I posted an article in an online magazine called Kuro5hin (www.kuro5hin.org). They were running a feature on being a coffee aficionado. Since I love coffee, but am but a novice, I read it with much interest. Here is the odyssey that began.
If you try Puerto Rican beans, you'll understand how bad the typical cup of American coffee is. I am a coffee neophyte, and this article was extremely informative to me (so informative in fact that I'm rushing to Yauco to buy some fresh beans from the countryside and roasting them in my popcorn maker :) ).
So if your typical Puerto Rican coffee from the supermarket (for local consumption only) is heads above the typical American brand coffee... imagine how good it will be when prepared/roasted fresh.
I think you can get Puerto Rican beans in New York (?)... don't know if they're fresh or not. Anyway, it'd be worth the effort. The beautiful volcanic soil here gives them this wonderful taste that you have to taste.
Okay, I'm salivating on my keyboard now. Off I go.
The Weekend Arrives, Saturday: The Quest
Got the beans. Read through the coffee newsgroup archives on google, stuck my beans in my hot air popcorn popper and...
Burned batch after batch. I must have the world's most powerful popcorn popper. In, like, less then four minutes the little suckers were black, black as night. Taste was awful. Whimper.
So I backed off a bit and tried roasting stove top (apparently my hot air popper was just too much) and got some roasted beans that were more brown than black. They are going to cool and set overnight and I'll grind them for breakfast.
Okay, so my popcorn popper is definitely on crack.
Tried stove top roasting in a skillet with aluminum foil covering it (to agitate like making popcorn) and got some nice brown beans (just a bit beyond first crack). Wonderful! Such smooth complex coffee. I will say however, that locally bought roasted beans still taste pretty damn good, which says something for the local processes.
The Next Day, After Much Smoke, Sunday: The Result
So it seems that locally grown Puerto Rican beans don't like high temperatures and don't like getting to second crack. They seem to like a moderate heat for a moderate time somewhere between 1st and 2nd crack.
I'm intrigued to hone this process now and maybe eventually get the "perfect cup" while driving my wife and kids nuts with the smoke *G*
I just found out today (Monday) that Santa (the woman who helps us take care of Olaia), also roasted her own coffee growing up in the Dominican Republic, where it is not normal to buy coffee in the supermarket. Everybody roasts at home... well, let that be a lesson to all the home roasting snobs and their fancy machines. *chuckle*