My Month on Instagram ǁ October 2015

I post photos on Instagram on a regular basis showing my coffee and tea drinking habit. Plus some running or cat pictures are inevitably going to be passing by. Once a month I bundle these and talk about the photos and the events behind them on my blog.

In October I:

» started to collect coffee cupping faces. These are the best ones so far. 

» We also bought a new Le Nez du Café set at Trabocca. This set is used to calibrate on aromas you can find in coffee. Basically it helps you learn what black currant, vanilla, butter, rubber, apple, smell like. Very important, as olfaction accounts for about 80% of your sensory experience. Want to try? Get some coriander seed (or for people with a sweet tooth, a jelly bean). Hold your nose, while starting to chew the coriander seed. Then, a few chews in, release your nose. Taste explosion!

We bought a new set for a cupping workshop I gave to some people of the Rabobank Foundation and Progresso to help them understand coffee and the coffee projects they are running in origin. Because not only farmers and coops need to learn the coffee cupping language, but also the people making that possible.

» At work we measure the moisture level for all coffee samples that come in. This helps us understand the quality of the coffee and can give an indication of risk for certain toxins, such as ochratoxin A. 

» Cafe Imports published a sample roasting tutorial on their website. And it was different to mine. So I tested both side by side. Now first a disclaimer, in all reality you can never copy paste a roast profile to your own roaster. As there are always differences, in the placement of temperature probes, type of gas and many, many more variables. But it never hurts to try something different. 

I did have some trouble trying to imitate Roaster Joe's profile's temperature rises and drops. But as Roaster Joe mentions on Twitter, drop in temperature should be a little lower, plus colours and times are more important.

All in all the in cup quality between the different roast profiles were not significant. Also roast degree and loss of moisture from green to roasted was about the same. The aroma however was a little more intense using the Cafe Imports profile. At least it was on the Colombia coffees I used. 

If you want to read more about my sample roast profile, let me know and I'll write a blog post on it.

» Having a Expobar Brewtus at home and being able to drink a good cappuccino at the dinner table is one of the best things. As I am no longer a barista behind a bar, I still get to practise latte art this way, and keep inverted tulips in my coffee portfolio.

» And I went to Oslo! Oslo is amazing in Autumn. The orange-gold leaves in the many, many parks shining in the sun, give the city an exuberant glow. And the city is filled with amazing coffee places. Read the Coffee Crawl Oslo edition to get the lowdown on these specialty coffeeshops.

See you next month!

Want to see my other pictures? Check out my Instagram at instagram.com/ceriannebury.