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I Get a Journal? Good for Me! (Random Comments Welcome)

H

Hell_Bent

Need coffee much, that's me right now
Joined
Feb 4, 2010
All comments welcome.

Anyway, my apologies if I'm a little slow writing replies right now, my head hurts and I'm all tired and caffeine-deprived. I need to fix the caffeine deprivation by roasting coffee tonight so I can have coffee tomorrow. Should I roast it so it spends longer in the development phase, for a short, pressurized extraction? (Think Aeropress or espresso.) Or should I go for shorter development for gentler, somewhat slower extraction? (Think pourover, French press or Turkish.) Should it be an African coffee? Central American? Perhaps I still have some Indonesian that need to be roasted and enjoyed? There's something magical about a hot cup of Ethiopian coffee and uniquely refreshing about Ethiopian iced coffee, yet the chocolaty bittersweetness of a Guatemalan can be so comforting and familiar. Maybe I should experiment with a blend, but do I dare?
 
It's decided. A good South/Central American blend, roasted to medium or the darker side thereof with a more rapid development phase for slow, gentle brewing. Sometimes the intensity of pressurized concentrates is fun, but it can't always compare to the subtle intricacy of pourover nor the weight and satisfying finish of a French press. That's a funny misnomer, "French" press. Why not a Swiss-Italian press? I suppose it's the same reason why Dutch-Belgian fried ptoatoes end up being called French fries. It's from a European country where a nontrivial segment of the population speaks French, so therefore it must be French. To be fair, the French press certainly caught on in France much faster and more fully than most other things that have come to bear their name.
 
I'm trying to get some writing in today. If I haven't replied to you in a few days, then tonight is likely the night I will. I'm sorry. Life gets in the way sometimes.

If you're curious, that coffee I roasted turned out to be just the thing. There was a considerable body and somewhat oily mouthfeel to it despite having been made in a V60. It was the sort of texture I'd expect from metal filtration, but without the silt. I can attribute some of it to the thin white paper, but a lot of it was origin quality and even roast quality -- I was wise to roast it on the darker end, I think. Sadly I don't think that, despite the mild yet present acidity, it would make for a good iced coffee. Shame, because it definitely feels like August now. Maybe some Ethiopian coffee would do the trick, and I think I still have some Rwandan left to roast in case I don't. I have so much Yemeni coffee too, yet I still feel tempted to restock just because I happen to see some on Sweet Maria's website.

Besides that, not much to report. I will keep you updated as that changes.
 
It was 92F today. 33C if you don't happen to be from the United States, Liberia or Myanmar/Burma. Sorry I haven't replied to anything, I was overheated. And there are some messages I haven't replied to in days -- again, my apologies.

That said, I'm still on the mend, feeling slightly better than I have been for the past few days. I can listen to music without it immediately hurting my head! If it's gentle enough music. Recently I discovered a singer I'm quite fond of named Neta Elkayam. Most of her songs are in Moroccan Arabic, if not all of her songs. That said, you don't need to understand the words in order to enjoy her beautiful voice. This song makes me wish I could play the melodica again -- maybe someday, medical advancements permitting.



In other news, I roasted some Ethiopian coffee, so I can make iced coffee if it gets too hot tomorrow. However, the discharge weight measured in at 88 grams and I would have expected it to weigh slightly less -- I fear I may have underdeveloped it. I will keep you updated if you're interested.
 
So, remember that 100 gram charge of green Ethiopian coffee that discharged to 88 grams, when I'd expect it to be two grams lighter? Thank heavens, it came out reasonably well developed. I did break one open to make sure it was roasted through completely, I'm not stupid. It was, but I still had my doubts. Tasting it put said doubts to rest, I'm happy to report.

So, the heatwave his breaking up. It's still kinda brutal. Pain has started again so no music to share right now. I'll have a real treat ready for you when that eases up on me too.
 
Hello again, dear Journal, I just made liver and onions tonight. I really want to make adobo with chicken liver. A Filipina lady gave me her family recipe a long time ago and it involved chicken liver, rice AND potatoes. Dunno about you, but I love having both rice and potatoes in the same meal. It's possible to have a healthy weight and body fat percentage while eating rice and potatoes, I don't believe people need to give themselves ketoacidosis or put themselves at risk for it.

Nothing to report on the coffee front other than my plan to roast some Yemeni coffee before the night is over. Bani Mattar, Yemen, has coffee shrubs that grow to resemble old growth trees. Yemen may well be the first place to have roasted and ground coffee seeds, rather than dried or fermented coffee fruit beverages. A man from Yemen once complained to me bitterly that his country lost its best singers when "those motherfuckers," in his words, drove away all the Jews. I've never seen a Muslim man speak so passionately about his love of Jewish culture before. I've strayed far from that faith, or any other faith for that matter, but it makes me smile thinking about that. But do you think Yemen lost its best singers when they drove away their Jews? These gentlemen descendants of Yemenite exilees make me think he had a point. And make me almost wish I were keeping Shabbat rather than writing here.
 
Post script: I have no goddamn idea how I want to profile my Mattari coffee. Why do I have to get into profiling and not just turning the damn seeds brown?! I guess we all need a hobby.

Also, this song is more personally meaningful to me than the one above. Specifically, the last bit in the medley has a personal meaning to me -- a survivor of the Farhud taught it to me and it was the first song I could sing in Hebrew.

 
So a migraine prevented me from roasting that Yemeni coffee until just now. The hardest part of roasting Yemeni coffee is waiting 48 hours to actually drink it. I'll have to roast something that needs less rest later after my roaster cools down sufficiently.

Besides that, I'm feeling quite morose. I believe it was back in May or more likely June -- couldn't have been later than July, a friend said something that stuck with me even if the date didn't. "Wow, everything you love just ends up hurting you, doesn't it?" The truth in that made me question who I am, what I value, everything. I'm a little old to still be finding myself. I'm also a little too young to become embittered with the world and hate everything. It's true that everything that gave my life a sense of meaning has been lost to me for years, but hey, if only just for now, at least I still have coffee. And I can keep trying to get back into the flow of writing here until it comes time for my next nine year hiatus.

Have you ever noticed that roleplay partners are a little bit like coffee? One cup of mediocre coffee doesn't really differentiate itself much from the other. One mediocre RP partner doesn't either. A mediocre cup of coffee just tastes like whatever sweeteners and dairy or dairy substitute you put in it to make it tolerable. Two mediocre RP partners will always write the the same "See Spot run" pacing, generic overused adjectives and other awkwardly indistinct literary crutches. Being too terse never seems to be a problem I run into. One liners, yes, but that's not being terse; it's being uninteresting and uninterested.

Actually, a lot of things are like that. They become less distinguishable the closer you get to the bottom, but differentiate themselves more on top. Some things aren't like that, especially in the world of men's fashion and grooming. A budget sport coat off Amazon will look very different from one from Target (with Target being the better deal) but two suits that are each over a thousand dollars won't necessarily look that different from each other. Barbasol shaving cream and Van Der Hagen shaving soap also perform quite differently, with Barbasol providing a gentleman's skin with a cushioning effect from the blade, but insufficient lubrication to glide across the skin, while VDH offers the opposite. Towards the top, the only difference Cella and Stirling Soap Company's shaving soap seem to have is that Stirling provides unscented options, but the protective qualities are all there.

Is this the difference between art and craft? That the best works of art have the most differences from and fewest similarities to each other? While the best craft pieces meet an ideal that gives them the fewest differences and most similarities? If that's the case, and if we are all creations of a single God, then is He an artist or a craftsman? To the point, should we even try to be distinct from each other like unique works of art, or in doing so, do we stray further from our utility to Him? Is there even a God? Did God just fuck up when He made some of us, or is He not even there to blame? As I said, morose mood.

Did I bring you down too? I'm sorry, lemme cheer you up with a song. I used to hear songs like this every Sunday living next to a Tongan church. Men wearing white shirts, suit jackets, neckties and grass skirts would flood the street, fill up the church and then you'd hear this kind of music in this language.

 
Have you ever been so tired you just can't do anything you don't absolutely have to do? So tired you could just cry if you don't get some sleep soon, but then when you finally do, your dreams make you wake up in tears and still tired anyway? Then the process repeats until your body just gives out, and you collapse, then you wake up like usual in tears, but you're just too exhausted to get out of bed, and you lose a few days from just being sick from exhaustion, only for the same thing to play out again and again? Yeah, that's my life now. Three years like this already.

You'd think all this coffee would help. I recently got two pounds of unroasted Yemeni coffee from Bani Matar and another two pounds of giling basah from Sumatra, Indonesia. They're each good on their own. Yemeni coffee is complex and often quite fruity, potentially with some leathery notes and often some fermented tastes. Beautifully imperfect coffee if you ask me. Giling basah is a process of swiftly drying coffee seeds in the humid Indonesian elements so they can be promptly sold for export. The resulting taste is unusual, and if it came from anywhere else, unacceptable. But at its best, it's subtly sweet and intensely flavorful, with a full body bordering on oily and a finish that lasts days and makes you want more. Now what happens when you mix a Yemeni coffee with a giling basah? Why, you get the famed Mocha-Java blend. Mocha refers to Yemen, but it could be from Ethiopia, the motherland of coffee. Java is likewise a specific Indonesian region, but Sumatra, Flores, Sulawesi or any other Indo could be your "Java" component.

So, in the spirit of Indonesian coffee, here's an old Indonesian song called Cai Kopi. I believe this is in Sundanese but I'm no expert in Indonesian languages, I just know the singer herself is Sundanese.

 
The only time I ever feel momentarily like I'm worth anything is when I've just drank my coffee. That process from roasting it, waiting for it to rest, grinding it in a hand mill and brewing it culminates in those few short moments I get to drink it and enjoy it. I do feel glad when I make coffee for others -- from the roast to the brew -- but when they say nice things about it I usually fear that they're trying to spare my feelings. When I drink it myself, I get to see how it stacks up with Peet's, with Philz, with that place downtown that does their own roasting (yet tastes like hot lemon juice.) I get to see how my cheap equipment and autodidacticism stack up to the pros and their expensive equipment. The only exception? When I roasted coffee and brewed it for a friend who is not a coffee person. He doesn't know that the taste of coffee is supposed to change as the cup cools, but observed that much in what I made for him and then proceeded to chide himself for sounding like one of those wine snobs. That was a couple months ago but when I'm really sad it gives me something nice to think about.
 
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