Papua New Guinea Sigra AA

Islands of PNG

There are two basic styles of coffee produced by this often undervalued but exciting origin: classically wet-processed coffees from larger farms or estates (Arona, Sigri) and small-grower coffees subjected to the same simple backyard wet processing that gives the traditionally processed coffees of Sumatra and Sulawesi their unusual character.

The magnificent and unique plantation wet-processed Papua New Guineas are acidity but balanced, with a variety of high-toned nuances, including flowers and citrus tones that often suggest grapefruit. The small-grower coffees are often a fin, fruity variation of the basic full-bodied, deep-toned sumantran/Sulawesian cup.

PNG located on map

The coffee produced in Papua New Guinea was actually first sown by the Germans in the early 1800´s, the plan was to sell the production/harvest to nearby Australia for consumption. Nevertheless the Papua New Guinea reputation went up in the late 1930s and started gain momentum.

Coffee bag from PNG Sigri

This coffee really jumps out on a table of other PNG coffees from the Western areas for it's sweet aromatics. The dry fragrance has slightly winey, ripe-fruit notes (quince jam, apple, pear). The wet aroma is a little less fruited, with a nice honey-on-toast scent. There are spice notes too; cinnamon and a little nutmeg. 

The cup is really nice; red apple dominates when the coffee is hot, with the same cinnamon and nutmeg found in the aroma coming through clearly in the sapid flavor. The body is not too thick, but seems syrupy and pleasing. 

The coffee finishes with sweet mulling spice notes, and a bit of orange peel. Dark roasts can be a little smokey in the roast taste: I prefer City to City+ roast, although the coffee appears a bit uneven and wrinkly in surface texture.

Harvest of the PNG beans

I must say that I really enjoyed this cup of coffee, cause its simply contains a stunning depth and volume. Its amazing to drink straight from the morning and its basically hard to find any time where a of PNG Sigri aren't enjoyable. 

If i were to choose I would drink the PNG coffee without any secondary food, because its very saturating.

Hope you enjoyed this review.

/Hendrup

Gene Cafe; Tutorial

Gene Cafe

This tutorial will visually show how to avoid the slow cooling system build into the Gene Cafe operational board. The Gene Cafe has a lot of fans all over the world and its among the best home roasting choice in its league, cause of its price versus value, but coffee nerds have always doubted the cooling system and often describing it as a con.

The Gene Cafe cooling cycle is set to cool down the beans within a 10 minutes period; as a Gene Cafe owner I can determine that the beans drop from 240 degrees to 58 degrees within the 10 minutes cooling cycle. This is very slow considering that the beans should be cooled as quick as possible, therefore this tutorial will show how to avoid this system that launched automatically after the set roasting time.

            * This tutorial will quickly describe the basic steps, when roasting on the Gene Cafe *

Fill the bean drum

First off the basics; Fill the included drum with your chosen green beans.

Keeping the beans within the maximum limit

When pouring the beans into the drum chamber, ensure that the green beans is below the maximum capacity line, shown on the side of the drum. If you don't follow this maximum capacity advice, your roast will suffer from inconsistency, leaving some beans perfect and others barely roasted.

Insert the drum into the Gene Cafe

 Like normal procedure insert the drum into the Gene Cafe.

Set your roasting profile

Set your roasting profile; Red bottom controls temperature and starts the roasting time and the blue bottom controls the roasting time along with the power on/off.

Unplug the roaster

When the roasting profile is done; You think that your beans are roasted to perfection, unplug the Gene Cafe. NOTE: Unplug the Gene Cafe when the handle of the drum is in position to unmount. 

Emtying the drum

The Gene Cafe will stop within one second and be quick to unmount the drum from the Gene Cafe, cause the longer the beans will stay inside the drum, the longer it will roast. NOTE: Use a glove when unmount the drum, because it will be hot. Empty the beans on some greaseproof paper and let them cool about five minutes along with the roaster.

Enjoy the final result

This method will leave some freshly roasted beans, which aren't affected by a slow cooling cycle, causing a plastic-like scent to the beans. The slow roasting cycle will also affect the sensitive flavors and notes in the cup, cause it will simply vanish them. Its also a lot easier to judge when your beans is done, because the roast will end exactly when you pull the plug, unlike when using the cooling cycle, cause the beans will continue to roast for further five minutes.

Hope this tutorial was useful!

/Hendrup

New template design

Classic template view

Hi Guys

I have decided to change the blog view from magazine to classic, so the blog post will be posted in its fully length instead of a short description along with the first photography. If you find this change annoying, you can always change the blog view (See arrow on the picture), cause the new dynamic blogspot views from Blogger ables the viewer to select from multiple designs.

Choose your favorite appearance and please comment if you prefer another blog design!

// Hendrup

10,000 mile stone

10,000 views within 64 days

It took off being a review-site for the home coffee enthusiast and that is exactly the content, which have been published at the Coffee Channel the last 64 days, counting 72 blog post. I have never thought that the Coffee Channel would achieve such high visit numbers within the first quarter, but nevertheless Coffee Channel is being enjoyed world wide, counting about 80% from foreign countries.

Its a privillige to publish blog post that people find interesting and especially useful, example the Francis Francis Internal PID guide has been linked on several coffee forums (incl. coffeegeek.com) as a solution to an occurred problem.

I will try my very best to continue this informative articles and seek related coffee firms/persons, who can provide interesting, fascinating and useful material to create articles. Therefore a special thanks shall be giving to the current coffee firms, who have provided such material; Grower´s Cup, Redespresso and Rocket Espresso.

Nevertheless the biggest thanks shall be honored to you, because without you guys, there would be no existing Coffee Channel.

// Hendrup

Mexican Maragogype Superior Granate

Ancient Mayan Ruins

Mexico is geografical located next to Guatemala in Central America and therefore some of the high-grown Mexican coffees share the fuller body and richer, more emphatic acidity of fine Guatemalan coffees. In general the Mexican coffees display a brisk, gently bright acidity, delicate flavor and medium body, which is suitable for blends and dark roasts. Some of the popular beans from Mexico is known by market names, such as; Coatepec, Oaxaca or Chiapas/Tapachula.

Mexican Maragogype located

This particular bean; Maragogype (Mara-go-hee-pey) Superior Granate, is also known as the "Elephant bean", cause of its giant size compared to a regular coffee bean. This bean were discovered in Brazil in the 1900´s, were the plant happened naturally. They got the name from the region of Brazil were they were discovered and has been relocated other parts of the Central America; Mexico and Nicaragua.

Comparrison of the Maragogype and regular coffee bean

This particular bean provides a great round cup with a long and pleasant aftertaste, its actually so balanced and round that it will do well at the breakfast table. Its a great bean balanced with a low acidity, which means this coffee easily could replace your everyday bean.

Have a great weekend!

// Hendrup

Aeropress; Professional use

Brewing on the Aeropress 4-cup

I have previos made a blog post regarding the use of the Aeropress, but my inspiration came from a local coffee bar, where Aeropress brewed coffee was on the menu. The brewing process at the local coffee bar, was different from what the included Aeropress manual stated, so I thought it could be beneficial for the readers of Coffee Channel to get knowledge about the two different brew methods. If you haven´t seen the previous blog post regarding the Aeropress, click on this link.

Moistening the Aeropress plunger

Its highly important that you moister the Aeropress plunger, cause when adding pressure onto the plunger, the fluid will break through the sealing of the plunger if its dry. (Its the rubber tip of the plunger that needs water applied) The picture above shows that I'm pouring hot water onto the plunger, but it does not really matter cause the mainly purpose is to moisture the plunger. If you are a hardcore coffee addict/nerd you should definitely use hot water, because the plunger will be preheating and therefore not cause a cooling off the hot water to be added.

Insert plunger into the chamber

 Place the plunger on a countertop nor a table like I and apply the chamber on top. This is actually the opposite of the "normal" brewing method and by normal I mean the included guide lines from Aeropress.

Applying hot water into the chamber

In the previous step the chamber along with plunger created a bowl for brewing, which could be preheated like shown in the picture above. The reason why you want to preheat the Aeropress is because of its cooling affect on the merging between ground coffee and hot water, which will lead towards a more sour cup. This scenario is of cause if you use "temperate" water, set to about 80 degrees, which therefore can't afford to loose more heat. If you on the other hand use boiling hot water, you don't need to preheat the chamber, cause the cooling affect will have a positive effect on the applied water temperature. If you go with the preheating of the chamber, keep the water in the chamber for about two minutes to achieve the optimal chamber temperature. In this spare time you can grind your coffee and moisture your filter.

Moistering the filter

In the last couple of days I have tried to run some test regarding the use of a dry versus a wet filter. The result of these few tryouts were clearly that the moistened filter holds a greater resistance when applying pressure onto the chamber.

Applying ground coffee into the chamber

Empty the water used for preheating the chamber and apply your ground coffee. Use the same measurements like the previous guide; one scoop per cup merged with one cup mark water.

Apply hot water onto the ground coffee

The chamber is filled with ground coffee and applying water is the next step. Apply the amount of water that suits your gr. of ground coffee to achieve the right balance in the cup.

Stirring into the fusion of ground coffee and hot water

 When the right amount of water have been applied, take your included stirrer and stir into the fusion of ground coffee and hot water to release CO2 gases trapped in the layers of coffee on top of the water. This will lead to a much better extraction, because the water will be in closer contact with the ground coffee.

Applying the moistened filter

When the fusion of ground coffee and hot water have merged in 30 seconds to one minute, apply the moistened filter. This should be applied like shown in the picture above, do not try to flip the Aeropress to seal the filter.

Flipping the Aeropress onto the cup

The last step is to flip the Aeropress onto the cup. Its important to keep your hans on both the chamber and the plunger, because the flipping will cause a little vacuum inside the chamber. This vacuum is noting serious, but the plunger will go up a couple of millimeters. Lastly apply pressure to extract the brewed Aeropress coffee into the cup. This extracting should take about 30 seconds from the start of applying pressure to the final extracted coffee.

Close up at the final result

Here you go, a beautiful brewed cup of coffee. This coffee have been brewed like professionals and its surely revealed in the final cup. I must say I'm mostly fund of this particular brewing method, because its more simple, quicker and better tasting.

// Hendrup

* Follow on twitter, @Kasperhendrup *

How to remove steam wand from the Francis Francis X1

Front screws which should be removed

I have got some requests regarding removing the steam wand on the Francis Francis X1. Therefore I have assembled this step-by-step picture guide. The different steps will be described both shortly in the picture text and in more detailed text below.

The tools required to remove the steam wand

1+4. Screwdriver, you need to have one of these to remove the front panel screw along with the internal screw.

5. Wrench, you also need a wrench to remove the nut holding the steam wand in place.

Removing the front panel screw 

The simple way of removing the steam wand is by taking out these two front panel screws, cause when the front panel is removing, you will have a clear sight of the internal of the Francis Francis X1.

Removing the front panel

Remove the front panel by use of hand, by pulling in a horizontal direction (towards you) and the front panel should come right off.

Locating the internal screw

Let the front panel hang in the attached wires and locate the internal screw holding the steam wheel. By removing this particular screw you will be able to remove the steam wheel.

Removing the internal screw 

The internal screw are located at the steam exit T, which you can only remove by entering the hole beside the steam wand with the screwdriver as shown in the above picture.

Removing the steam wheel 

When you have loosen the internal screw, you can remove the steam wheel by turning it against the clock, likewise when opening for steam.

Removing the steam wand

You need your wrench when removing the steam wand. Seal it to the nut holding the steam wand in place and turn with the clock to unscrew the nut.

Remove the steam wand 

When you have released the nut holding the steam wand in place, just pull it down. To remove the steam wand completely just grap around it and pull vertical (down).

The removed parts 

1. The removed steam wheel.

2. The steam wand, which can be disassembled further by turning the steam tip clockwise while holding the steam wand arm in place.

4. Front panel screws holding the front panel in place.

Well as you might have noticed so far, removing the steam wand is very simple; SO GET ON WITH IT, this way you can clean it optimal and perhaps invest in some better steam wand tips.

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe

Sun dried coffee beans

Ethiopia is historically said to be the geographical origin of coffee and even today this country produces great coffees, one of them is the Yirgacheffe. This particular coffee is an Ethiopian wet-processed coffee and is one of the worlds most distinctive coffee; overwhelmingly floral, lemony with rich, soft-toned acidity, crisp mid-tones and medium to light body. Other Ethiopian coffees marked as Limu nor wet-processed versions of Sidamo and Jimma are similar to Yirgacheffe, but usually less intensely floral and distinctive.

"Intensely aromatic yet finely balanced. The rich aroma is dominated by a pungent cedar sensation with backgrounded caramelly chocolate sweetness and a hint of flowers. The chocolaty fruit and night floral notes move lushly forward in the cup, persisting into the finish. Soft acidity, lightly syrupy mouthfeel." Ken Davids (November 2009, coffee review.com)

Map locating Yirgacheffe

"Perhaps its because coffee has been cultivated in Ethiopia longer than anywhere else on earth, and has so much genetic variety to choose from. Whatever the reason, Ethiopian coffees are vibrant and intensely aromatic as a rule .. and ours exemplary." Doug Cadmus

Yirgacheffe, green vs. roasted bean

The roasting profile used for this bean was 240 degrees for about 15 minutes on the Gene Cafe, which could have been reduced by a couple of minutes, cause I was roasting for Aeropress. Nevertheless is the beans a little brighter than the picture above shows of the roasted beans, but I would definitely recommend a shorter roasting profile to achieve more of the lemony flavors.

Final brewed cup of Yirgacheffe

Yirgacheffe charms you with its high citrus notes and its notes of chocolate; its sensual wisp of flowers and its round body. There are no doubt in my mind, that this coffee represents the origin country of coffee, cause its an absolutely pleasure of quality to drink. The flavors is extremely sensitive and is constant flirting with the line between sourness and citrus, lemony, which gives the cup some extra mysteriousness and depth.

// Hendrup

Newly purchased items

Two kilos of green coffee beans from Colombia and Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea: This particular green bean is from the plantation Sigri and is a AA grade bean. The taste of this coffee should be similar to the exclusive Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, with a rare and clean depth.

Colombia: This green bean is grown in the mountains of Andes and have the highest quality grade available in Colombia, which is supremo. This coffee should have a great acidity and rich flavor with a good strong cup.

Two kilos of green beans from Mexico and Ethiopia

Mexico Maragogype: These green bean is known as the elephant bean, cause of the huge size of these beans compared to other green beans. These particular bean is hand sorted in Mexico and is of the highest quality. The coffee should have a round and great taste, with low acidity.

Ethiopia Yirgacheffe: This organic and fair-trade green bean should have floral notes with notes of citrus.

Chai Powder

Spiced Chai: This Chai powder is used in the brewing of a Chai Latte, which is a great replacement  cup when you need an additional choice to a cappuccino nor a hot chocolate. This type of powder is mixed with frothed milk to create this drink and is most enjoyable when its cold outside.

Aeropress

Aeropress: This brewing device is growing rapidly in popularity, cause of the short extraction time between the hot water and ground coffee, leaving a crisp and clean cup to enjoy.

// Hendrup

Step by step: Aeropress

Complete Aeropress items from package

I have just bought an Aeropress, cause I got one Take-away coffee from Sigfreds coffee bar in Århus, which tasted crisp, clean and sweet, like I have never tasted it before. I bought this item yesterday along with some other products, see blog post for tomorrow for better description of these items. Nevertheless I paid 250 DKK ($43) for this brewing device, which is cheap in my opinion cause there is included 350 filters along with a great coffee maker. If you note the above picture, there is inserted different numbers, here is an explanation;

1. Stirrer, this item is used for mixing ground coffee with hot water when poured into the chamber.
2. Scoop, the scoop is used for measuring the exact amount of ground coffee, one scoop is equal to one shot of espresso. In other words one scoop of ground coffee will provide the strong taste of one espresso cup, if brewed with water to the line of one cup.
3. Collector, this item is used along in the grinding process. Use this collector beneath the grinder to capture all ground coffee into the chamber.
4. Aeropress, the brewing device. This item is containing two items, the plunger which is used to create a press inside the second item, which is the chamber. 
5. Filter container, this item keeps track of your filters.

If you haven't had the pleasure of brewing with this brewing device before, here is the included manual, but I will attempt to create a step by step below.

Aeropress instruction manual

Some people learn better by visual instructions, so below there is a instruction video by World Champion Barista 2009, Gwilym Davies of how to simply brew the Aeropress.

First off, preheating the chamber along with the filter

The chamber is preheating cause the following poured hot water then wouldn't experience a temperature drop, also the filter is soaked too create greater resistance, when pressing down the plunger.

Soaking and preheating filter and chamber

Align your setup like the above picture and pour in some hot water, cause you will be this method both preheat the chamber along with soaking the filter, but also preheat the cup.

Adding ground coffee

When you have preheated the chamber, cup and soaked the filter, then empty both cup and chamber for  additional water. Align the item like before and fill in the ground coffee. I have in the picture above used the included spoon, cause its a measuring tool, one scoop equals one cup of espresso. This coffee is brewed with two scoops of ground coffee.

Applying hot water into the chamber

When you have poured in the preferred amount of ground coffee, the next step would be to apply hot water. Fill the chamber up to the cup line, at the side of the chamber, in this cup I use the three cup water mark.

Applying the plunger and extracting the coffee

The final step is to apply the plunger and press it down to create pressure inside the chamber. There will be created an air pocket inside the chamber between the plunger and mixture of hot water and ground coffee.

Close up at the extracting process

This close up reveals the big air gap between the plunger and coffee. This will also provide a dry puck when you reach the bottom of the chamber, cause it will dry blow the ground coffee. Be aware of sour/bitter flavors which is left in the puck, as Gwilym Davies explains in the attached video.

Close up at the brewed cup

This method is providing a cup of coffee without comparison, cause the method is only allowing the ground coffee to merge with the hot water in 30 seconds, which is beside espresso coffee among the fastest brewing methods. The quickness of the method is applying a clean and crisp cup without additional sour/bitterness like you will experience in a ordinary brewed cup of coffee.

Have a great weekend guys!

// Hendrup