Amsterdam Coffee Festival, a few impressions

-
Today the 2016 edition of the Amsterdam Coffee Festival opened and a few friends and I went to see it. In two beautiful halls close to one another, many but not too many companies have presentations. A beehive of new and familiar faces, fames and small brands, classic machines, recent machines and some of the latest technology on display and word of the upcoming machinery from those who are developing it.

Wouter Strietman was there as well, but not manning his own booth this time. His ES3 and CT1 machines are well published and selling to such an international crowd that it makes less sense to present it locally.

We visited the BOCCA booth where Yakup Aydin was energetically hosting and introducing many folks to one another, handing out the most delicious samples of espresso, inviting visitors to compare the taste of washed and unwashed Ethiopian, organizing a brief demonstration by a colleague of him who made the most unbelievable latte art masterpieces. One was so incredible, no one dared pick it up and drink it.

At the COMPAK booth, we met Montse Ibern from the Spanish Head Quarters, who worked with Dutch retailer Sebastiaan van Pommeren to present a wide range of the newest COMPAK grinders. We were briefed about burr design, with examples of a burr that was cut in a way to deliver optimal taste at lowest noise levels with a relatively slow delivery, and same sized burrs with a more aggressive bite that also produce excellent grinds but at a much higher speed, also due to the special coating of the heavier steel.

We also noticed a new and beautiful "Single / Small Dosing" funnel for COMPAK grinders. Easy to take out with the sliding stopper near the bottom. Load a handful, a cup of beans or one single dose. We expect to be testing one soon.

There was lots more of course and others will post their impression as well in their own spaces.

Some pictures:

Yakup Aydin and colleagues
Mahlkönig EK43 with the new "Versalab" style dosing slider

COMPAK display illustrating burr cutting edge design variation

COMPAK display showing the Red Speed Lucidate coating

One HUGE flat burr by COMPAK

New upcoming "Single Dosing" funnel for the COMPAK

 easy to take out

showing the swivel-stopper

Montse Ibern (c) of COMPAK Spain 

Sebastiaan van Pommeren, Wouter Strietman, Tije de Jong, Jan van der Weel admiring a tiny Slayer

Jan van der Weel, Tije de Jong, Wouter Strietman taking off

Reacties

Een reactie posten

Populaire posts van deze blog

Finished Pavoni & Fuji PXG4 pid: Probe Inside the Ring

-
Afbeelding
Delicious cup: all the work was well invested! At the end of the previous blog about the pressostat and PID working together , I mentioned that I would like to clean up the xmas tree of wires and have as few cables and probes as possible to visually disturb the classic design of the La Pavoni. Getting rid of the probe that was fastened with copper tape to the top of the brew group was a priority. I wanted to hide a new probe in the cooling fin as close as possible to the brew group. This morning I asked Tije if he could do that. He would need to drill a straight hole of 3mm diameter in the 4mm inner ring of the cooling fin that sits as a tight clamp around the brew group. Always the optimist, Tije set to work: First, Tije made a piece of aluminum to fit the inside of the ring. Drilling a thin hole straight through the curved aluminum, if possible tangentially going through the inside of the ring to touch the brew head directly, you need the support of the temporary insid
Meer lezen

Tiny Cheap Fluid Bed Roaster by Tije and Jan

-
Afbeelding
(also see Daily Coffee News feature ) Tije designed and made the following structure for a tiny and cheap fluid bed roaster, to which Jan van der Weel added the Arduino parts, electronics and programming: Sketch by Tije de Jong Jan sourced a very cheap blower (€ 11) to start with, Tije developed and constructed the mechanics, Jan built together and programmed the TC4 / SSR electronics.  On his blog, Jan will specify exactly how the TC4 part is combined and programmed and I will copy these details into this blog entry, just as Jan will use this video in his blog. We did a few test roasts to make sure it works at all and it does. Towards the end, the first roast tended to get a flat BT line and airflow was slightly decreased. 200g seems max load of green beans. Second roast a little more power was given to the heater. Next we will try the Background Roast driven by the PID software of Artisan. A week later, with updated software that works better to change the fan
Meer lezen

KiwiSDR2 [radio]

-
Afbeelding
  Despite selling one and giving away two of the five monster vintage 'boat anchor' receivers that I had, I still enjoy listening to shartwave radio. The modern iCOM R8600 that I also have has a wider range plus some decoding options but it's not easy to figure out what encoding is used on which frequencies. The SDR-Control app from Marcus Roskosch at https://ham-radio-apps.com/ makes this much easier and also allows some remote control of the receiver so you can place it and an antenna at the top floor of your house while listening downstairs. I also got the SDRplay RSP1B box: This offers a great listening experience at a very low price compared to the iCOM hardware. I had one before and bought one again after a (somewhat limited) Mac version of the software became available. This device needs a computer to be connected to the receiver. For some time now a nifty little device has appeared which not only works standalone, it even allows you or anyone else to utilize the
Meer lezen