donloeb.com

ok, i can’t justify buying one of these yet. but, i want one.

luckily, we have a few at goog…since these single-brew clover machines are 11k each, my guess is that search is profitable :)

here’s my pic of the machine in action…love the “coffee cake”

so, a break from regularly scheduled programming (”RSS all the time”) to talk about coffee. of course, i’m dependent on good coffee to get thru my rss feeds and email…hmmm, that’s a problem… :)

as i wrote about early on, i just got into coffee roasting. i thought people like me were crazy too, so don’t judge me … unless of course you’ve tried it and believe we’re all loony.

i use the iRoast2 from hearthware and get my beans from sweetmaria’s (incredible selection and customer service - these people are serious about their coffee…but, they need an RSS feed for their weekly coffee selections!). this weekend, i’m drinking coffee from kenya and it’s absolutely fantastic.

there’s something great about roasting your own coffee, but it’s hard to explain…yes, the community includes a bunch of people that do crazy things like build their own roasters and keep detailed logs of their roasts. in fact, i’m sure someone’s going to make a funny documentary - there are some real characters floating about. for instance, what is this person doing and is there really an Apple roaster?

but, again, don’t knock it till you try it. i’m convinced that starbucks’ global domination is going to create opportunities for speciality coffee. folks will start to want something “else”…hence the growing interest in different types of beans from around the world (sustainably farmed, fair-trade, variety of tastes/quality, etc.). while home roasting isn’t likely to take off, i’ll bet that in 5 years, there will be coffee tastings across the US (at least on the coasts that is…).

before i end this post, i have a question…which description below is referring to wine and which one to coffee?

1. ” …sweet and aromatic, lighter body that others, with plum fruits and spices”
2. “…virtually no acidity, heavy body, baker’s chocolate, mild earth and wood tones”

as this is my first real post (after matt tagged me), i thought i’d do a very quick post on something completely unrelated to RSS. so, here it is…my first experience with coffee roasting…

about a year ago I commuted with someone at Yahoo! who roasted his own coffee beans. while i’m an addict, i thought this guy was crazy. but then one day, he brought over a little baggie filled with some beans from costa rica…they were amazing. of course, i still thought he was a bit nuts…

fast forward 12 months and I discovered that some close friends in Berkeley had started to roast their own beans as well. After two or three lbs of “pushed” beans i was hooked. so, for my 3?th birthday last week, i got a coffee roaster - the iRoast2.

while, the iRoast2 doesn’t handle enough beans (4-5 oz at a time), it’s pretty amazing. the coffee is far superior to peets, sbux, whatever. the flavors are subtle / nuanced. it’s become my version of wine collecting / tasting.

for more information about roasting, machines, beans, etc go to Sweet Maria’s