Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


7.03.2009  

A Nutcase

Lately, I've shied away from calling myself a connoisseur of any sort, particularly a coffee connoisseur. I feel uncomfortable with that word when it's applied to me, especially when I think of touting myself as one. A connoisseur, by definition, is an expert, or one who can discern subtleties and differences.

That's quite a presumption.

I have no qualms, however, stating that I'm a nutcase. A coffee nutcase. I brew coffees for different reasons than most folks do: to drink, yes, but I brew coffees primarily to taste them, savor them, even understand them. Think I'm crazy? You haven't even heard the hundredth of it.

Nutcase, indeed!

Yesterday, Kiddo hooked me up with a pound of Intelligentsia's excellent, in-season Honduras La Tortuga. With such a delight in my possession, you'd think I'd brew it and enjoy it, right? Well, sort of. On my desk are two mugs, one with a brew from a press and another with a brew from a Hario cloth cone pour-over.

The press was brewed with a course grind setting and an extraction time of four minutes. The pour-over was brewed with a finer grind setting -- a little finer than traditional drip, perhaps -- and a total extraction time of roughly one minute. There's a discernible difference in the cups, mostly in the body and mouthfeel. The press is less even, less homogeneous. The pour-over, however, feels more syrupy, having a more viscous body, even though it feels cleaner in the mouth. Quite interesting.

Why share all of this? Well, a handful of you don't care one whit about coffee beyond its ability to wake you up in the morning. Some of you, like Moon Pie, won't even have made it down this far. A small portion of you glorious readers really dig a post like this, though, and are actually intrigued by my mad rantings and unrelenting roasting and brewing experiments.

Am I a nutcase? Absolutely. Will I continue to be so? You betcha.

posted by Bolo | 10:30 PM
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