Kayahara.ca

Most of the coffee I drink, I brew in a French press. But I do also have a relatively low-end espresso machine, which I use several days a week when I need a caffeinated afternoon pick-me-up. Of course, this means I don’t go through espresso as quickly as I do “regular” coffee. In some ways, [...]

My friend Stuart McCook, a historian who studies coffee cultivation and blogs about it at Coffee Cultures, has been called an “apologist for Robusta coffee.” Robusta is a species of coffee plant (Coffea canephora) distinct from the more widely cultivated Arabica species (Coffea arabica). Robusta is estimated to make up anywhere from 20% to 30% [...]

Since randomly throwing together my first coffee blend, I’ve been reading more about blending, especially on the fantastic Sweet Maria’s site. In particular, I learned that there’s a distinction to be made between blends of coffees from various origins, and blends of coffees roasted to different levels (which may be from one or more origins). [...]

Since posting about my third round of home-roasted coffee, I’ve been trying to roast a batch – some smaller, some larger – once a week. I think I’ve gotten pretty good with the process by now: I’m no longer under-roasting, and have learned more or less where to stop it to get the roast I [...]

Half a pound of green coffee doesn’t last that long, especially when you consider that it loses weight in the roasting process! Fortunately, I don’t rely exclusively on coffee I’ve roasted myself, so after I used up the beans from my first home-roasting run, I went back to store-bought for a few days. Last weekend, [...]

It is one of my fundamental beliefs that most foodstuffs can be made successfully at home. The results may not be the best example of their type – there’s a reason specialist producers exist – but they are at least consumable and, with a little understanding of the physical and chemical reactions involved, often very [...]

One of the fundamental skills of cooking is controlling the way that heat goes into (and, sometimes, comes out of) food. You can use a very gentle heat, like a controlled-temperature water bath, to warm the food slowly until the whole thing is the same temperature as the cooking medium. Or you can use a [...]