I want some coffee!

It's been about 8 months since the roaster mfr (Aillio) has updated the software they provide for managing the owners roaster. Lots of whining among users, but (as I understood it) the project was to be a major re-design. I'm committed to the development of the software and had volunteered to participate in testing. The wait is over and I got to fly RoasTime 3.0.56 briefly on Friday nite (no roaster connected) and again on Saturday morning to do some actual roasting. No one but me cares, but this is a good place to keep track of what's changing or what needs changing. Screen Preferences (especially selection of color choices) have changed but V2-similar flexibility will be provided later. The Roast History isn't getting properly updated yet (alpha limitation) Roast History is currently limited to 100 roasts while server changes are being done. My 2nd & 3rd roasts seem to have been deleted but I eventually was able to edit the 1st & last roast. We now get Notific...

Honeywell CS10XE swamp cooler I used the Honeywell swamp cooler for the first time a few days ago and have to say it worked really well. Aside from a whine about how the original buyer prep'ed and packed the unit for return to Amazon, the cooler worked flawlessly. In fact, I think if you were to stay in the blast of the cooler for long it would get very uncomfortable. On roasting day (23 Aug) the outside temps ranged from about 85°F to as high as 95°F. Inside the shop, though, the temp never got above 86°F. And that high was probably cockpit error as I'll explain below. Outside humidity was about 35% (higher than usual; we had just had a really good T-storm a couple days before) and the humidity in the shop ranged from a high of 50% to a bounce off 39% (see last paragraph). Humidity was probably near the top of the most effective range for a swamp cooler, but indeed it worked. I set it up as I had planned- door wide open, cooler blowing toward the rear. The air moveme...

Today it was Veracruz Finca la Laja (honey processed) from Mexico. I bought these beans from Coffee Bean Corral and I'm very pleased with what I tasted this morning. What caught my eye was- This honey processed coffee is a blend from two farms: Finca La Laja and Finca El Mirador. After depulping, the coffee was dried slowly on covered raised beds for 20 days. This coffee is supremely sweet with a mild orange citric acidity, chocolate and sugar cane flavor profile, and a big creamy body. It is very clean and consistent. By now it's no surprise that the words 'chocolate' and 'sugar cane' are what grabbed me. And that is also code for a roast that has to be fairly dark since that's what accentuates those flavors. So that was the roast plan: take the roast to above about 440°F which should yield a Full City roast. But I got surprised as the roast progressed. Normally I hit fist crack (1C) at around 395°F-400°F. But with these beans, a recent harvest lot, I was ...

I had a visitor before I finished the 5th and last roast. I had slammed down some breakfast and went back out to the shop. I heard a noise and for an instant thought I might have stumbled and bumped something. But it repeated and this time I was standing still. I finally looked up and saw a roadrunner trying desperately to look invisible. He failed miserably. A few really strange vocal noises (I've never heard a sound out of one before!) betrayed the anxiety. So I called in the fixer (that would be the Admiral- *my* Admiral) who is more to the Buddhist end of the spectrum- I'm more the hammer and machete type. She got a broom and gently coaxed it out the door. He took off like he'd just seen god and wanted out before there was a change in intent. One of those quirky things that happen in a very rural setting like we have here at the SKP Saguaro Co-op. Then it hit me. I roast a bunch of coffee and give it away so I can have the pleasure of pursuing my hobby of roasting coffe...

 I've been struggling with managing the slope of the Bean Temp curve (data from the thermocouple) after 1C. The slope of the line would just tank after 1C got going. Nothing I did seemed to adequately affect that plunge and that threatened to stall the roast. I had looked at a bunch of roast data (most of the 350 roasts I've done plus roasts from other people) and I saw varying degrees of the same problem (at least I see it as a problem). I had tried several things involving power changes and varying fan speed but they just didn't seem to have the controlled effect I was missing. Then I recalled that I had been working with slow drum speeds at the start of the roast, gradually increasing drum speed from D4 to D8 just before 1C. When I thought about what slow vs fast drum speed meant to the beans, I realized that at slower drum speed the beans are staying in contact with the drum for a longer period. Yes, they drop away sooner because of less centrifugal force but the total...

  Amazon delivered the mostly portable swamp cooler (after letting the order sit unfilled for 5 days; thanks a lot guys!). My favorite UPS driver, Frank, delivered it Friday night and it was my plan to fire it up today and see how well the plan worked. No joy. I think I mentioned that swamp coolers work well in a dry climate. 2 days ago we had a heavy monsoon T-storm with nearly an inch of rain (a lot for us). The rain stopped and the clouds disappeared. But in its wake is humidity over 60%. Trying to use a swamp cooler in climatic conditions like that would lead to death by drowning. So I spent Friday morning doing some maintenance on the roaster (while sweating profusely!). I have everything ready for whenever the humidity drops down to normal. To be continued. And btw, here's an Amazon whine (it's very seldom they cause me to whine about anything). Apparently the previous buyer - the one who returned the new-looking cooler - didn't bother to get all the water out of the ...

Well... yes, as a matter of fact I do. If you live in a hot dry climate, the old swamp-cooler did a pretty good job bringing a modicum of summertime thermal comfort to this nation until AC came along. We relied on one in Santa Fe (it wasn't very different than the one here) and were very content to fire it up when the need arose.  Nothing much has changed with these things since they came into use a century ago- - pour a little water over an open matrix - blow air over the matrix to evaporate the water - evaporating water cools the air moving thru the matrix They have to be used as an open system, i.e. you provide hot outside air to the cooler - thru an open window or just standing free like the photo - then blow the cooled air into the room. That cooled air then flows out another open window. If you try to operate it with no exhaust like you would an AC, the house turns into a swamp and there's no cooling... hence the name swamp-cooler. I can't install AC in the shop becau...

  The heat keeps hammering us which makes it hard to concentrate on anything that doesn't involve air conditioning. Roasting coffee or doing maintenance on the roaster both involve a tiny, super-heated shop of 50 sq ft with no ventilation. Yeah... ventilation. Ventilation probably wouldn't do much to temper the heat as the outside air continues to stay above 100°F, currently for the 12th or 13th straight day. Of course here in this land of insanity we call Arizona (you didn't think any of us that summer-over here are sane did you?!) we can always point at Phoenix and say 'they're crazier than we poor sods- they've had over 30 days straight of 110°F or higher so far this year!' And in case you haven't figured it out yet, all this is an excuse for not roasting coffee. And I need to roast so I can work out a solution for managing the heat at the end of the roast. I have an idea which involves lowering drum speed significantly as first crack gets going. At...

What's in the cup? This time it's Mexico Organic Chiapas that I bought from Coffee Bean Corral in Mississippi. All whines about roast management not withstanding, this turned out to be a pretty good cup of coffee. Unfortunately Coffee Bean Corral doesn't make any effort to publish cupping notes so I don't have the usual info-packed diagrams I get from Sweet Maria's. Wish I could pinch hit as a cupper but I just don't have the training. The roast went pretty well with a little less loss of heat as 1C got going (the chart/profile is below). I took the roast to FC (Full City) which is a medium-dark roast. The first time I brewed this just-roasted coffee for our morning cup was a little disappointing. In my limited vocabulary it was a little rough around the edges- maybe a combination of a little bitterness, some unwanted acidity, and it had no distinctive flavor.  I've learned to not give up on a just-roasted coffee since things change as the beans age/season/...

 ... was a foundation built on sand. I'm still struggling with a plan to manage heat at the end of the roast. What I thought I knew, now that I did a chart-by-chart review of over 300 roasts, turns out to be a bunch of roasts with poorly managed heat. I've had this issue from the beginning and apparently just excused the error with "I'll do better next time" with no real plan how. Back to the drawing board.

In the last post I was wool-gathering about heat management at the end of the roast. A little research has helped plug a few holes in my memory.  I reviewed some of the early roasts I did 17 to 20 months ago. I was certain I did things better 'in the good ol' days'. But the evidence was undeniable- I had convinced myself about the good ol' days, but they existed only in myth. As Merle Haggard reminded us, "things were exactly as I choose to recall". What I saw in the charts, however, was the same collapse in RoR starting at about 1C. Exactly what I'm whining about today it's just that I wasn't conscious of the issue. I also looked more closely at the greatest difference between a recently cleaned Drum Temp sensor (IR) and the Bean Temp probe (thermocouple). These days I see about 45F° max difference, but over a year ago that max difference was about 65F°. I had speculated that the difference (65F° vs. 45F°) had to do with using higher Preheat, but ...

Before Blogger shit-canned my work for the 3rd time, what I wanted to post about is my issue surrounding the runaway loss of heat at the end of the roast. I didn't have to deal with it when I started with the Bullet back in Jan 2019, but it's a familiar quirk these days. I whined to an internet acquaintance about it and Stuart's feedback was phrased in just the right way to make me see what I've changed that needs to be unchanged. He said: As you note, one of the perils of the Bullet with it lacking any significant thermal mass is once you drop off the cliff with thermal momentum, you’re kind of screwed. I had whined that I was already at P9 (the highest power setting on the Bullet) and 'there's nothing left in the tank to get heat into the drum'. This has been happening at the end of the roast as 1C starts. Rate of Rise (RoR; the 1st derivative of Bean Temp) measures how fast temperature in rising in Fahrenheit degrees per minute (F°/min). As long as the ...

... but you can be happy if you've a mind to. Words of wisdom from Roger Miller. I can't say this post makes me happy, but I do feel a little better not demanding to roller skate in the buffalo herd of Blogger Editor. This is the 4th time I've written this post about running out of heat at the end of a roast. Sadly the Blogger staff decided auto-save is no longer necessary. Simultaneously they removed the Save button from the Blogger Editor post editor page and buried it under the Preview icon. Come on guys... you're not supposed to act like amateurs! So I guess I'll just pub this bitch-post and try again using a new post.