Kostverlorenvaart

My new Compak E8 grinder arrived just in time for Xmas. I have no tree and anyway it would not fit under the tree so I took out my sebenza and cut the box open, unpacking and installing the machine. I expect to put 10-20kg through the grinder before really putting it to the test. Jan van der Weel and I have promised a review for KTC magazine to appear in the spring 2016 issue. So there's time! Below the list of pictures is a video of a first shot of espresso after dialing in the grinder to find the "espresso" grind, aiming for 30g of espresso in 30 seconds from 18g of grinds in the VST 18g portafilter basket, tamped with the LONDINIUM tamper and extracted on the Londinium L1-P lever machine, monitoring the flow with an Acaia Lunar coffee scale. This specific grinder has the Lucidate "Red Speed Burr" set for lower friction and lower temperature . A Box Opened Box Hopper popping out First peek at the machine Ready for action

Tije made a portafilter cradle for himself (and one for me!) to be used for the La Pavoni portafilter when catching grinds from the ROK hand grinder:

The Tonino instrument to measure roast color is made like this:

A better view on the roast process using the combination of a Fracino Roastilino, a Fuji PXG4 PID controller and the free-for-all Artisan software to command, monitor and log the roast details. This time using a Canon 5D on the beans, an iPhone on the Fuji and the screen capture on the Mac. The full frontal view of the three "hotspots" combined, with annotations on screen, allow an easy cockpit view of what's happening and how it is done. YouTube version:

I just got this new book, 128 pages including index. First impression: very little about a lot of things. About everything just the very basic knowledge, like the first paragraphs of a wikipedia entry. And a  LOT of exclamation marks! It seems the author uses these to give extra meaning to the hurried words and whaddayaknow, exclamation marks take up very little space ! I looked top a few items from the index that I have been focusing on a lot in the past, to see what the author has to say about roasting for instance: "Home roasting machines aren't as sophisticated as commercial machines. This isn't to say you can't create an excellent coffee at home, just that you may not get to explore the finer points of roasting too much." So there you have it! Now you have learned more about roasting! Wasn't that much easier than you thought? You can now impress the h*ck out of your friends at the next BBQ party! People don't call me "Mr Coffee" f

Recently I rediscovered a very old pocket knife in a drawer of mine. I bought it in a thrift shop more than 30 years ago because at the time I happened to have a vintage fountain pen with a barrel of practically the same marbled material as the scales of this little pocket knife. The pen was produced in the late twenties of the last century so the knife might also be from that era: It is probably a "Pradel" knife from France but the exact whereabouts may be hard to establish because the Pradel family of knife makers is very fragmented. Retrieving the knife from my past prompted me to buy a number of whetstones to sharpen it again and I eventually took it to a knife friend who is a very dedicated expert knife sharpener in Apeldoorn. He also sharpens kitchen knives for chefs in restaurants and this allows him to learn more about the endurance of certain methods of sharpening. Razor sharp knives, for instance, may need so much maintenance to keep them sharp that t

Roasting on the Roastilino from Frans Goddijn on Vimeo . A start-to-finish roast of 250g Ethiopia Yirgacheffe coffee beans on the Fracino Roastilino roaster, controlled by a FUJI PXG4 which is in turn controlled and monitored by the free Artisan software. YouTube version: