Roaster: Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters, Denver CO
Coffee: Kayu 
Country: Kenya
Origin: Murang'a
Process: Washed
Elevation: 1650 MSAL
Varietal: Ruiri
Producer: Various small plot growers
Flavor profile: Blood orange, assam, butterscotch

Brew 2: The Virtuous Pour

- Method: pour over
- Beans: 29g
- Water: 500mL
- Grind: Medium-fine

Black

• clean
• subtle, but full flavors
• assam comes through

Cream

• rich toffee/butterscotch flavor goes well with the cream
• very smooth

Brew 3: A Fair Cap

- Method: cappuccino
- Beans: 18g
- Milk: 134g

• delicious toffee flavor
• smooth & creamy
• delightful
• very subtle tartness

Brew 4

- Method: pour over
- Beans: 29g
- Water: 506mL
- Grind: Medium-fine
- Brew length: 3m 39s

Black

• nice flavor & full mouth-feel
• assam flavor comes through

Cream

• goes wonderfully with assam flavor

Roaster: Huckleberry Roasters, Denver CO
Coffee: Buenos Aires
Country: Colombia
Origin: Tolima
Process: Washed
Elevation: 1830 MASL
Varietal: Caturra
Producer: Israel Hernandez, Finca Buenos Aires
Flavor profile: Caramel, red apple, almond pastry, orange

Note: I found the elevation listed for the producer’s Gesha varietal here.

Beans

• On the smaller side of medium
• Rustic

Brew 1

- Method: pour over
- Beans: 29g
- Water: 500mL
- Grind: Medium-fine

Forgot to taste the coffee black. Adding it a bit of cream, I wasn’t super impressed:

• smooth
• bit of bitterness
• low acidity
• earthy
• weak flavor profile
• reminds me of a diner coffee, but better

Brew 2

- Method: pour over
- Beans: 29g
- Water: 505mL
- Grind: Medium-fine
- Time: 2m 55s

This time, I drank it black first and preferred it that way. The flavor came through more and there was some complexity to it.

Black

• smooth mouth feel
• complex flavor notes; I can maybe see the flavors on the bag

With Cream

• adds some richness
• cuts the strong flavors

Brew 3

- Method: cappuccino
- Beans: 18g
- Milk: 128g

• I enjoyed this one as a cappuccino
• Flavor came through nicely
• Still a bit of an earthy taste that I’m not sure I’m the biggest fan of

Final thoughts

Overall, a solid bean, but not my favorite. In looking online to find out the elevation and varietal, I saw the same producer makes a Gesha that Huckleberry does an annual special release for. I would like to try that one.

6.0/10 beans

Roaster: Middle State Coffee, Denver CO
Coffee: Libardo Pepicano
Country: Colombia
Origin: Huila
Process: Washed
Elevation: 1700-1900 MASL
Varietal: Tabi
Flavor profile: Blood orange, red plum, candied mango, complex

Beans

• On the smaller side of medium
• Fragrant
• Rustic
• Beautiful caramel brown

First day drinking

Drinking as a cappuccino, I don’t taste the complex fruity notes listed on the bag. It’s a delicious, balanced cup–very smooth. But the flavor notes are quite subtle and if anything I would describe them as being nutty or chocolatey.

Second day drinking

Drinking as a cappuccino again. I tasted slightly fruity notes this time, but overall it was mostly smooth and chocolatey.

Third day drinking - Virtuous Brew

I brewed using the virtuous method today–pour over. First, I tried it black:

• Stronger fruit notes
  • I could definitely taste the blood orange
• The ‘complexity’ came through stronger
• Crisp and tart

Next, added a little cream:

• Still taste fruity notes, though they are bit muted
• Cuts the tartness/crispness and adds a bit of smoothness

Final thoughts

Overall, a solid bean. I recently have been more into strong, complex fruit flavors that punch through the richness of a cappuccino (usually, I like a smooth, rich breakfast style). I felt this one felt a bit short in that regard. The pour over was solid, but again, nothing special.

6.5/10 beans

So far, the course has used the Lua language with the LÖVE framework. My understanding is that it’s pretty barebones, which makes it a good tool for teaching. However, Love2 is more than just a teaching tool–it’s commonly used for prototyping games and has also been used to build some published titles. The lecture on Angry Birds was the first one to introduce a major library in Box2d, a popular 2D physics framework. Some simple ones were introduced earlier:

• push
• hump (really just class.lua)
• knife

It feels exciting moving from doing everything manually to something that easily provides very interesting mechanics. Colton (the instructor) says as much in the lecture; I couldn’t help but laugh at this quote 😂:

It’s a good like sort of segway from the…sort of abstract, for lack of a better word example that we used earlier, and sort of merges it into the realm of, ‘how can we make something fun with this?’

The game, lecture, and assignment all seem to be pretty simple/short in this one, because Box2d is introduced as something big and new–but the usage is really simple. I’ve watched the lecture and am going to begin the assignment. Here are some notes I took:

Box2d

A C++ library that is used all over (Unity uses it). Lua provides a wrapper for it. https://www.iforce2d.net/b2dtut/introduction

• Main concept is the “World”, which is the container for simulation
• The world keeps track of “Bodies” and applies all the physics to them (gravity, collisions, etc.)
  • Has position, velocity
• Fixtures allow you attach a shape to a body, allowing interaction with other bodies
  • influences collisions
  • have densities, friction, restitution (bounciness)

World

• Top-level container Box2d exposes to be populated with bodies/fixtures, and then run the simulation

Bodies

Types

• Static: cannot be moved, but can influence other dynamic bodies
• Dynamic: influenced by other bodies
• Kinematic: can move and influence other bodies, but is not influenced itself

Fixtures

• Several shapes a provided

Collision Callbacks

• You pass your functions for the different callbacks to the world
• The collisions happen between the fixtures; not the bodies
• That means there is a single entry point; you have to check which fixtures collided to get different behavior
• The way we can distinguish between fixtures is with UserData, which we set on the fixtures and then can get in the callback
• Don’t delete or destroy anything in your collision callbacks; mark it as destroyed and wait until the callback completes

4 types

• beginContact
• endContact
• preSolve
• postSolve

You register them like this:

self.world:setCallbacks(beginContact, endContact, preSolve, postSolve