The new crop of Ocumare (a delicate Criollo from Venezuela) is in and available. If a few of you want to jump on it, there is a small window of opportunity to taste and compare both crops. There are a few pounds of the Ocumare 2006 left. I have set the limit to 1 pound so a number of people have the chance to compare them. I would expect the supply to be out in a day or so. On the other hand, I do still have some of the 2006 available as Roasted if you want to go that route. In general, the 2007 crop is a little fuller in flavor and in particular has a bit more of a chocolate profile than last years crop but not quite as bright.While I am listing some different beans don't forget about the Ecuador "Nacional". I just roasted some up this weekend and it has maintained a very nice balance of flavors. If anything it may well have improved.
And one other bean that seems to get ignored in light of some of the other really excellent beans is the Papua New Guinea. I know the review reads a little odd, and I really don't mean to drive people away from it. I just don't want people to be surprise by it. But hands down, every response I have received back from it have been positive if not glowing. Please give it a try before it runs out.
And I know there are a lot of people out there eating raw cocoa beans for their health effects. I don't and won't claim particular health effect one way or the other (I really prefer the taste of roasted beans) but I did want to pass on this bit of information that I received about the organic Madagascar we have. It was lightly fermented about 5 days at temperatures not exceeding 120 F. I have found this has been found to be quite acceptable to many people who follow a raw food diet/way of eating. Finally, I have what I consider some exciting news. There is soon to be (August?) a new drum coffee roaster on the market. How in the world does that affect us roasting cocoa? Well, I have been testing it (the Behmor 1600) for the last couple of weeks and it is doing a GREAT turnkey job roasting 2.5 lbs of cocoa in about 15-20 minutes. It has 5 different temperature profiles and just happens to work great on cocoa. I will be talking a lot more about this, but wanted to give everyone a first glimpse.
And of course, if you want to get into homemade chocolate and roasting your own coffee, it will be a perfect machine for that.