Tom's Coffee Adventures - His French Press & Roasting Of Coffee Beans
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French Press - This is my disassembled 6 cup Bodum Chambord
French Press. You can clearly see the components: Metal frame, glass pot, metal
mesh filter, nylon filter, metal cross piece, metal spring disk and the plunger/lid.
The nylon filter is something I bought separately. It helps keep more grounds out of the cup.
It was white, the coffee oils have stained it. |
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To assemble a french press, the metal cross piece
starts on the bottom. Next, the metal mesh filter and the nylon filter on top of that. The spring
disk is the last part of this "sandwich". The plunger then screws into the metal c
ross piece and holds everything together. Here is a shot of the assembly looking from the bottom. |
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Roasting Coffee Beans - The following is a pictorial from a recent roasting session I did. The far left picture shows my roasting setup: timer, mason jar, green bean scoop, green beans, roaster, french press, scoop for ground beans, collander for cooling
The center picture shows a scoop of green beans and the empty roasting chamber. I use two rounded scoops for each roast.
The last picture shows the roaster assembled and the timer set for six minutes. |
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Hot air is blown from the bottom of the unit through the roasting chamber and chaff collector. The chaff collector sits on top of the chamber and collects the this silky covering of the beans as they heat up and expand.
These three pictures show a color change as the time passes. As the beans start to roast, you can smell a "bready" odor. Also, as the beans loose moisture, they become lighter and start to float on the column of hot air. |
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Once the two minute cooling cycle is over, I dump the beans into a collander to finish cooling. Don't they look great !!
The center photo shows all the chaff that comes off as the beans expand.
Once the beans are cool, I place them in a mason jar for storage. I don't screw down the lid for the first couple of hours because the beans are emitting gasses. After about 24 hours "rest" the beans are ready for brewing. |
These photos and captions was submitted by Tom in Florida. His web site is
www.CigarSmokingMan.com.
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