Growing coffee

[mobbarley]

Re: Growing coffee

First roast of my own coffee tonight -


Start:


The setup:


It had a strong pungent smell after the drying stage that didnt really go away.  :-/

It was a very uneven roast I believe this is mostly because I think have two different varieties of tree - the coffee was also dried in two different batches to unknown moisture contents. I didnt really know what I was doing with this roast, I tried to keep the ramp up very steady to get all beans to a reasonable colour:


Not as messy as I was expecting, lots of fragments of broken beans:


The results:





The nickname is derived from its 100% organic nature...

[Thundergod]

Re: Growing coffee

You beat me!
I have enough for a roast now.
At the moment all my processed batches are sitting together; hopefully the moisture content will even out.

You roast looks a bit darker than I prefer; the 18% weight loss might explain some of that (depending on how many broken bean bits there were). I average around 15%.

Must feel good though to have roasted what youve grown.

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

Tony, any chance you want to share some of your coffee with a fellow Novocastrian?

sorry matty, i havent checked in for a while. it looks like everyone is getting some cherries in at the moment. i am just drying mine - 9kg, which is half what i got last year.

send me your address and ill send you a bit of it when its ready. have you got a roaster?

mobbarley has a pretty fancy outfit, plugged into a laptop no less. if you want accuracy thats how to do it. i tend to rely on fuzzy logic - yeah, thats dark enough or mmm - ill let it go another minute and see what happens.

for the past three years the end result (pretty much whatever the roast) has been a mild, chocolatey brew. im getting a bit tired of it. i might try to brew it a bit thinner to make it leaner, and put in a bit less milk. also, just soaking the coffee in cold water overnight produces a more astringent taste.

[trentski]

Re: Growing coffee

When I was in Canada I had a drink made out of the juice of the coffee cherries, Ive since wondered if you could eat the cherries an dwhat they tasted like.

Anyone game to try?

[saoye]

Re: Growing coffee

Apparantly the Luwaks love them...so cant be half bad right? Ive searched that the taste is similar to watermelon or melons with some floral aftertones. When I get cherries on my trees I will definitely be tasting them once ripe.

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

Google can be a good friend.  Looks like Tony just about cut and pasted some of our musings from here 

http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac;jsessionid=1B0FDC421ABB4847...

the guy who writes the weekly green/organic column in the newcastle herald asked me to do a run-down on home coffee growing and processing. most of it was taken up with pictures (same ones i put on this thread)

[mobbarley]

Re: Growing coffee

You beat me!

I cheated. I still have the 3rd pick drying, it should be ready now but I really dont want to have to hull them all again. This coffee better be good.

You roast looks a bit darker than I prefer

It is pretty dark - I kept seeing the odd yellow bean circling around the roaster while all the others were brown and it spooked me, i didnt know when to call it. Ill do the next batch lighter to compare.

[mobbarley]

Re: Growing coffee

Ive since wondered if you could eat the cherries an dwhat they tasted like.

Anyone game to try?

Hard grassy tasting seeds with really sweet goop around them and a thin bitter skin around that!

[saoye]

Re: Growing coffee

Hard grassy tasting seeds with really sweet goop around them and a thin bitter skin around that!

So kinda like a plum?

[mobbarley]

Re: Growing coffee

Except without the plum taste and more sweetness? Maybe someone here has a better command of words than I do...

[Thundergod]

Re: Growing coffee

Ive since wondered if you could eat the cherries an dwhat they tasted like.

Anyone game to try?

Ive eaten a few.
A little bit of a bite to them which I like.

My son is trying to make grog out of some; hes already fermented them and now just needs to distil the liquid.

[Pavoniboy]

Re: Growing coffee

Just got back from the father-in-laws farm - and found out he has 7 coffee trees growing! I couldnt believe my eyes. He said Im welcome to the fruit. Probably not quite enough for a roast even once the remaining green ones ripen (most of the fruit has already fallen or a very dark (almost black) over-ripe cherry, but Im thinking next year I will be dropping by regularly to pick the fruit and provided I can get there often enough should get enough for at least one roast, if not several. All the trees are from PNG - he had a horticulturalist mate who lived there for many years and brought over some trees when he moved back - my father-in-law then got some cuttings from these and seem to be doing really well now. He said theyve been in for about 4 years.

I tasted some of the fruit today - I really liked it. Very sweet.

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

I tasted some of the fruit today - I really liked it. Very sweet.

i can probably find a couple of ripe cherries still on my trees. im going to have a taste. why havent i done it before?

[saoye]

Re: Growing coffee

i can probably find a couple of ripe cherries still on my trees. im going to have a taste. why havent i done it before?

Hehe. Kopi tonyt?

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

tried a coffee cherry - mmm, dont think theyll take off.

on another matter, i have been interested to see how the blossoms acted this year. it went like this:
- dec 10 - masses of blossom starts all over my three mature trees
- jan 14 - a month later the little greenish blossoms still hadnt turned into real flowers (pic 1)
- decided to water heavily every day to see if i could get them to do their thing
- jan 20 - blossoms beginning to look a bit respectable at last (pic 2)
- jan 21 - boom! big change in one day (pic 3)

rule: heavy watering brings on tghe blossoms.
what i dont know is what those little star-shaped stunted blossoms are (pic 1). there are a few of them on the trees and they havent turned into regular blossoms.