Is it immoral to lie to a machine?

Faulty motors aside, the Behmor is a great little machine.  I really only have one complaint: the Behmor 1600 is too scared.

That’s right: chicken.  As in Leghorn.

The Behmor’s designers must have heard about home roasters who start a roast in the garage then forget about the roast until the roaster’s wife sees smoke rolling out of the garage an hour later.

In designing the Behmor, they established maximum times for each profile.  For example, a one-pound roast on P1 (100% heat throughout the roast) will not continue past 20:30 minutes.

Not a bad idea in theory, except that 3/4 of the beans I roast have not yet reached second crack by 20:30.

The only work-around I have found is to lie to the Behmor.  I tell the roaster that I am roasting 16 ounces of green coffee when I have loaded 13.3 ounces into the drum.  After a half dozen roasts, only the Sumatra Mandheling needed the full 20.5 minutes.

So I roast six pounds of coffee out of a five pound bag.

That’s the truth.

Will my Facebook page outlive this blog?

I have been roasting for five months now using my Behmor 1600. 

Actually, I have been using three Behmors 1600.  Or is it Behmor 1600s?

Customer Service at Behmor, Inc., has been faithful, prompt and reliable, which is more than I can say about the motor turning the roasting drum.  But as long as Joe keeps sending new machines, the faulty motors really shouldn’t matter, right?

I wonder how many other Behmor users have been suffering from malfunctioning motors.  Maybe I’m just unlucky.

Yes, I know: Joe Behm has been more faithful and regular about sending replacement roasters than I have been about writing on this blog.  I wonder if my new Facebook page will last as long as Kopi Leghorn?

Another Behmor Bites the Dust

If my blogging is a commentary on me, then either (a) I am an inconsistent loser who cannot finish what I start or (b) I am way too busy and need to cut a few things out.

Oh, I’ve been writing, but it has been a muddle of responses to the recently-released Evangelical Manifesto and to several books I have recently finished, including N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, Brian McLaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus, and a compilation of essays called Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting.  Not the sort of topics that lend themselves to Kopi Leghorn treatment.

Of necessity I have continued to find the time to roast coffee, but writing about coffee has obviously been a lower priority.  I still have a half-written Behmor review, and I have watched the first half of our current Netflix DVD Bucket List which mentions Kopi Luwak and therefore will likely be reviewed by Kopi Leghorn.

But I had to write this evening becuase my second Behmor 1600 died.  I was roasting an El Salvadoran coffee and less than one minute into the cooling cycle, everything stopped.  This is the replacement roaster I received in mid-March, and this is only the fortieth roast in this machine.  I am hoping that Behmor Customer Service will be as responsive as the last time.

I have killed many coffee roasters (i.e. popcorn poppers), but the Behmor is my first real roaster for real money.  It should last longer than three months.

The Right Way to Comment About Drip Coffee

[Thanks, Erndog, for the kick in the rear. I have been working on a Behmor review, but I'll first respond to your comment posted yesterday.]

Erndog linked to a video clip purporting to explain The Right Way to Make Drip Coffee. I don’t disagree with the disheveled fellow, and I am happy he was not commenting on The Right Way to Comb Your Hair and Get Dressed To Make a Video Commentary.

Do I even have to start with this? You can only get great drip coffee if you start with great coffee and great water, and coffee roasted more than a week ago is rarely great coffee.

It is also important to drip 200-plus degree water into the grounds. Mr. Untidy’s method is a little more primitive and time-consuming and cheaper than my Technivorm KBTS741 which drips the water at the proper temperature while I am in the shower or reading the paper.

But for those who insist on buying inexpensive already-roasted coffee and using the free Gevalia coffee maker, the two biggest steps you can take to improve your coffee is (1) grinding whole beans just before brewing and (2) dripping brewed coffee into a thermos rather than onto a burner. It isn’t obvious until you begin dripping coffee into a thermos, but the electric burner burns the coffee giving it that nasty church-basement-styrofoam-cup-percolated coffee taste. When visiting my in-laws, I jam a potholder under the glass carafe and make sure I get the coffee (and potholder) off the burner the moment the coffee stops dripping and before the potholder starts to smolder.

The one detail where I disagree with the tousled commentator is his choice of filter. I have participated in blind taste tests comparing the same coffee brewed through (1) a bleached paper filter, (2) an unbleached paper filter, (3) a wire filter from Walmart, and (4) a Swiss Gold filter. The difference was dramatic. You could taste the paper in both paper filters and something was missing in the cheap wire filter; but the Swiss Gold filtered coffee was wonderful.

This week I roasted and blended some Peruvian coffee from The Captain’s Coffee and some Sumatran coffee from Sweet Maria’s. Can I say this? It was the best drip coffee I have ever made. Ever.

And you should know that as I write this my hair is combed, my shirt is tucked in, and my tie is - well - almost pulled to my unbuttoned collar. Not bad for a Friday afternoon.