Kostverlorenvaart

Watching the beautiful "Film About Coffee"  https://vimeo.com/ondemand/afilmaboutcoffee/92370761 Screen snapshot Response of a coffee farmer tasting espresso for the first time in his life Stunning landscapes and wonderful people on the coffee farms working so hard to produce brilliant coffee beans. Almost shocking contrast between the farmers who talk sparingly and truthfully and footage of barista championships where participants talk like robotic actors, a lot of self inflicted stress covered up by endlessly rehearsed plastic-text. Some notes after watching: 1) Beautifully filmed and produced 2) In part a commercial for a few hip coffee firms 3) Very very impressive to see how much work the farmers do for very little money 4) Teaches the public nothing about what roasting is exactly, apart from the standard romantic clips of tumbling beans, same about grinding and extraction, so people are impressed but do not learn much. As such not inspiring the ...

(This is the final part of a short series of blogs. See also Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 ) Today I took the new DC power supply to Tije's workshop, where he connected the power cable to the old FIAT 132 windshield wiper motor. Here's a picture of a Fiat 132 : We decided to keep the old wires in place and in sight, saving the vintage quality and looks even though just two wires are used: that black connects to the mass and the red connected to the power end of the motor. The other wires were for different speeds and for ensuring that the windshield wipers would stop in the 'neutral' position (lying down). First we used two multimeters to monitor the Voltage and current during workshop test runs of the motorized grinder. Before doing this, we checked how the internal fuse of the DC power supply handles the considerable  startup load of the heavy transformer. The fuse does not exactly blow now but it does light up for a flash and I will get a "slow"...

ROASTED from Kavekalmar on Vimeo .

(Previous part:  http://kostverlorenvaart.blogspot.nl/2014/11/motorizing-hg-one-part-2.html ) Now it was time for me to do a little homework because the motor needs about 20V DC at around 8-9 Ampere. I first looked at variable digital power supplies from the lab equipment stores but one that's capable of 10A is quite huge & heavy and Cees at Muco electronics in Amsterdam told me that the sensitive electronics inside these lab DC supplies can't cope with the peak startup-current of the short circuit motor I want to drive it with. He advised me to build my own instead. A heavy toroidal transformer and a massive rectifier should do the job he said. "It won't give a fart for the startup current of your motor and just keep working" he told me. So I got the material and a hard plastic box to build it in. At home I do not have the equipment for drilling things to size like Tije has so I used an awl, two metal reamers and little files to get the right holes....

(Previous post about this project:  http://kostverlorenvaart.blogspot.nl/2014/11/motorizing-hg-one.html ) Today, Tije measured the places where the engine has to be bolted on the plate and the places where the plate needs to be bolted on the HG One. He then drilled the holes, cut off the exact needed length of thread to bolt on and he cut some spacers to ensure that the engine will not be 'rolling' or 'twisting' around while grinding. To make it all fit, Tije figured out which bolts to fasten first because as the combination gets fitted together, a spanner has little room to fasten some hard-to-reach bolts. As we tested the engine grinding beans, we found that it takes a lot of energy. About 20V and around 8 A current. The present transformer has a hard time keeping that up so we will look for another one. Also, the enormous torque coming from the engine made it necessary to get an extra tight fit of the coupling, with the bolt inside on the threaded axis of the m...

Several HG One owners have worked on motorizing their grinder. Jason Wolley for instance. He documented the mod on his website . Don Poocher did one as well as you can see in his Vimeo clip . Plus there's a thread about it on HomeBarista  and on the LONDINIUM forum . Tije is working on a similar mod for my HG One. He has some motors stored in crates in his workshop. These motors have powered windshield wipers in cars and years ago Tije salvaged them to use in theatrical art installations. Today he picked one that has apparently kept the windshield of an Italian car clear. For power he used a vintage box that once powered electric blankets and he sent the AC from the box into a heavy rectifier bridged by the biggest Elco capacitor he could find. To create a coupling between the HG One axis and the motor, he took an iron rod, sawed off a length, then proceeded to drill a hole in it the exact size of the outside diameter of the HG One axis on one end, and on the other side dr...

Gisteren haalde ik even snel wat eten in huis bij de AH om de hoek. Bij het fruit lette ik wel op dat ik appels uit NL kocht zodat ik Hollandse tuinders kon steunen en tegelijk het milieu sparen. Dan hoeven er geen vliegtuigen met appels uit Tunesië te komen of slecht betaalde vrachtwagenchauffeurs uit Frankrijk die de taal niet spreken, zich aan geen enkele verkeersregel houden en allerlei slecht in de zin hebben. Vannacht even uit bed, een appel in partjes gesneden en opgepeuzeld. Best lekker, ook al is het van het AH merk "Puur en Eerlijk" wat natuurlijk niets betekent. Sterker, het hele keurmerk is een leugen, zo toonde Teun van de Keuken al eens aan. Het is gewoon liegen in verpakking maar je doet het voor de hardwerkende tuinder die de appel niet te ver van de boom laat vallen. Toch voelde ik me niet helemaal lekker. Ik was wel moe, maar ook een beetje draaierig en ongedurig. Kijk ik nog eens op de verpakking, slaat de schrik om mijn hart. In kleine letters, t...

Reading "Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto)"[Kindle Edition] by Nassim Taleb I am fascinated by this man who writes about people and philosophies in math, probability, banking and economy, so imaginative, evocative and knowledgeable as if he is a combination of J.D. Salinger, Dominic Strauss Kahn and Vladimir Nabokov (he might not like any of the three). He is also a gifted speaker so I take breaks from reading his book by watching his performances documented online. Here's a quote that makes you think twice about today's banks, which I clipped from a longer conversation he had with David Cameron :

From: Broken Markets: A User's Guide to the Post-Finance Economy by Kevin Mellyn Paperback: 188 pages Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (June 19, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 1430242213 ISBN-13: 978-1430242215

Quintessential scene from the 2011 movie about the near crash of the financial system due to the mortgage crisis:

Doe eens een dagje DELA, dan kun je er weer tegen! Elke dag is een feestje. Maar je moet het zelf maken. Pluk de dag! Met de DELA. Een uitje voor het hele gezin Bij de DELA is altijd wat te beleven Foto: Hans Eichbaum

Nordic Approach - Producing Quality in Rwanda from Nordic Approach on Vimeo .

A preview of a new feature in the upcoming version of the free Artisan roasting software: At 2:09 min into the roast, bean temp is 95.7ºC Artisan sends real-time LCD data to the phone: a wireless monitor.

When I visited Tije this afternoon, he showed me he'd made a little mirror to monitor the extraction on his La Pavoni. It's fastened on the neck of the brew group and a little stick-and-ball arm with a joint in the middle allows him to twist and turn the mirror so he can see what the extraction is like when he is pulling an espresso: For my Mazzer grinder he's made a fun new portafilter-support, one that's custom made to hold the Naked Portafilter. The standard PF support is meant for the spotted portafilter but this one carries the naked type portafilter very well: Tije's Mazzer-support for the naked portafilter It fits under the Mazzer's cone very well Thanks Tije!!