Consequently I thought that me and coffee were going to part ways, I was especially gutted since 'they' had just decided that coffee was actually good for us.
However my neighbour is cultivating a small rainforest for a garden ' Daintree Gardening' is how he describes his style. He has lots of coffee plants in his rainforest and they grow the most lovely red fruit.
He asked us if we would like some, so we went over and picked a bucket full.
We covered them with cold water and let them sit for a few days. They softened up and started to ferment.
Then we removed the seeds from the pulp. It was quite easy, you just needed to squeeze one end of the berry and the seeds squirted out.
We placed them on dehydrator trays and put them out in the sun to dry. We brought them in at night. We dried them for approximately three days, until they felt nice and dry when we ran our fingers through them.
We had read that you only want to roast them for twenty minutes, the variable for the darkness of the roast is the temperature. We put our oven up to about 220 centigrade, we were aiming for a dark roast. We placed the beans on oven trays in the middle of the oven.
The aim with roasting coffee beans is to get an even roast, often that involved lots aeration in a professional machine. We decided that the best we could do regards aeration would be to remove the trays every five minutes and move the beans about in the hope they would roast evenly.
We achieved a rather dark roast.
Coffee beans continue to cook unless they are rapidly cooled down.
We moved the beans back and forwards between a sieve and a pan to help cool them. Done vigorously this should help remove some of the chaff. Though chaff doesn't affect the final flavour, so we didn't try too hard to remove it.
We let the beans cool then ground them. The flavour matured as the hours passed by. Supposedly 24 hours after the roast the coffee will be at its best, after which the aroma will start to fade.
For a first attempt we were really pleased with the result. Using a stove top espresso maker we brewed our coffee and mixed the Espresso with a little water, brown sugar and milk. Mmmmm it was delicious. I had the remnants of a bag of shop bought coffee in the fridge so I decided to make a comparison brew... oh what vile flavourless muck it was.
We have both become coffee fiends ever since and are looking at our jar of ground coffee as its contents dwindle, fearing the day that it runs out. We have even planted six coffee trees in our garden, fortunately as a rainforest tree they grow well in shaded areas which had otherwise been going to waste. I must admit that I do feel a little wired and think it may be a good thing when the coffee runs out. I have heard that in cider producing regions the locals binge for a few weeks at end of brew time then stop for the year, which gives their bodies time to recover from the abuse. I think that is probably how we ought best manage our coffee habits; binge for a month then be calm for the rest of the year, until harvest time rolls around again.
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