee you are using in the garden and  compost pile.

There is some great information on the web about starting a compost pile in your back yard. I am amazed at how much stuff we have come up with  to put in the pile since we started our this spring. Coffee grounds has been a big boast to our pile because we are always serving coffee. When I will start to put something down the disposal, and then I remember I have a small bucket by the sink to take to the pile. We very rarely use the disposal anymore.

Bonus things to do with coffee: 

1. Put some coffee grounds down the disposal, let it sit for a little bit and then run it, the grounds will help freshen the disposal and the drain.
2. Have a musty trunk or old chest of draws, put whole bean or ground coffee in them, it will remove the smell. Give it some time, it works.
3. Place a bowl of coffee beans in the refrigerator, it will keep the smells out. This is the most important reason to NEVER, NEVER store your coffee in the refrigerator. Coffee absorbs smells and taste very easily, unless you like onion flavor and scented coffee, keep it out of the refrigerator if you intend to brew and drink it later.
4. This one is from my non-coffee drinking son. He loves the smell of fresh coffee. So we took a nylon stocking and made a sachet for him to put in his car. You can hide it under the seat or just keep it on the dash. The ideas came to him when he was delivering some fresh roasted coffee to someone he works with and when he got back into the car, the whole car smelled like fresh roasted coffee.

This is just an FYI: I made an challenge to an art friend of mine, do a painting this summer with coffee. I am providing her with some shots of espresso for the challenge. Can’t wait to see the results.

The Good, Bad & the Ugly of Blending

Our goal for a blend is a very simple goal; achieve a more complete, complex and pleasing coffee experience than can be gotten from brewing single origin alone. Blending can be fun.

When we are working on a custom blend, the first thing we do is figure out what the strengths of our coffees are and then select the ones that we think will complement one another without over powering those qualities. The second step is the process of deciding what percentage we will use of each coffee. It is a trial and error kind of thing. You have an idea of what you think will work together and then you start mixing it up a bit. One of our favorite ways to create a blend is to brew a strong pot of each of the single origins and with a teaspoon and cup measure in some of each, taste, let it cool in the cup and taste again. If we like it, we work it over to see if there is a better combination.

There are coffees that work so well together the blends have become famous, such as Mocha Java. But the one thing you need to know is everyone’s Mocha Java could taste different. It just depends on the coffee that is select from each of those regions.

We also blend because we have gotten a large group of clients that love there fresh roasted coffee all day, but don’t really want to stay up all night. So we do some very good half-caf blends. Now this takes time to perfect what to do. Because a decaffeinated coffee require more care in roasting the regular coffees, it is best to roast them separately. We like to call this a Mélange, which is a blend of coffees that have each been roasted individually. They could have been roasted to a different degree, some light, some dark or from different origins. Mélange is fun to say, so when talking about blends I make sure I work it into the conversation.

Espresso blending can be quit the art. It can be a blend of three to seven different coffees, a combination of different origins and/or roasting levels. Each one is there for a reason, not just hap hazard added. Finding the right coffees for most roasters is an ongoing endeavor. A good espresso will make a big difference in your coffee based drinks. When you find one you will know it.
I think this was a short and sweet description of the GOOD of blending.

Now we can move onto the BAD of blending. I guess the first BAD of blending would be, for just the sake of blending. From a marketing perspective a larger number of choices with cool names can be good for sales, but not so good for taste. If a roaster has purchase say 4 coffees and create as many combinations as he can come up with, that is a lot of blend choices, but not necessarily good choices. The number of blends offered isn’t important, but what you achieve from that blend sure is.

Now this is just an observation from our time in the coffee business. Many people think that all coffees are blends and they are under the assumption that a blend is better than a single origin. NOT TRUE! A blend is only as good as the carefully select coffees used to create that blend, and the skill of the roaster that created it.

I guess my second thought on the BAD of blending would have to be if you blended a coffee that was so complex with so many things going on that you would miss them because you stuck it in a blend. Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t a coffee out there that shouldn’t be included in a blend. In my opinion they are wrong. There are some “out of this world” single origin coffees and I wish I could afford to buy all of them. To truly experience them, they should be brewed alone, but shared with another coffee lover.

What would be the UGLY of blending? I am telling you this does happens. All of the coffee from a region is purchased by a large roaster all mixed together; it doesn’t matter what quality or defect is in the bean. It could have been processed wrong by the farmer, have molds, been a bad crop, handled badly coming into the US, allowing it to pick up some very nasty taste along the way, but then it is all roasted into one blend. Now that is scary. What is in your cup????

I just thought of another UGLY, you could call this the Lie Blend. They call it by a well known name such as Kona Blend or Jamaican Blue Mountain Blend. Since there are no regulations out there telling you what percentage of a coffee needs to be in a blend to use that coffee as the enticer, you might think it is mostly the enticer coffee that is in the blend, but it could be 5% for all you know. Check the price, there is the tell.

I was reading some stuff on blending the other day and came across another reason to blend. It is an old-crop/new-crop blend. Right a first I thought, well that is a way to hide the fact that you have a bag of old flat coffee sitting in your shop. So I read on, the author said, “you can obtain a fuller, more balanced version of the particular coffee’s taste than could be obtained by roasting either new or old-crop alone. I still need to think on this one. Our goal is to use up a coffee before it becomes old-crop. So it is not an experiment we have done to see what we think.

Blending or Single Origin coffees, it is still a raging battle between the Coffee Purist and the Blend Enthusiast. However what really matters is it a good fresh roasted coffee bean that has been handled and processed well? What is in your cup?

I know the picture is cheesy, couldn't help myself. Click on the picture, do you recognize it, is your age showing?

Exciting Coffee News

Well, it is exciting news for us. Indy Magazine just did a feature article on Midwest Coffee Company. It is in the Green Living section of the May/June issue. "Real Smooth Roaster" was written by Tina Jesson of Carmel. We have been told that 30,000 copies have already been distributed and that there will be a second printing. Look for the magazine all over the Indy area, welcome centers, hotels, stores, etc. It is a magazine about all thing Indiana. It is a beautifully done magazine. Very classy looking. We are proud to be a part of this issue. Alan Applebaum has done a great job.

How Fresh Is Your Coffee

To truly talk about fresh coffee we need to start at the beginning.

Green Coffee Bean Freshness
Fresh really begins all the way back to the day it is harvested from the coffee trees and how quickly the farmer gets it to market. The quicker it is sold at the auction, put on a ship to the US, unloaded, moved into a truck, delivered to a storage warehouse and sold to a roaster, the fresher the green coffee will be.

Roaster to Your House
TIME! Oh' so important for your roasted bean. There is a whole science experiment that could go with this part of it. How long does it take for your roasted coffee to degas? DEGAS? What? Yes, coffee beans do have gas. But you do want to be near them when they degas, unlike uncle Fred. It takes about 15 days for the degassing to be complete. It's all downhill from there. Deterioration starts, wonderful flavor is lost and aroma will start to diminish over time. If you pre-grind your coffee it will happen even quicker. So drink your coffee in the first 15 days and you will not have to worry about that. Now this is a problem I have with the big companies out there. They tell you that they vacuum seal your coffee to hold in the freshness. What a load of S****! (stuff) If you vacuum seal coffee before it is done degassing the bag expands and could even pop. So if it is in a brick, it must have been done degassing before it was even put in the package.

So what am I telling you here? Buy a 15 day supply, fresh from the roaster, take it straight home and put it into an air tight glass container. (Like a Ball Jar, but don't crank it down too tight.) Enjoy all the ever changing pleasant flavors that happen in the first 15 days, and then order your next batch and start all over again. Try a different origin or blend to mix things up a bit. Don’t get caught in a coffee rut, there are hundreds of origins out there just waiting for you to bring them home. Midwest Coffee Company has 15 to chose from and they are all grown and produced 100% chemical free.

Storage is a major element in freshness. The amount of oxygen exposure your beans have will speed up the deterioration process. Light and temperature also play a part in freshness. We are constantly asked about storing coffee in the refrigerator or freezer. EEET, wrong. No fridg, no freezer. Put in an airtight glass, stainless steel, ceramic, or an old coffee or cookie tin. Put it in your pantry. Cool, dark, airtight. Perfect. Ah! I feel better. I can tell you stories about ice crystals and onions and Jell-O and your coffee if you want, just let me know.

Now the last part of this FRESH story is all about BREWING and drinking your coffee.Grind it, brew it, and drink it. Don’t let it sit on the burner; put the leftover straight into a pre-warmed carafe or drink it all. Now in a perfect world we would all do this. Right? But some of us have to get up early and don’t function very well until we have had that first cup of coffee. Okay then, go ahead and grind it the night before, put it in your brewer with the timer set for way too early, and since it is not a perfect world and if your coffee has only been roasted for a few days, you may not notice that it sat in the coffee pot all night. But don’t forget to close the top on the brewer, the cat may lick it. You don't really know what they do when the lights go out. It could be a real cat party.

What to brew in? There are so many wonderful choices and they are all good in there their own way. All methods will bring out something different in you fresh roasted coffee. I use several different methods and I am willing to experiment with others. Do you have a suggested method or a serious preference? Let me know. I will try it.

This is just some extra information that we can’t really do anything about, but it can affect the quality and flavor of you fresh coffee. Things like, how long it sits on a hot ship, on the dock and in the truck, or how about a cold dock and freezing in a truck on route to the warehouse, all of these things affect the moisture content of the green coffee. These are elements that are out of the roaster's control. Several green brokers are working on storage and shipping solutions for the future of our precious coffee beans.

Becoming a Coffee Purist

Discovering Single Origin Coffees
What do I mean by single origin coffees? It is a coffee that comes from only one area, such as: Sumatra in Indonesia or Sierra Nevada in Colombia. They could mix the whole farm harvest together at an estate, but it would still be only one coffee from that area. The estate might call that an estate blend, but it would still be a single origin coffee.
I got hooked on single origin coffee with my first taste of a fresh roasted Papua New Guinea.
It was on a spring Saturday morning, I had prepared a pot of fresh roasted PNG, filled my stainless steel travel cup, added sugar & cream, I used a lot back then. Grabbed the morning paper and headed for the glider on the patio. The sun was warm, the grass was still damp, there was a nice breeze and our fountain was bubbling away. There wasn’t another scene to experience, I didn’t think so anyway.
I causally took my first sip, not really paying much attention. WOW! It stopped me dead in my tracks; it almost took my words away. That is saying something.
What I tasted was like someone had put spices of some sort and citrus fruit in my coffee. It wasn’t like a taste slap, but a more subtle thing. I set the paper aside sipped again to see if I was mistaken, no it was really there. I set everything down, went inside, found the cupping note, to read what I was supposed to taste. It was right there in black and white, I tasted just what they said I would taste. Those people are good!
I couldn’t wait to tell someone I was amazed. I hadn’t had many good coffee experiences. Coffee for me had just been a time I met friends at a local coffee shop, order something with a lot of sugar, flavoring and steamed milk. I didn’t really taste the coffee. Which isn’t always a bad thing; it was bitter and needed covered up. As I learned about coffee, I found out that the bitter isn’t there if it is slow roasted and fresh coffee. Fresh really does make a difference.
Now, a new world had just opened up for my mouth. PNG was my new favorite coffee, for that day anyway. Now I have so many favorite single origin coffees, I have trouble picking what to fix in the morning, afternoon and evening.
Because we own a roastery, we have the opportunity most coffee lovers don’t even think to dream about. We sometimes have as many as 16 single origins around. Right now my favorites are:
Kenya French Mission Bourbon, it is a very complex coffee with all of these characteristics over a couple of week’s period: berry, winey, coconut finish, lemon, Crème Brulee, tropical fruit, exotic spice, papaya, chocolate, very unique.
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere DP, light, fruity with nice acidity. You think of Michigan Blueberries.
Nicaragua Apanas FT is a clean and mellow coffee, with wonderfully delicate floral-nutty-malty aromatics, with a wonderful hint of cocoa.
I drink something different most morning but had Bolivia at least twice this week. Wouldn’t it be great if you could drink your morning coffee in a small café, on a side street in the country that it came from? That would really be an international coffee adventure.
There are some great coffees out there that lend themselves well to blending. But there is nothing like the pure clean taste of a fresh roasted organically grown single origin coffee. Become a Coffee Purist, try all the single origin coffees you can find, but if you are like me, your favorite will be ever changing.
Is there room in a coffee purist pantry for a blend? What do you think?

French Roast Coffee Conspiracy Part 3

We have been experimenting with a French Roast for the past couple of weeks. We have found some surprising things.

The first being, we have recently purchase some very good coffees. They are complex and have a lot of depth. What this has allowed, is for us to roast from American roast to a Dark French and still have an excellent coffee. Even thought this definitely changed the flavor and aroma, it brings a whole new set of elements to your cup that you cannot taste without the dark roast temperatures. The Sweetness and Pungency will increase and Acidity decreases. So if you love your Bolivian coffee, you can get new taste experiences if you try different roast temperature. You may still prefer the lighter roast, but this can be a lot of fun. Bolivia was just an example; we have already found that four of our coffees create some great new tastes when slowly brought to a French Roasted. And one that burns very easily and is bests kept at an American Roast or lighter.

That last comment brings up a new thought. I have been telling you all kinds of things about when roasting the coffee beans to a higher temperature to get a French Roast, but I didn’t tell you one very important thing.

The time that it takes to get it there is the most important element. Slow, slow, slow!! Slow roasting your coffee is what will allow the internal and external temperatures to rise at the same rate. I want to create a tasty word picture here: You are baking your favor chocolate brownies; you raise the oven temperature 20° because you are in a hurry to eat them. You get a crisp on top, possibly burnt outside brownie that is gooey & under cooked in the middle. Now, in a brownie that can be very good; but that is no way to treat coffee beans. What will happen is the outside gets roasted faster than the inside, leaving the inside too moist and slightly green. Some pretty funk tastes can remain when it is still green inside. This goes back to what I said in an early article. A quality Specialty Roaster not only knows how to treat a bean special but will make the time to do it right.

I told you that sweetness and pungency increase and you may ask “what this really means?”
As you roast darker there is a development of sugars and a partial elimination of bitter flavor components, like trigonelline. This will soften the taste without making it flat, a richer body. A naturally sweeter coffee or a Dry Processed coffee could be even sweeter. Pungency is a word used to describe a distinctive bitter that we actually find pleasant. Together you get the “bittersweet” that is in my favor type of chocolate. The notes of acidy are gone, the sugars start to caramelize and that new impression is created.

Even though it may have sounded like I didn’t like French Roasted coffees in Part 1 & Part 2, I willingly tell you, I appreciate the sweetness and pungency that comes into the coffees in the dark roast that just are not there in a lighter roast. My roaster is a different story. He still prefers an American Roast. Maybe that is the artist in him. Not wanting to lose that special God given gift to the particular origin of coffee bean. Or it could just be his taste preference.

I am sure that I have left some stone unturned in the examination of the French Roast Coffee Conspiracy, but right now I don’t know what it could be. If you have some other angle to look at this subject or you know of something that is still under a stone. Let me know, I am sure I can keep talking about coffee, it is one of my favorite subjects.

French Roast Conspiracy Part 2

In part one I gave you the technical part of what is happening to your coffee as it is French Roasted now we can get down to the heart of the matter.

What happens to the flavor? You will get as many different opinions on that one as there are coffee drinkers.

I have heard it said that most French Roast coffees have a flat, dull finish with a bitter after taste. Some call it chard or burnt taste and unpleasant to drink. Another coffee aficionado said French Roast coffees are known to be, smokey-sweet, light body but quite intense and that none of the inherent flavors of the bean are recognizable.

Now I will throw a few words at you: Acidity, Body, Aroma, Complexity, Depth, Varietal Distinction, Sweetness and Pungency. These are the terms used in determining what we taste in our coffee. They are usually rated on a scale of 1-4, 4 being the highest (good). This can all be very complicated when we just want a good cup of coffee. When you change the roast level of any coffee bean, you will change all of these characteristics. It could make your cup better or worse. Finding a roaster that studies his coffees and know how far to go with the roast will make all the difference. Just to let you know, there really are people out there that their job is to judge coffee this way. And it is a job that would have a pretty good buzz going most of the time.

Now I know what I like and don’t like and my mouth is probably doing all of that judging and I just don’t know it. My mouth is smarter then it speaks sometimes. But the point is all these things are affected in the roasting process. The good qualities of a coffee can be roasted right out of the bean and new ones can be brought into your cup. What you like is a very personal thing.
A general rule of thumb is that the darker the roast the less acidity and varietal distinction there will be. The body, aroma and complexity will decrease and the sweetness and pungency could increase. There are a few origins that are known to be wonderful all the way from a light roast to a dark roast. A good Kenyan coffee can hold its varietal distinction, complexity and depth. Most other origins of coffee cannot tolerate this darker roast and they are the best at lighter roasting temperatures, retaining the complexity, depth and varietal distainction.

So if you have a really great coffee roasted to 415°F to 435°F (Medium, Medium-high, American or Regular City) the best qualities are still present in the coffee. Why would you want them removed?

Start believing your taste buds; compare a French Roast to a Medium Roast of the same origin. You are the judge; don’t give into the French Roast Conspiracy.

For those of you who disagree with anything I have said here, now is your opportunity to chime in.

How do you like your coffee roasted? Why? Did you even know that there are different roast temperatures and that it would change the taste and aroma of your coffee?

Midwest Organic Coffee Company is offering a French Roast Taste Test to our clients. You will pick up your sample with your regular order. Watch for more details.

French Roast Coffee Conspiracy Part 1

To French Roast or Not to French Roast? That was my question. I thought we would start at the beginning with what is a French Roasted coffee; here is the science part of my answer.

Technically speaking French Roasted coffee is brought to temperatures between 435°F and 465°F over a predetermined time. This goes all the way from a light French Roast and a dark French Roast. As the temperature of the bean rises, moisture in the bean starts to evaporate and the oils are being brought to the surface. At this point the bean has gone through first and second crack. It sounds like popping corn, smells like toasting wheat and will start to smoke. If you ever get the opportunity to watch a roaster in action, take advantage of it.

A French Roast coffee beans will be medium dark brown to dark brown and about two days after the beans has been roasted it will have tiny droplets of oil forming on the medium dark and the dark will have an entirely oil surface.

There are many names for this same roast, depending on where you live in the world and even which area of the US you live. Starting with your medium dark roast they could be called: Viennese, Full-City, Light French, Continental & After Dinner, moving into moderately dark roast: French, European High & Continental and on to the dark roast: French, Italian & Dark Turkish. Now at some point in recent years a new terms started being used to refer to a roast and that is Espresso. The term Espresso is often used in all three groups, but Espresso is really a blend of coffees and can be roasted to any of these temperatures depending on the quality of the coffee and the care of the roaster. Espresso is another topic that can be address all by itself. There is a lot to be said about Espresso. We can talk later on that one.

Have you drunk a French Roast coffee? What origin? What did you and your mouth think of it? Do you have any questions so far?

In part two we will talk about the taste and do I really want my coffee French Roasted, or did some well know roaster spend a lot of money to convinced us all that it is good and oh so chic that way?

I will drop in some more technical terms for the fun of it.