Death wish coffee

[pucho812]

Received some for the holidays and as a coffee aficionado, I have to tell you it's amazing.

As taste goes  it's full of flavor and a well bodied cup of coffee.

As caffine goes they boast that they have more caffine then any other coffee.  A bonus if you ask me.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Revived some for the holidays and as a coffee aficionado, I have to tell you it's amazing.

As taste goes  it's full of flavor and a well bodied cup of coffee.

As caffine goes they boast that they have more caffine then any other coffee.  A bonus if you ask me.

I've been roasting my own coffee (from green coffee beans) for a couple decades. I never heard of "Death Wish" coffee, but I am aware of Robusta coffee beans. Aribica is widely accepted as superior tasting and more expensive. Aribica only grows at higher altitudes, while Robusta can be grown at sea level.  Viet Nam is a major producer of Robusta. The cheap Robusta is used in low cost coffee blends, and sometimes as an extender in major blends (to make more profit). 

Making a brand that promotes Robusta as a feature is slick, pay less for raw material and sell for higher prices.    https://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/content/robusta

If you want more caffeine, drink two cups. Caffeine is bitter so more of it will not likely taste better. I drink so much coffee that I switch to drink decaffeinated coffee for late afternoon-evening drinks, because the normal caffeine, late in the day was affecting my sleep.  You can buy decaffeinated green beans to roast, that can be as good tasting as regular.  Most decaffeinated coffee sucks because they start with lousy beans. I don't need even higher caffeine, in my morning pot, that I drink all by myself. Normal is just fine, and Aribica beans are good tasting too.

JR

 

[pucho812]

John is there anything you don't do? Thanks for the info.  Happy New Year.

 

[JohnRoberts]

John is there anything you don't do? Thanks for the info.  Happy New Year.

Plenty... but life is too short to tolerate inferior beverages so I brew my own beer and coffee, etc.

JR

 

[okgb]

I believe  Robusta was partly responsible for the " flavored " trend as they had to do something
to fix it.  I bought some starbucks flavored coffee thinking they would do it right,  nope same
acidy after taste , ass is the key word there.

 

[JohnRoberts]

"every mic has a purpose" 

===========
Something like 75-80% of world coffee is Aribica because it tastes better. Robusta finds itself in some expresso blends to punch up the caffiene, and like I already shared used in low cost coffees. Instant, decaf, and coffees blended for less discerning customers gravitate toward cheaper beans.

=====
StarBURNT, is an interesting coffee story... over roasting beans tends to drive off aromatics and reduce flavor variations, so over roasting helped them deliver a consistent product despite green bean variations. Interesting to see Starbuck$ introduce "blond" coffee lighter roasts to appeal to more sensitive palates. Of course since beans vary it is harder to deliver a consistent flavor profile with light roast.

I find it equally amusing when Guinness offers a light beer or Heineken a dark... but that's just bidness. The neighbors grass always looks greener.

JR

 

[pucho812]

That's an interesting micing technique. 

 

[sodderboy]

Perhaps make Bulletproof Coffee with the Death Wish blend.
A friend swears by the bulletproof recipe.  I thought it was meh.

OT I have determined that coffee and beer, taken together or separately, totally kill my gut so I have abstained for months now.  I thought I would have eaten a .44 slug by now!
Mike

 

[JohnRoberts]

Perhaps make Bulletproof Coffee with the Death Wish blend.
A friend swears by the bulletproof recipe.  I thought it was meh.

OT I have determined that coffee and beer, taken together or separately, totally kill my gut so I have abstained for months now.  I thought I would have eaten a .44 slug by now!
Mike

I'm not sure adding butter to coffee is a good idea if weight conscious, for mountain climbers they need plenty of calories, but that is interesting about mycotixin contamination. 

here is an interesting exchange from where I buy my green coffee  http://www.sweetmariascoffee.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3578

I did some research into whether mycotoxin survives roasting 400'+F and some can survive to 500'. Roasting removes 50-70%...

Thanks I learned something..

JR

 

[Kingston]

We got a proper espresso machine some months back. Nothing short of life altering event. This machine, holy shit! it's able to extract the core essence of even mediocre coffee as long as its ground right.

Anyway, all of this talk has me itching for more coffee.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Grinding your own coffee is an order of magnitude fresher than buying pre-ground coffee.

Roasting you own coffee is another order of magnitude, or more better.

I roast up 5 days worth at a time, so never drink coffee more than 5 days old. I grind it minutes before brewing..

It makes a difference. While each batch of green beans is different, like the grapes in wine.

Carpe diem....

JR

 

[dmp]

I got a burr grinder a year ago and it made a difference over a blade type grinder.

 

[Kingston]

They have good roasteries here in Helsinki but this freshness thing is new to me. I thought the bean itself works as a container of sorts. You open it up when you grind and better drink soon after.

These roasteries allow tracking their batches. Makes sense now that you say it makes a difference.

 

[0dbfs]

Pucho, how does death wish compare to Kings Road? Kings road has been my fav for a while now but I don't get to drink it often enough.

Cheers!
-jb

 

[pucho812]

I have not had kings road in a very long time so I can not give you a fair comparison.

 

[Andy Peters]

Grinding your own coffee is an order of magnitude fresher than buying pre-ground coffee.

Roasting you own coffee is another order of magnitude, or more better.

I roast up 5 days worth at a time, so never drink coffee more than 5 days old. I grind it minutes before brewing..

A friend got into the local coffee roasting business (his partner was working for someone who owned a roasting company that had some local accounts, that someone retired so the partner bought the business and my friend bought in).

Anyways, once a week I ring him up and order a couple of pounds of beans. My office is on his way home, so he drops them off. (A coffee pusher that delivers!) The beans are usually roasted that day or the day before, and that's good enough for me. I don't have to set up a roasting kit at home, which I don't have room for, anyway.

Burr grinder, french press, coffee. The rest is commentary.

 

[JohnRoberts]

They have good roasteries here in Helsinki but this freshness thing is new to me. I thought the bean itself works as a container of sorts. You open it up when you grind and better drink soon after.

In my judgement, fresh roasted makes a bigger difference than fresh grinding, but I never tested them independently.

In fact the flavor profile of roasted coffee improves for several hours after roasting, then starts declining.  I actually roast green coffee beans every 5 days, and rest them one day before I drink the first pot. I can actually taste a difference between day 1 and day 5.

Immediately after the roast, coffee beans out gas CO2 (I read about a worker being killed by unventilated storage at a mass roaster ). In addition  to CO2 the beans also lose volatile flavor elements. After a roast, you can smell the aromatics coming from the fresh roast. All those volatiles that evaporate away (in a matter of days), are no longer in the beans to flavor the brew.

When you grind the coffee you release another round of internal flavors. These will go away even faster than while the roasted bean is intact (more surface area,  and grinding breaks down protective structures).

Yes, @DMP there is even a difference between grinders. I have a hand cranked and motorized burr grinder. Some purists claim the hand cranked tastes better, I can't tell any difference, but burr grinders are much more consistent and adjustable than cheap blade type grinders.



 

These roasteries allow tracking their batches. Makes sense now that you say it makes a difference.

You can probably do your own experiment if you have a local roaster.  Try to get the roaster to sell you the same origin beans. One batch that was roasted within hours, and another that may be a few days old.

[edit\ another variable that could confound this simple test is that both batches using identical green beans are roasted the exact same amount.  There are variations in how dark the beans are roasted, The darker roasting drives off volatiles so darker roasts suppress some of sharper flavor highlights. [/edit\] 

You should be able to notice a difference just smelling it, the fresh roast will have stronger aroma.

Coffee makers have invested a lot of research into trying to stop this deterioration of flavor after roasting/grinding with limited success. It isn't simple oxidation as much ac chemical changes in the coffee itself.

Warning: after you learn how good coffee can be, it will be hard drinking the same stuff most people think is coffee.  Life is too short for inferior beverages.

JR

 

[0dbfs]

Where can you normally get quality green beans locally? Roasting @ home sounds like a great idea Is a nice heavy pan on the stove enough to start me off?

Cheers,
jonathan

 

[JohnRoberts]

Where can you normally get quality green beans locally? Roasting @ home sounds like a great idea Is a nice heavy pan on the stove enough to start me off?

Cheers,
jonathan

There is actually a guy in MS selling Green coffee and I tried him once but not as good as my primary source
https://www.sweetmarias.com/  Sweet marias is located in Oakland, historically where a lot of bulk coffee gets imported through.

Tom the guy behind Sweet Marias,  travels around the world sampling coffee and finding reliable sources.  In 20 years of buying green beans from Tom I have never received a sub-standard batch...

I actually found this one obscure robusta https://www.sweetmarias.com/product/tanzania-mara-tarime  .  In the past he has sold small samples of robusta kind of as a joke to help reveal how inferior it can be. I guess there is better/worse robusta's too. The vast majority of his coffee is aribaca

Over the decades I have sampled beans from all around the world (from sweet marias) and never been disappointed... all different and all good.  I am currently drinking Ethiopian decaf (water process) and Brazilian regular. Next buy will probably be central america maybe Guatemala.

https://www.sweetmarias.com/category/green-coffee He writes pretty specific reviews but generally doesn't buy green beans that aren't good so he doesn't have to sell bad coffee. Sometimes he will run out of one origin, rather than  selling inferior greens.

Since the coffee is traveling half way around the world, another few hundred miles is no big deal. The MS guy is not selling MS coffee beans... FWIW I think there are coffees grown in Puerto Rico, and Hawaii (Kona is expensive), but US is not a big coffee growing nation.  I've tried Kona before and it didn't seem to me that the high price was justified...  You can't go wrong trusting Tom's judgement...(IMO).

JR

 

[Bowie]

Coffee guys; answer me this...
Coffee usually rots my stomach unless I eat something with it.  However, I've found that some are not as bad at this as others and I recently got hooked on Kicking Horse coffees, which don't seem to bother my stomach much at all.  What is it that causes stomach pain?  Is it the acidity?  Or, something else?