Dancing coffee beans

One evening just before supper I was transplanting some of our Tasty Green cucumber starts. Tomatoes I start in a 5-by-5 tray and maybe 40 to 50 seeds to a tray. Cucumbers I start in individual containers. I pretty much figure that some of the seeds won't germinate after they are a year or two old so many times I plant a couple or three to a starter tray. I think almost all of the Tasty Green seeds came up, so I had one little plant in some spots and then three in others. So I carefully separated those with three and transplanted them.

I was transplanting them that evening and noticed how the plants smelled like cucumbers. Man, I love cucumbers. I wondered if cucumber plants taste like cucumbers. Bet they do. I never tried it, but someday I may have to pull some leaves off one of our plants and add them to a salad. But even as I was transplanting my cucumber plants, I was smelling roasted coffee.

Earlier I'd roasted about 12 ounces of green coffee beans from Burundi, and the smell was still lingering in my little work shed/man cave. This is where I start all my tomatoes and zucchini and such. Marge usually cleans it a couple three times a year, so in between it's not the cleanest. It's my work room. I spill a little starter mix or potting soil on the floor, and it's not a big deal. It just kind of joins what was spilled from yesterday and the day before. Then Marge cleans, and we start over. But that coffee smell is there all the time.

I'd roasted the 12 ounces, and after cooling down the beans, I'd put them in an old quart mason jar and left the lid a little loose to let them kind of breathe. For 24 hours and up to a week the roasted beans need to breathe. So after transplanting the cucumbers and about 24 Mortgage Lifter tomato plants, I took the quart jar into the house with me. Supper time. So for whatever reason I went to bed thinking of coffee.

It was storming that evening, and it must have awakened Marge, because when I woke up after the storm was done, she wasn't in bed so I went checking. The storm was done, so she was fixing to head for bed, but I was thinking about those coffee beans. I pulled up a site with DuckDuckGo and looked at more green coffee beans. Hate to run short of beans during this virus. The virus is serious, but running out of coffee is inexcusable. People seem to be really concerned about no toilet paper. No coffee is even worse!

I picked out five different beans from Ethiopia, Columbia, Burundi, Kenya and Brazil. After I'd checked out the green bean website and chose the five coffee beans, I went back to bed. Slept for maybe three hours, but those darn coffee beans kept dancing in my head. I was there in bed thinking about the coffee beans and praying for some friends and finally decided to just get up and have a cup of Burundi coffee. It was about 2:30. Glad I did. Sure tastes good. For whatever reason I can drink a cup of coffee in the evening, and I'll stay awake, but if I drink a cup in the middle of the night I can go back to bed and sleep like our pets do.

The coffee from Burundi beans is pretty darn good. I can't describe exactly what it tastes like, but it's definitely different than the Costa Rica and Ethiopian I've been drinking. The Ethiopian has a definite taste of blueberries. Coffee from anywhere in the world has its own unique taste. Beans from Panama have a unique taste. So do beans from Ethiopia. This is the same as Vidalia onions or Texas 1015 onions. I can buy the same plants as they grow down in Georgia or Texas and mine will taste different because of where I grow them. Same with coffee.

How long you roast them makes a big difference as well. You can saute some sweet onions just a little and they will have a distinct taste. However, if you saute them a little too long, they lose that distinct taste. Coffee too. As one heats the coffee beans and the temperature rises, when they hit about 400 degrees or so, they will pop like popcorn. It will be a distinct popping noise. You can dump the roasted beans right here, and this is a "city roast." If you keep adding heat, they will pop one more time, and this will be a "full city plus roast." A city roast will taste predominately like the country it originated from or it will have a predominately origin taste. Just before full city plus, the beans will still have some origin taste but they will also have a roast taste or a charred coffee taste. From full city plus on there will only be a roast taste. You can take beans pretty much from anywhere in the world and roast them to full city plus or beyond, and they will taste real similar. So I strictly roast my coffee to city or city plus or a light roast.

My roasting coffee has been a journey for me. My brother, Mick, in Nebraska got me started. I'm not sure how he got started. He was using one of those aluminum whirly pop popcorn poppers to roast his beans in so I ordered a stainless steel Whirly pop popper. I roasted a bunch of green coffee beans in that old roaster. Some were good, and some not so good, and some went in the trash. Slowly I came to realize what roast level of coffee I really liked so from then on I had a goal to aim at in regard to roast level which was city or city plus.

In time I watched a video of some guy roasting coffee using a plain Jane air popcorn popper. So I found a $5 dollar special at Teen Challenge and I was off to the races. I've added more poppers and eventually a more expensive roaster, but good coffee was and still is my passion. Times may be trying, but coffee is a constant in my life. Maybe a distraction as well. I enjoy sitting down with a cup of coffee relaxing and letting the worries and concerns fly off into the sunset. Happy drinking!