Roasted!

So much news here at Ritual; where to begin? OK go: aside from the fabulous Hairbender and decaf espresso all of our coffees are roasted in house by the oh so intense Jeremy Tooker with Mr. Ryan Brown (seen below with stunna shades) as his roasting assistant/apprentice. What what! This has proven to be beneficial in several ways…the most important I think has been the increase in cupping sessions. It seems like someone has been cupping at least once a day (how it should be) with an effort to provide descriptions of the coffees as they sit instead of a standard pre-scripted definition. For example: the Harrar now might taste different than the Harrar two weeks ago so why should the description of what they taste like be the same…hmm, it shouldn’t, so we’re breaking out of that generic mold.

There’s so much stuff going on I don’t think I can cover it all in one blog. Next month I’m headed up to Seattle for a week with a planned stop in Portland for at least a day (I’ll be comming to visit you at Stumpy’s Gabe…) with a posse of Tony, D-Sauce, and Vitto. I’ve never been to seattle and am really stoked for this trip. Shit, I’m gonna have to continue this next time, I’m loosing my focus…time for some sleep.

roasty-toasty

So we’re slowly getting our roasting into gear…sexy. Duane came down for three or four days and went over a buch of stuff with Jeremy, Eileen, and Ryan. I got to watch most of this from the bar; sneaking my way over to the end of the counter to eavesdrop when the chance came up. Lots of cupping, tasting, note-taking, and roast profiling going on. I must admitt that I was quite jealous that I was not able to hang out more while everyone was getting down…oh well, Ryan said he would give me the full overview soon.

I cupped twice the other day. First cupping in the morning was three batches of Brazil that Jeremy roasted, each with a different roast curve. I flipped through the roasting log prior to this to try to get an idea of what characteristics a different roast curve might bring out. The intricacies of what exactally goes on durring the rosting process are still very foreign but in house roasting will no doubt increase my knowledge by leaps and bounds.

Cupping number two involved only two coffees: Ethiopia Yirgacheffe and El salvador Finca Kilimanjaro. The Yirg was exhibited quite different charater traits from the Taylor Maid I was previously working with: fragrance of vanilla creme right of the top that bled into an orange creamsicle aroma mixed with fresh flowers upon the introduction of water. Taste was overall sweet and bright with a toned down lemon flavor with a nice acidity…suprisingly more heavy bodied than I anticipted. Although the citrus notes were still there they were not as prominent as those brought out in Taylor Maids Yirgacheffe, TM’s lemons jump at you – brighter, much more zesty with a lighter body, stronger florals and not quite as creamy. Both verry pleasing. The El Salvador caught me as having a woodyish fragrance up front that quickly dissolved into a musty, chile type aroma…I got a really interesting and intense sweet bell pepper type smell. Malty tasting but lighter bodied and dryer than the Yirg overall; seemed to sweeten up as it cooled a bit. Ok, thats all I got for now…oh yeah, working the bar is crazy when its busy (most of the time)…what a workout. Ahh The Tookie stance: