Kostverlorenvaart

Fuji has stopped producing the PXG4 unit that I have been using so far as a PID device and it will be replaced by the PXF4 : The PXF4 looks very good as well and it even has a nice USB connection: And it still has the MODBUS communication option so that's good as well: I'm looking forward to trying one out.

Lukas Kubiny , a fellow FZ94 owner , also fellow Artisan user in Slovakia, sent me a beautiful gift box with a few samples of his roasts and I can't wait to taste them in the morning! Thanks so much Lukas . PS 30 May 2017: Jan van der Weel and Tije de Jong came to taste these beans together. I also had two bags of beans that Roemer Overdiep bought recently at The Barn in Berlin so we had lots to try. Beans from the all white bag measured Tonino 117, so about 20 units lighter of my own usual roast range. At a very fine grind setting on the Compak R120 and a higher than usual extraction temperature, it was a pleasant cup for us but not very complex. The Brazil at Tonino # 116 was very similar in our view. The Berlin beans were even lighter at Tonino # 124 even so we did not experiment long with these. I packed the stash and mailed it to Erik, a friend who owns a Strietman machine and he is very well versed in enjoying the light roasts. So I'm excited to hear...

When visiting Bono Gargolov and his family last week, we exchanged some of our roasts. I have just finished the last shot of some exquisite beans roasted by Bono Gargolov with his Probat & Artisan combination. A very light roast ( Tonino # 117!), the espresso like a bright red wine. A lithe body smoothly pleasing without any dry aftertaste. Ground on the R120 Compak machine, 20g in the 18g VST basket , pulled 24g out in about 24s, a relatively high pre-infusion pressure & temperature tweaked on the Londinium-R lever machine.

Lukas Kubiny, a fellow FZ94 user sent me a few pictures of his brand new FZ94. It has a few details that are different to mine from spring of last year 2016. The air inlets that are on the lower left and right side on the front of my machine are now on the sides and also there is a new part on top of the chaff collector: Note the 4 diagonal air vents on the side The new part closer up: http://www.coffee-tech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/FZ-94_web_eng_2016.pdf We're wondering what the aluminum part on top of the chaff collector is for exactly. It's called a 'suppressor' and if I look up the current PDF version of the manual on the CoffeeTech website I think it might be an additional trap box type chaff collector for the cooling: Lukas reports that he observes smoke leaking from it.  If air flow capacity is over 60% it pushes smoke out of the suppressor and when airflow is increased to more then 95% around 20 seconds after 1st crack starts the...

Espresso in Fürstenfeldbruck from Frans Goddijn on Vimeo .

Javier, a fellow FZ94 owner in the USA, has decided he also wants to add the Fuji PXG4 PID to his roaster, as described in a recent blog . He is ordering the exact same type of PID from Fuji in the US (mine came from the European Fuji HQ in France) and he requested some pictures of the way mine is placed / connected. I post these pictures below, so others may also benefit. Javier was, to my knowledge, the first to upgrade the communication of his FZ94 to completely work with Artisan the way Marko and I have  posted on the Artisan blog and on this blog. So it has been proven to work: study these blogs, execute as specified, and get roasting. Javier asked Tije to make a dual-probe  Bean Trier probe device for his FZ94 as posted before. The USB of the PXG4 goes into one of the USB ports of my laptop, just as the USB of the MODBUS out of the FZ94 goes into the other USB port of my laptop. Marko Luther managed to expand Artisan to facilitate working with two MODBUS uni...

Another member of the roaster group currently working with the same Indonesia Sumatra Mandheling crop is Peter de Goede. He uses a FIR300 roaster, also connected to Artisan . Here is a clip of Peter's  FIR300 as it was tested by the designer Charlie Ho before its shipment to Peter (also using Artisan ): Peter de Goede was so kind so share his profile and comments below: Peter de Goede's Artisan profile for the Indonesia Mandheling beans He writes: I see great similarities between Arnoud's profiles and mine even though there is a significantly larger drop in temperature at charging of the beans in Arnoud's roaster which may be caused by roaster build, probe placement and sensitivity. For my roast I aimed for a sweet espresso without acidity or bitterness, so ending before second crack. Since the Indonesian bean is quite hard, it can take quite some heat. I had a profile in mind with a rather long and relaxed development after FC with an end temp near 220...

(As a follow up to my blog about developing a roast profile for the Indonesia Sumatra Mandheling beans, Arnoud Kruiver of Het Hoofdkwartier  and fellow user of the Artisan Roast Log software agreed to contribute his report about roasting these same beans.) Frans asked me to share something about my ongoing roast profile development for the Sumatra that we recently acquired for our group of roasters. Sharing I am rather strapped for time since my recent fatherhood so I need to be terse but I do want to start sharing data about roast profile development because this initiative to collectively buy green beans offers such an excellent opportunity to share experiments, findings and experiences. Rarely does a large portion of our coffee community focus on one and the same crop at the same time with such a level of expertise. Of course, merely comparing roast profiles is hardly relevant if only because of the different offsets in probe readings and therefore I would very much li...

Last week I got an email from fellow roaster Javier Reto who purchased an early 2016 FZ-94 and is currently upgrading it to work fully with Artisan like my machine. He has managed to speed up communications on the MODBUS following the procedure described by Marko Luther on his blog Bumping up MODBUS . The new cable set to also add the frequency drives for air flow and drum speed have been ordered directly from CoffeeTech and these are in the mail on their way to Javier, so he will also be able to control these from within Artisan. Currently (as of May 7 2017) the PID for ET is not yet willing to communicate. The correct SLAVE number setting has been set as can be seen here: This is matching the configuration I also have in Artisan, with ID numbers ET=slave13, BT=slave11, DT=slave12: I will add more info as we figure it out, which will be helpful to others upgrading their FZ94. For those who need it, I placed some manuals for the Maxwell MTA-48k PID in a folder ...