Thirty-three bags of coffee arrived yesterday. Much of this is coffee that we have a little past crop or another current crop lot to use first, but two coffees did require immediate attention: Mexican and decaf Mexican, both Fair Trade Certified.
Yes, that's right. We now have a decaf Fair Trade coffee. Chances are good that we'll transition most of our decaffeinated flavored coffees to this. Just look for the sticker to see when this happens.
I roasted 15 samples of Mexican and 13 samples of decaf Mexican for the cupping. In both cases, this represented a range from a roast that could be fairly classified as either a city or full city roast through either a darker than normal Vienna roast or a lighter than normal French roast (I consider a Vienna roast to be lighter than a French roast). In both cases, most of the samples were at least acceptable and I suspect with a little work, good results could be had at just about any degree of roast. For this reason, the regular would be an excellent choice for someone just starting to experiment with home roasting. Decafs can be a little tricky for someone not accustomed to working with them. (I say this even though the first batch I roasted on commercial equipment was decaf. That batch was quite a bit better than the hotel room coffee, but this is mainly due to starting with a better quality green bean and having good instruction.)
From these 28 samples, I selected a medium roast profile for Mexican, a dark roast profile for Vienna Roast, and a medium roast profile for decaf Mexican. The regular and decaf Mexicans are very similar, though the decaf is a little lighter. Mexican and Vienna Roast taste very similar to the coffees by the same names from the previous lot, with the Mexican having a little more body and a nicer aroma and the Vienna Roast being just a little bit lighter.