Here’s a quick review before I head out to another conference… it has been a work-filled summer, but after this week, I’ll be back to a more normal-ish posting schedule! Let’s take a look at Arbuckle’s Plainsman, a coffee that was first introduced in the 1920’s!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17.95/lb
Other reviews in this series: Ariosa
ARBUCKLE’S PLAINSMAN
Arbuckle’s Coffee is a historical American coffee brand that has been revived by a company based in Tucson, Arizona. John and Charles Arbuckle were Pittsburgh grocers who developed and patented a process of roasting coffee, then sealing it in a glaze of sugar and egg to seal in the flavor and, to some degree, freshness. This was around 1865 and for the first time, it made pre-roasted coffee readily and easily available. Prior to this, most coffee was sold green and roasted every day, which made coffee out on the frontier a pretty tough thing to come by. The Arbuckles hit it big with this process and their high-falootin’, new-fangled one pound packages they sold it in (instead of a giant bag of green coffee) and for the next couple decades, Arbuckle’s was the best-selling coffee brand in the United States. The company broke up around the 1930’s and was also associated with a spin-off called Yuban Coffee. Every bag of Arbuckle’s coffee also had coupons that could be redeemed for goods ranging from wedding rings to handkerchiefs, adding another layer of business and salesmanship to the Arbuckle’s repertoire.
A while ago I reviewed the revived Arbuckle’s Coffee Ariosa, the original coffee that made Arbuckle’s famous, and I enjoyed it for the dark roast I found it to be. This morning I’m checking out Plainsman, a coffee first introduced by Arbuckle’s in 1923. It’s billed as a lighter roast than Ariosa, and in that case, it is, but it’s still a fairly darkly roasted coffee, with the beans being covered in a light oil sheen, maybe just past second crack or right up close to it in any regard.
When I opened up my bag of Plainsman, I was really craving a traditional style espresso and that was how I started working with this coffee, enjoying it to the point that I never bothered to brew it any other way! LOL I went through the entire bag as espresso without a pause. As espresso, I would place this in the “traditional Italian”-ish category. I got plenty of roast notes from this darker-side-of-the-spectrum coffee, and it had those cocoa, chocolate and nutty notes that are to be expected from more traditional espresso styles. I found Plainsman to be very easy to grind in my Pharos 2.0 hand grinder (which can be darn near impossible to turn with light modern roasts) and super well-behaved, extracting nicely everywhere from a ristretto style 1:1 ratio espresso to a “normale” 1:2. As with a lot of ‘spros, I found the sweet spot to somewhere in the middle, so I was pulling 19g shots with a yield in the cup of 28-30g of espresso in around 25-28 seconds for my favorite cups. These had big body, lots of pretty crema, cocoa, chocolatey sweetness and a roasty, slightly bitter finish and aftertaste. It was like being in Rome again, only with better quality beans and extractions. I loved it, and Plainsman was exactly what I was looking for in a traditional-style espresso!
For you technique and equipment junkies, here’s my setup:
- Gaggia Classic tuned to 9 bars of pressure. I replaced the shower screen holder with a brass one and the shower screen itself is a precision screen from IMS.
- I use an aftermarket bottomless portafilter with a Decent Espresso 58.5mm (I think… I know it’s just slightly different from VST which I believe is 58.4mm) 20g precision basket and a matched tamper that is also calibrated to 25lbs of pressure.
- Water is Third Wave Water espresso blend using distilled water as the base.
- Grinder for this coffee is an Orphan Espresso Pharos that I converted to a 2.0 model.
As far as process, I grind, use a WDT stirrer to distribute in the basket and break up any clumps (which the Pharos really doesn’t make, it’s basically clump-free), then groom and level with a cheap OCD-style knockoff leveler. Then I tamp, lay an Aeropress filter across the top of the coffee bed and pull my shot. I have found the filter helps reduce channeling and seems to give a more consistent shot.