Kostverlorenvaart

In 2014, all our bags of roasted beans will have their unique roast profile printed on the label of the bag. Frequently, customers asked more information about a specific roast they liked but it wasn't always easy for us to remember or to reproduce a favorite, even if we knew the duration of the roast and the peak temperature at the end of the roast. Now, thanks to the Artisan software developed and maintained by Marko Luther and his team and also thanks to some tips from him, we managed to get the "fingerprint" of each batch of beans and print it on the label. So next time you like a specific roast, show us the bag (or simply mail us a snapshot of it) and we will know what to do. And if you think it tastes different, you can compare the profiles and find out what you like best. For starters we did this for a batch of Ethiopia Gayo Amaro beans, creating a fairly dark and even roast after first carefully sifting through the green beans and throwing out the od...

Visiting Marko and his family, I brought along my HG One grinder so we could taste some of the coffee beans he has roasted just a few days ago and some that I had brought along. His roaster is a beauty. Built in 1938, it's one of 9 machines of this type that have survived the ages. 1938 Probat, respectfully upgraded to have the probes and electronic controls of today We first tasted a very lightly roasted bean, I believe it was from Costa Rica. The bean was still very hard to the bite (I eat a bean or two to get a first impression) so I was curious. Marko carefully weighed off the beans and made a filter coffee for us that was so light it soared in the mouth between tea and coffee with a hint of sweet cannabis. Very nice, how such a light roast had no acidity to speak of, just an alluring brightness. Next we tried some of my beans on his monumentally beautiful Faema President lever espresso machine. It took a few shots to get the HG One grinder tuned up for the right dose bu...

Frequently one hears objections to traveling. "I'd rather just stay home because the coffee in Bonn seems to be awful." But it's so easy, just with a few basic things you bring along in the trunk of your car, to make you feel at home, on xmas eve, in Bonn! La Pavoni, HG One, espresso utensils, also some Costa Rica beans roasted by Londinium Espresso Front center, the crystal clear acrylic and super-magnetic portafilter holder and (to the right of it) filterbasket holder, hand crafted by Stephen Sweeney in Seattle, a perfect fit version for the La Pavoni gear to magnetically swoop and snap into position exactly under the center of the HG One burrs. Home is where the gear is   Espresso! Room 32, Hotel Abasto, Maisach

Bij het posten van een pakketje naar m'n dochter in Sydney kreeg ik een "Track and Trace" nummer mee. Na een paar dagen zag ik dat "bezorging niet is gelukt, adres was incompleet." Vanzelfsprekend had ik foto's van alle verzendpapieren zodat ik kon zien dat het adres wel klopte. Gisteren belde een postmedewerker op. Heel attent. We namen de adressen samen nog een keer door. Daarnet een mailtje: "Op 19-12-2013 heeft u van Minke van PostNL een reactie gekregen op uw onvrede of klacht . Uw contact had betrekking op de volgende zending met barcode [xxx]. PostNL verneemt graag wat u vindt van de reactie op uw klacht. Uw terugkoppeling wordt gebruikt om verbeteringen aan te brengen in de manier waarop PostNL met klachten omgaat. PostNL vraagt u vriendelijk om uw terugkoppeling door de beantwoording van een paar vragen." Nu had ik helemaal geen klacht, slechts een haperend pakketje, maar toch aardig van ze. De vriendelijke mensen van het vroegere...

The third batch out of Merijn's "Addis" beans tasted fair, although it was a little too lightly roasted. The grinder turned very heavy, the smell of the grinds was delicious and the coffee very nice albeit a little too acidy. I used 180g out of the last green in the bag to roast a little longer and to see how 180g go in the Roastilino. Sometime soon I will be test roasting two 180g bags with the guys from the Trakteren cafe so I needed to see how the roaster handles this. With just two different bags of beans one has just that one shot at it. First I removed the stones and other oddities from the beans. Below, pictures of the debris, the roast profile logged by Artisan, and the result: Debris and odd beans Roast profile Result

Merijn, a coffee connection on a coffee forum, sent me a bag of green beans he received straight from a friend in Addis Abbeba, Ethiopia. He has little information about these beans. I roasted 3 batches and am sending him two of these. Green beans Some remains of the berries in the mix Roasting Result and graph of batch 2 Batch 3

Earlier I wrote a blog entry about repairing Soda Siphons using some parts of the basic repair set for my LONDINIUM espresso machine. There remained a few soda siphons that I was unable to fix and when I visited Peter of www.kafko.nl I took these with me for him to have a look at them. A few were easily fixed with rubber seals Peter had in his collection, but one was more difficult. To get to the tiny piston with the old used-up seals, the handle / trigger needed to come off and the little screw had no intention of letting go after being stuck in the head of the siphon for maybe fifty years. The picture story (which ends with the soda siphon in full glory) starts when Peter uses a drill to make a hole through the screw, about as wide as the screw itself: Drilling out the stubborn screw Getting a grip on the siphon head to create a new thread Creating the new thread Taking out the old worn rubber seal off the piston top New seal on the top, created new se...

Peter van der Weerd fom KAFKO gave my Rocket Giotto a cleanup and upgrade. It was a great chance to see the intricacies of the E61 brew group inside out and to see some of the details and little tricks one should remember when doing it oneself. Peter encourages people learning about these basic service procedures and when he sends out a set of all necessary parts, he includes a diagram and some instructions. Plus his phone number, because he is available for advice in case someone is surrounded by parts and doesn't know what to do next... What we (well actually he) did: E61 Cleanup, changing seals, removing scale Vibration pump replacement (newer one less noisy), new metal connection Anti-vac upgrade, startup release of water/steam out the front panel now Boiler insulation removed (better looking, better cup heating) Below, lots of pictures telling the story and some brief comments. There's other web pages with extensive info on the E61, like this excellent page (th...