Kostverlorenvaart

(Copy of  http://artisan-roasterscope.blogspot.nl/2016/07/coffee-tech-fz-94-working-seamlessly.html ) Recently, we received the opportunity to get an FZ94 lab roaster and see how this roasting machine could work seamlessly with Artisan. An inspired back-and-forth between Marko Luther on the Artisan side in Germany and the R and D team of Coffee-Tech in Israël ensued and soon, the first machine was communicating fully with a newly expanded and freshly compiled version of Artisan. Marko will explain the technical details in a separate blog post. Some details can be read in the  release history . One of the things in Artisan that were greatly expanded is the amount of MODBUS channels that can be communicated with at the same time. The new FZ94 can communicate, over its MODBUS ring, the values of the current Bean Temperature, Drum Temperature, Exhaust Temperature and also the current setting of the frequency drives that control Drum Speed and Air Flow. This invo...

See also: http://www.perfectdailygrind.com/2016/11/producer-insight-organic-coffee-farming-guatemala/ A small specialty coffee roaster near Amsterdam, Koffiebranderij Het Hoofdkwartier , offered a number of nano roasters and homeroasters the opportunity to acquire green beans from a completely new source: Tekistic beans from the La Delicias farm in Guatemala. I've been told that the owner, Manolo Murales, originally a coffee farmer, moved to the USA to earn an income and finance the education for his sons and on their return home they used their savings to start a new farm, focused on quality and attractive 'shade grown' coffees like Tekistic and Pacamara. The idea is to gradually keep expanding the farm, getting more land and planting more coffee trees. The farm was started in 2012 and now their first crop has reached our shores. Mention of it has been made on Direct Source Coffee and Cropster Hub . I was lucky to get my hands on 30kg. I'm very excited...

At a new coffee / barber / motocycle place called Looiedet , I met again with Maarten Meijer of Sanremo Nederland and I had a chance to finally play with the new big commercial Sanremo two group machine that has full integration with the Acaia Lunar scale. First you use sliders in the app to design your recipe: weight of grinds, pre-infusion time and pressure, brew boiler temperature, extraction pressure and extraction weight in the cup. Send the profile to the brew group of your choice. Then use the Lunar to check the weight of your grinds, lock in the portafilter, pull the lever to start the profile. Acaia scale under the cup does an auto-tare to 0, then communicates the extraction weight to the machine and stops at, for instance, at the designed 40g with 0.4g margin. We played with a new roast by Jose Mollura for Moyee Coffee , a high end specialty line of theirs from 90+  Yirgacheffe beans and we checked how a 3 seconds pre-infusion at 3 bar or a 7 seconds pre-infusion at...

PS 9 Aug 2017 : meanwhile Tije de Jong fixed me another modification that's even easier and simpler: http://kostverlorenvaart.blogspot.nl/2017/08/fz94-vacuum-cleaning-click-on-click-off.html After a number of roasts, some ash and charred debris collects in the space below the drum so we need to clean this frequently but carefully so as not to damage the isolation floor material below the drum of the heating elements. Poking around with a hard vacuum cleaning extension is therefore not a good idea. I tried vacuuming and later settled on blowing. Vacuum cleaning Also, the air inlets are fairly small so you can't poke just everything through it. I used a Gardena hose section for this and the part that usually is screwed on the tap now fits snug on the inside of the vacuum cleaner hose that I have. Garden hose meets vacuum cleaner Perfect match Gently sucking up the ashes The spacers of the air inlets do tend to slide off when you take out the screws so I foun...

See also: http://dailycoffeenews.com/2016/07/22/video-roasting-by-the-power-of-the-sun-or-not/ Tije wondered if it would be possible or even easy to roast with sunlight and a magnifying glass. As a boy he was successful at setting stuff on fire with his magnifying glass, so there might be enough solar energy to collect in a metal, reflective bowl catching the full blast of solar heat on a handful of coffee beans. Add a little shaking device and anyone can roast their beans on a sunny day. It's grean, sustainable, fun and all. Tije made some tools and came over to try this together with Jan van der Weel and me. We'd like to say that the first results are simply astounding, but alas, they are not. A sunny afternoon went up in smoke. Very little smoke. But we had a great time. Wout Lipper (1980) PS 9 Oct 2016: Then last week I saw a vintage solar powered coffee roaster in the museum collection at Probat in Emmerich. Fantastic object, looks like a machine to burn t...

Jan van der Weel and I are reviewing the La Marzocco Linea Mini this week (to be published in an upcoming issue of KTC magazine ) and here we extract a first espresso, using the double basket included with the machine, the heavy double spout portafilter, the LM tamper that comes with the machine. Also using the Acaia scales and a Compak grinder . Monitoring the group temp which is very stable around 83ºC after we set the extraction temp on 93ºC using a small mechanical wheel on the top left of the machine. The roast profile shown briefly during grinding is made by the free Artisan roast control & logging software supported and developed by Marko Luther. Linea Mini Flow from Frans Goddijn on Vimeo .

John, a fellow roaster living nearby, was asked by a local barista to repair her Vibiemme two group E61 machine. It resides inside an old bus that has been turned into a mobile cafe and she noticed that one group did not deliver any water anymore. Repairing it proves to be rather simple. A new solenoid has to be ordered and the scaled up group will be thoroughly cleaned in the workshop. Vibiemme receiving some mechanical care I came along to assist if necessary and was amazed to see the parking place of the old bus. It lives in a vast and secure world with countless old beauties and a team of mechanics is working on restoration full time.

Yesterday evening, mr Rex Tseng, CEO of Acaia, manufacturer of highly specialized scales for baristas, came to visit. We enjoyed some espressos from Cameroon Boyo washed Asuchuf village java arabica beans that I roasted on the Coffee-Tech FZ-94 last week and we chatted about  lot of developments in the coffee arena.  Mr Tseng showed the prototype of a scale they are developing for the Sanremo Opera espresso machine. On the three group machine, each brew group has its own device that exactly fits into the drip tray and each one communicates wireless with the electronics inside the linked brew group. One other device he showed is a setup for pour-over coffee which is basically a Lunar scale tracing what's being extracted into the cup over time, with the pour-over device including the filter and the Lunar sitting on the larger Pearl scale and a new Acaia app that communicates with both scales at the same time, showing exactly what's happening in a way that has not ...