Kostverlorenvaart

Pulling an espresso from 15.1g of Los Lajones beans from the Panama farm of Graciano Cruz, imported by Kees Kraakman of Stadsbranderij Noord. Scales used: Acaia Pearl & Lunar. Grinder: R120 by Compak. Tamper by Londinium, lever espresso machine L1-P by Londinium. iPhone used for filming.

Before going to sleep I noticed how the vintage spotlight that Tije fixed for me lights the huge R120 grinder very well when all other lights have been shut off already. I took out my camera and made this picture (ISO12800, so dim was the room!) Thank you Tije! Below is a video of how he made me the coupling piece that enabled the vintage theatre spotlight to fit on the expandable bracket, also from an old theatre but of a slightly different size.

Over the past months, Tije has been testing out several concepts for a fluid bed roaster that will be very similar to my Fracino Roastilino but with a larger capacity.  One example is shown here: A problem in this setup is the high speed of the cheap blower we are using. The blower is so powerful that it cools the heating element rather than heat the beans and it tends to blow beans all over the place instead of just "stirring" them around. We actually need a blower that has less speed with more static pressure and we're currently looking at an Multi Stage MS8 Backward Curved, Single Inlet Centrifugal Fan from Air Control Industries. Taking a break from this R&D which is more time consuming than we anticipated, Tije has worked on an idea of his own, using very basic materials which most everyone has in the household somewhere. Tije let go of the idea to agitate the beans by a powerful air flow and he also discarded the "rolling drum" concept which h...