So do you ever make your Caffenol with regular coffee brew rather than instant? Robusta beans seem like something you can get much easier in bean or ground form without ending up with a blend. Not sure it matters, but you never know.
i haven't made caffenol with instant coffee in more than 10 years, i bought about 90# of coffee a bunch of years ago, and roast the beans myself in my driveway on a hot plate in a wok. i let them outgas, then i grid them, i brew them in a percolater and make the caffenol by eye. i don't measure with a scale, LOL i have more important things worry about. i'll let the kings of caffenol worry about that sort of stuff. if you've looked at the caffneol cookbook, i was one of the authors, and for between 10-15 years most every black and white image i have made has been made with that developer. you've probably read what i wrote there already. sorry for repeating myself
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regarding the burnt rubber commentary, not really sure what to say.
there is a lot of snobbism & hype about coffee. a lot of people who claim these things for whatever reasons say not so nice things about robusta coffee--->>
whatever . some coffee shops cater to
sophisticated clients and want to sell
more expensive "exclusive coffees" are like the places you have linked to, they want to sell arabica coffee ...
their arabica coffee . they don't say anything about beans-blends exclusively used in espresso machines having robusta beans in there, which i think is kind of funny. caffeine content is regulated by how much a coffee is roasted. if you have robusta beans and you cinnamon roast'em it will have huge caffeine and taste different than a dark / full city ( oils come out the 2nd time ) roast or an "espresso"/italian or french roast. cinnamon roasted arabica beans same thing. websites like to leave out important details to make suggestions and steer their clients to expensive arabica coffees...
i've had expensive arabica coffee, plenty of it, and hate to say it, but some tasted like crap ( i'm not talking Luwak or Black Ivory Coffee
). i had some the other day even that was supposedly
soooo good! all of it from this exclusive boutique farm .. it was sour and gross, i've had the shop's espresso shots as well as drip coffee another
exclusive shop across the street is even worse, tasted like paint thinner smells. Both situations could have been because they don't bother to clean their espresso and drip machines every night who knows, or maybe new employees and they have no idea how much coffee to make their drip or how to not over/under extract their espresso, all i know was it is money wasted and gross coffee. i even had
exquisite arabica beans sent to me by a friend in south america (he's no slouch!) and told me it was the best coffee he had ever had, well, i'll just say sure wasn't the best coffee i have ever had ... .. maybe it was the whole experience of being where he was, having it every day the ways the locals have it, and
the experience was delicious.
i could easily write on my café's website that arabica coffee from mexico, south america, africa and indonesia i had tasted terrible, was a bit more varnish than body, then talk about ficticious amounts of caffeine, maybe on a couple of coffee forums and populate the rest of the site with troll/bot user names and glad-hand+hype to steer interest coffee i sell. specifically sumatra, where delightful robusta beans are grown. they are processed with a huller and fermented ( wet method ) ... roasted to perfection with exquisitly light with earthy, floral and nutty notes and develops a hell of a roll of film.
YMMV