Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Roasting with the Jones'



When I pulled it from the pool of white packing peanuts in the shipping box, a few fluttering to the floor, I didn’t know what it was. I could tell it was a machine of sorts. It was heavy and from the pictures on the box looked like some kind of trendy popcorn maker. Brushing away the static clinging peanuts revealed a home coffee roaster.

Just that act of brushing something away to read an “inscription” already made me feel like Indiana Jones. This was no longer a routine night at home with the cats; something now had to be decoded, discovered and conquered. And really this is an indication of how mundane my life has become, that receiving an unsolicited coffee roaster in the mail made it seem like I was about to set sail on an adventure.

This gift from my father was the iRoast 2. I liked that the name implied that in addition to my other culinary skills I also roast coffee. “iRoast 2” could easily be construed as “I roast as well”. It was already padding my ego.

Digging through the peanuts again revealed several tightly packed plastic bags of light green pellets. Now it appeared my dad had smuggled me some kind of illicit narcotic through the mail. But no, these were raw coffee beans! They were a pale green, smaller than the roasted coffee beans I grind everyday, but on closer inspection were the same basic shape, the rounded oval turtle back, with the single divot running lengthwise down the other side.

I spread the bean bags and various parts of the roaster out on the counter like puzzle pieces. There was a giant heavy motor, a glass chamber, a metal mesh filter, some other odd filter, a weird top shaped like a tear drop and finally an open metal cylinder. Obviously these components fit together some way, but rather than look at the instructions, still unwrapped on the counter, I began to mash and twist the various bits together. It was now a machine teetering on itself and the cats, bored with the packing peanuts they had spread throughout the apartment, were looking from the machine back to me with alarm. That didn’t seem safe, so after tearing open the instructions and reading the directions, I had an assembled coffee roaster.

Now to choose a bean! I had several options, involving the countries of Brazil, Kenya, Ecuador and Columbia (places Indiana Jones no doubt traveled through), with descriptions like “chocolate milk”, “sweet citrus”, “peach-apricot preserves”, “spiced tea”, “apple skins”, and “mild floral aroma”. These clear, if a little snooty, qualities were also paired with more austere and baffling descriptions like “City+ to FC+”, “At City+”, and “FC to FC+”. In the end it came down to my love of another beverage, Whiskey. One of the bags had the word “Bourbon” written clearly in both the title and description. Sold.

I loaded the glass chamber with one cup of “El Salvador Siberia Estate Bourbon”, twisted the lid shut and turned my attention to the controls. The machine has one digital read-out and only four buttons: Preset 1, Preset 2, RoastTemp, and Cool Time. “Who needs instructions when there’s only four buttons?” I thought. Preset 2 seemed like a good bet. Once pressed, the machine’s readout changed from blinking dashes to 11:30. I mashed Roast Temp, thinking I was now setting the power of the machine. Nope.

That started it, and with the sound of a powerful hairdryer, the beans began blowing about the chamber and clinking against the glass. Both cats, sensing danger involving untested machines, heat, and poor ventilation, ran for cover. I sat mesmerized by the process. The time read-out was now counting down, and I had the feeling that I had triggered a bomb. Indiana Jones triggered bombs, but surely he didn’t sit in his kitchen alone and watch them count down.

While I’ve found it true that “a watched pot never boils”, a watched bean certainly roasts, and roasts fast. By four minutes, they had become a light brown, and most had lost their skins, an attribute that wasn’t even visible when examining their raw state. By six minutes they were a milk chocolate color. By seven minutes they began to sweat, releasing a greasy residue on the sides of the glass and were beginning to turn a dark brown. This looked perfect I thought, before realizing I still had another four and a half minutes to go. The beans continued to get darker, and then smoke was angrily billowing out of the machine and filling the apartment. I opened three windows and the sliding glass door, turned on the hood vent above the stove and began wildly flapping my arms. The cats were now exchanging worried glances with each other and had taken cover under the couch.

And then the sound abruptly changed, still a hairdryer but muffled, and the readout was counting down a different time and alternated flashing the word “Cool”, as if to say, “It’s all good Jackass, you didn’t burn your apartment down.”

Once it stopped I had what looked like roasted coffee beans! They were almost black in color, but smelled rich and complex (burnt? I hoped not). The coffee (liquid version), I had the next morning tasted better I think because of the adventure I had embarked upon and survived the night before. It still lacked something though, and in looking over the instructions on roasting for the first time I came across the phrase “every second can alter the flavor of the bean. Choose your time wisely”. Well that was intimidating, but also heartening, that my adventure in roasting had just begun.

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