Sweet, Sweet Maria's

I'm ashamed of how long it's been since I've visited Sweet Maria's to buy my green beans for roasting. I've gotten lazy and have been buying my green coffee (of relatively unknown origin) from The Roasting Plant around the corner from my apartment for months.

Given all my talk about origin on this blog lately, I figured it was a bit hypocritical of me to keep buying and roasting "Ethiopian Yirgacheffe" that I knew nothing about -- despite repeated requests for additional information on origin.

So I visited the standard source for any serious home coffee roaster, Sweet Maria's. Not only is their selection amazing, but their site is packed full of information (although even they admit it's a little hard to navigate).

Here are the three coffees I purchased. The link for each brings you to a page with everything you would ever want to know about the coffee including the farm, processing method and cupping score.

El Salvador Pulp Natural Finca Mauritania

Brazil Moreninha Formosa Raisin Coffee MicroLot

Ethiopia Organic Dry-Process Birbissa

While I'm eager to try all of these, I'm particularly interested in the Brazil since it is tree dried, a process which is new to me.

I'll post more on each once I've roasted and tasted them.

Chicory: Still Just a Coffee Substitute?

Last night the subject of chicory and coffee came up while I was out enjoying drinks with some friends. A New Orleans native brought up Cafe Du Monde, which of course led to the chicory conversation.

I had to admit I knew absolutely nothing about chicory other than Cafe Du Monde's famous coffee blend and chicory's historical use as a coffee substitute -- especially when real coffee was scarce (such as during the Civil War).

So of course, I had to look up chicory today, starting with good ol' Wikipedia. And here, for your reading pleasure are some of the facts that I uncovered:

• Chicory is the root of the endive plant.
• The use of chicory in coffee is said to have begun in France where it was first introduced by Napoleon's army.
• At one time, people believed that the consumption of too much chicory damaged retinal tissue, leading to blurred vision.
• Chicory is "well known for its toxicity to internal parasites."
• Sweet Maria's warns that stale roasted chicory is just as bad as stale roasted coffee. If you're going to use it, get the good stuff. And they even offer it on their site.

Outside of Cafe Du Monde, I don't believe I've ever had coffee and chicory. I've certainly never tried blending it with my roasts. Being the purist that I tend to be with my coffee, I've always relegated it to the same category as French Vanilla, Hazelnutt and Snickerdoodle coffee. I'm curious to see if others agree.

If you have any thoughts, insight or opinions on chicory and coffee, please post a comment.