Silver Case

Jason, my espresso machine connection, zipped over today and replace the seized water pump. $350 parts, and a $50 for an hour’s time. Massively cheaper than finding a new espresso machine.

Not clear why the thing started leaking and seized. Bearing seal failed, and then having a chance to sit for 10 days let it rust up enough to be permanently frozen?

The old pump is a nice piece of brass paper-weight.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Today my coffee roaster arrived. It cam in a massive constructed plywood box and weighed the better part of eighty pounds.

When I get to the USA in a couple weeks I’ll be taking a two-day course in how to run this machine at Diedrich in Idaho. I’m not going to toy with it before then. Apparently a common mistake during the initial “seasoning” of the machine is to catch the beans on fire and scorch the roaster. I’d prefer not to do that. So in the meantime I’ll just have to wait and fantasize.

Fuzzy picture of the coffee roaster on our coffee table

Nice industrial look with a bit of pin-striping

This was a disgusting experiment.  I think this proves that either my iRoast is broken or just fundamentally a piece of crap. Regardless of the profile I install, it basically gives the same results:  drive as fast as possible to 200c.  When I programmed in the blue profile (humm at 160, the minimum temp, for 15 minutes) it didn’t even try to throttle itself (by controlling fan speed) until it hit 200c.  WTF is that?

Nauseated I wasted my time with this thing.  Getting service will be a joke — I bought it in Australia. Have fun mailing a cooking appliance into Australia.  I’m basically boned I fear.

Hearthware, maker of the iRoast, doesn’t inspire confidence either. Many out-of-date references on their website, and their faq reeks of Engrish of some type.  Fuck. I should have bought the $2,500 sample roaster instead of the $200 coffee burner instead.

Don’t know what sort of programming the iRoast has, but it seems stupid. Note the graph above which shows actual temperature versus the programmed temperature curve. Roast 2 was a hotter profile, yet it managed to be less hot than the Roast 3. Everything else (ambient temperature, beans, weight)
It’s like this thing overshoots but has no satisfactory way to cool or vent itself, so it just keeps overrunning the temperature guidance. We’ll see how the beans are tomorrow morning, but I can’t imagine they are materially different from roast 002. The first crack perhaps came 30 seconds later, but not much, and I still couldn’t get a more extended roast. Ugh.

Am cooling the iroast in front of a fan, and in an hour or so, I’m just going to run it at 160C (the lowest available temperature) for 15 minutes and see what this thing does.

Second roast tonight. I used a different profile (also found online). Still was a relatively short roast. First crack still occuring relatively early. Looks like longer stages allow the iRoast to ramp to that temperature more accurately.

Not sure how these beans will turn out, but for next profile I’ll have a longer, cooler stage to start with. Seems to be no problem getting the heat if i do need it.

I’ve done a few small batches so far. The first two batches of PNG I carbonized. Then I tried a batch cooked much lighter. It acted really weird in the espresso machine. The water blasted through at light speed, just roared through the portafilter. Even after I made the grind considerably finer, it rocketed through.

Two considerations: 1) are the default iRoast profiles too hot? 2) are 75g batches too small and get cooked too quick? [I seemed to be finishing up quite early in the roasting profiles]

So today I tried another batch, using a customize profile I found online, on a 150g batch. I used brazillian beans this time, hoping that would make a more appropriate espresso single-origin.

I did the roasting, profile shown above. They nominally look ok. I have to wait for 4-14 hours while the beans outgas CO2. In the meantime, I charted the temperature telemetry I captured from the onboard thermometer.

The colored bars are the target temperatures during the three stages. Sort of silly. It doesn’t seem to have much control on the temperature. It seems to steer it more like a freighter than a golf cart. I can program up to five stages (totalling a dead limit of 15 minutes). I suppose once I have enough of this telemetry, I can figure out approximate over- and under-steering on this thing’s temperature control.

I’ll see how the coffee tastes later.

I collected abou 12kg of green beans yesterday. Tonight I ran 80g of PNG Papua New Guinea through my iRoast2.

Results? I think they were roasted way too dark. I tried “dark roast” profile #2 then ran “light roast” profile #1. Although you have to give the beans 24 to vent off CO2 before using them, just chewing on some beans, and visually inspecting them, they boast quite a char.

The manual says don’t roast with the machine more than once in two hours. I did twice in thirty minutes, so maybe my second attempt (the light roast) was overheated from the preceeding run.

Regardless, I still think this is running way to hot, making far too dark a roast to be worthwhile. So out with the auto programs I guess; I’ll have to start with my own.

Update. So I read some online stuff and realized that people generally shut off the roast (vent it) when the roast gets to the point they want.  Running the full program isn’t necessary. So I just ran another batch, using the light roast preset, and shut it off with about three minutes thirty to go.  Got something around a City+ Roast.  We’ll see how the PNG tastes under those conditions. Certainly better than the char-burgers I made in rounds one and two.

Matt comes out soon. This is screaming weekend project “install a datalogging thermocouple in Mike’s iRoast.”

Quick update.

Luke and Ling got back from Perth this afternoon.  Don’t know whether it’s an illusion or not, but Luke looks bigger. I’ve only seen him a few hours total in the last ten days.  One thing is for certain, however, and that is he’s trying to talk much much more.  Lots of long extended babbling repeats of things we say.  Matt comes over next month and I’m guessing by then he will be making some serious noise.

Okonomiyaki is sometimes called Japanese pizza. Tonight we had both Okonomiyaki and italian pizza.  I used the end of the pizza dough from the other day (I didn’t achieve as fluffy a crust as I wanted. I think because I blind-baked the crust in the middle of the oven, not on the bottom element) and used up left over batters from a kimchi okonomiyaki and a seafood okonomiyaki.  I bought several liters of sake, some umeshu, and two cases of Japanese beer for the party sunday. Still to arrange is the sashimi and spare okonomiyaki parts.

My green coffee beans are ready for collection tomorrow. Looking forward to playing with my iRoast 2 roaster.  I used some mocha java recently and it made decent espresso, bit darker than sumatran stuff I’ve been using.

Downloaded several Bruce Sterling and William Gibson books onto my n73 today. It appears that MobiReader only will read its own books purchased from its store. Death Penalty.  QReader appears to read .txt (but not .rtf) and refuses to read .pdfs, so I need to convert the rtf and pdfs to text before copying them over.

Still bumbling along with Japanese.  I’ve been having my teacher come over and give me private lessons instead of the class. I fell behind when I was travelling, so am racing to catch up. Actually I’m not even racing. The class is a giant grammar-cram and I don’t get a chance to practice my speaking. With a tutor, I can practice and work over stuff a lot more, so I am happy with that arrangement.

And I think that is about it.

Have  been nursing a terrible hangover all day.  The only solution is to drink lots of water, but for some reason water tastes really, really bad to me when I’ve got a hangover, so it’s quite a vicious cycle.  I tried to sneak around the problem by making an ice drink (it’s really hot here today).  I was sort of lazy, sort of stupid.  I peeled the hide off of three oranges and two grapefruits and liquidified them with my hand-blender, pith and all, and then mixed that broth with a big bucket of shaved ice.   It was absolutely horrendous, there was a peel-like bitterness that I could not escape.  I tried to add sugar and all that resulted was a bad drink that tasted like peel + undissolved table sugar.  Then I poured ‘passion fruit’ syrup from my aborted Hurricanes at the Crayfish Boil.  That also just added more to the sweet note, but the bitter/peel note was undiminished.  Ling liked it, but I poured mine down the drain.

Ling was telling me about their visit to one of our friends who has a 1yo girl.  While they played Luke hit her on the head with a toy hammer, so she cried.  He didn’t really know how to respond (this often happens when he does things impulsively [he is 21 months after all]) and sort of stood there sheepishly, distressed by Alissa crying and wondering what Ling and Alissa’s mom would do.  The poor little guy doesn’t have a lot of tools in his emotional response toolbox, so he used that one that normally gets the best response from us:  he started tap dancing and making a hopeful smile.

There are a pile of Japanese restaurants at Robertson Quay. We went there tonight and ate a restaurant (forgot the name) that serves “Taiwanese Food in Japanese Style.”  Best dishes were a crab/bamboo/vegetable omelette.  Their gyoza was ok, though not teriffic.  Had Dan Dan Mein which was pretty darn good.  Ordered a taiwanese spring onion omelette which I thought was horrible (like an old, tough, oily prata) but for some reason Ling LOVED it.   Briefly, i guess I’m not making this sound like such a great restaurant, but we actually did enjoy it and would go back.

Popped next door to ‘The Chocolate Factory’ and had a cake and a coffee.  The chocolate candy room had some really beautiful candies on display.  The place was really busy though (9pm on  a Saturday night) and the French  chocolatier looked… umm…. prickly, so we figured we’d come back some other day to pick over the chocolate selection.

Tomorrow I am doing a test-run of okonomiyaki recipes.  Didn’t realize that the batter-binder uses not only flour, but a starchy stick Chinese yam.  I’ve found a lot of good recipes and guides, so I think i have a fighting chance of making some on-spec okonomiyaki.

What else?  Still hovering around 76.8kg.  I didn’t go light the last few days (yakitori last night) and haven’t been running, plus I fell behind on my Japanese.  Doing some catch-up tuition with なおこせんせい　(my teacher, Naoko) and my membership at the hote health club next door start imminently, so i can swim at lunch time.
A bunch of travel coming up.  Hong Kong and Dubai the final weekend of this month.  Japan in mid-April i think.  Next weekend hosting a small party to finish off the last of our three frozen hokkaido tarabakani king crabs. That will be bittersweet.  The Okonomiyaki party is mid-April.  Around April 30th will probably host a deep-friend turkey as three of us have birthdays on April 29 or 30.

Living off Toby’s Estate beans I brought back from Sydney.  The Espresso Rico is their best espresso blend by far.  I spilled some of a ristretto yesterday, and it was almost black as lacquer. Really good, chocolaty stuff, perfect for milk-based espresso drinks.  I need to get some green beans to play with in my iRoast2 after I use up my current stock of beans.

It’s exactly what it claims to be. Their ice cream (gelateriaadfaskdfm whatever they want to call it) is really good.

Understand that I am not an ice-cream enthusiast in any way. For me to have eaten two orders of ice cream there says something! I had something called ‘kinder’ which was white chocolate and gnutella. It was probably the creamiest ice cream I’ve ever eaten in my life. The sweetness level was perfect and the texture of ribbons of gnutella in it made it a real treat. My second order was a cone of screaming Blood Orange. It had a fantastic color and a really punchy, powerful taste. Maybe a bit exhausting after a while, in fact, but still, good.

Espresso Bar? Well, yeah, they run lavazza beans. I had an espresso. It was fine.

362 Pacific Highway

Lindfield NSW 2070

9416-2275

My kayaking lessons this week were held at Rose Bay.  On Thursday we went early, in order to have breakfast before my 11am lesson.  Bernasconi’s was well-reviewed in one of my cafe guides so we tried that.

Overall impression?  Fairly large, well-run, busy cafe.  No magic, but also no complaints.

Ling ordered field mushrooms and spinach on thick toast that tasted fantastic.  I think it was  a combination of many types of mushrooms plus a lot of garlic that gave it such good flavor.  Her drink was atrocious, turned out to be a glob of ice cream floating in enormously sweet cocoa milk. She hated it.

I don’t remember my coffees at all, which means they were neither fantastic nor horrible, just fine.  I think it was a long black to go along with my scrambled eggs/toast sort of meal.

I’ve found that most cafes in Sydney can manufacture a coffee that you’d have to at least give an “above average” mark to.  Also, they seem to have dialed in what good toast is:  big thick, crusty slices.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here, but if I was in the area, and wanted a cafe lunch or breakfast, this would be a top-three candidate.
23 Plumer Road

Rose Bay, NSW 2029

Phone (02) 9327 5717

Watched Alton Brown’s episode on coffee, True Brew. The only reason it didn’t do much for me was that I am quite fond of coffee and have spent lots of time studying it already, so there was nothing new to me. But he did break it down into a process for making dependably decent coffee that would benefit most people.

I suppose he chose a manual drip over a french press because a french press is a bit of a mess which leaves (charming heh) silt in the brew. Most master roasters will say that french press is the best method. However, his drip looked pretty good, and he emphasized a trick seldom discussed: get your freshly-brewed coffee into a thermos FAST. Then is stays warm and doesn’t spoil.

I agreed with his brew time (4 minutes) and his rough ratio of coffee:water, an emphasis on lots of coffee:water. It will be LESS bitter because each grain of coffee suffers less extraction. The good stuff in coffee comes out first, and the bitter nasty shit comes out later. Extract as little from each grain as you can get away with.

Of course he kept his beans in an airtight container. Speaking of airtight containers, my mom bought me a small coffee bean bin that seals up and, unbelievably, manages to run small vacuum pump from four AA batteries for around two to three weeks. It really does make a difference. I would estimate it adds 20%+ to the bean’s shelf life. This is not immaterial with the expensive beans I pull from Tokyo or Sydney. I like this gadget much more than I might have expected.