cohiba coffee anyone?

[monkey66]

All very distinctive, the Monsoon Malabar has that musty profile (great with milk) and the sumatra lintong again is a big coffee, the new guinea may be a bit cleaner. Hard to know how it will compare to your usual brew as there are a lot of variables aside from the beans.

Look forward to hear how you get on.

[celsis]

One last question. I use a cafetiere. My wee grinder has two settings, coarse and fine. Which should I use?

[monkey66]

probably coarse but hard to tell as these are such arbitrary terms.

A couple of pointers for cafetiere, let the kettle stand for a couple of mins after boiling as you don't want 100degC water, 94 DegC is much better. Pour in the water and let stand for 3-4 mins, plunge in one smooth action, pour slowly to avoid bringing up too much 'sludge'

[celsis]

Cheers mate!

[Lascaux]

i've never heard of the 4 days after roasting thing paul, but i will try it!

i recently bought some mandheling sumatra and some nicaraguan coffee from artistan roast in edinburgh. great great little coffee shop. it was freshly roasted the day before and smelt and tasted fantastic up there, bought several bags of whole beans back down, then left them for a week as I had nasty flu and they tasted weak as hell with an unpleasant aftertaste. dont know how the hell they turned so bad in just a week, ah well

[monkey66]

4 days is essential, coffee needs to rest post roast to develop it's flavours (whilst it releases c02). the difference is night and day.

As for coffee going bad in a week it can happen if the beans are badly roasted: over-roasted and covered in oil that can go rancid quickly or not stored in a bag with a one-way valve giving the c02 nowhere to go and rapidly turning the beans bad.

[celsis]

Tried the Sumatra Lintong today. Very different from what I've had before. A lot "thinner" than what I'm used to and not so oily. Taste was strange at first, until my buds got used to it. Vry fruity taste at first and this matured into the standard, strong Java taste. The aftertaste was quire sweet however. No bitterness here!

Very enjoyable and I'll buy again!