Early Morning Espresso (home away from home)

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Tiny Cheap Fluid Bed Roaster by Tije and Jan

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(also see Daily Coffee News feature ) Tije designed and made the following structure for a tiny and cheap fluid bed roaster, to which Jan van der Weel added the Arduino parts, electronics and programming: Sketch by Tije de Jong Jan sourced a very cheap blower (€ 11) to start with, Tije developed and constructed the mechanics, Jan built together and programmed the TC4 / SSR electronics.  On his blog, Jan will specify exactly how the TC4 part is combined and programmed and I will copy these details into this blog entry, just as Jan will use this video in his blog. We did a few test roasts to make sure it works at all and it does. Towards the end, the first roast tended to get a flat BT line and airflow was slightly decreased. 200g seems max load of green beans. Second roast a little more power was given to the heater. Next we will try the Background Roast driven by the PID software of Artisan. A week later, with updated software that works better to change the...
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Getting a Bestmax Premium water filter

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Last week a friend brought me a BWT Bestmax water to replace the DV8 that I had. The advantage of this new filter was that it has a built in bypass so some amount of Ca minerals that the resin in a DV8 and Bestmax replaces with Na / sodium can be mixed back in for a better coffee extraction. Then I read that the newer " Premium " version of the Bestmax filter uses Mg(Magnesium)  ions instead of Na which further enhances the water taste and subsequent coffee extraction. Online, BWT are very brief about what exactly sets this filter apart from the rest. I find that generally, water filter manufacturers are terse in explaining the exact workings and most text has words like rich, full taste, particle-free and pleasant.  I assume manufacturers keep the text vague for two reasons: first, the competition is not to be made any wiser and second, consumers may be taken aback by technical specifics. Anything beyond the absolute necessary, like mention of Calcium ('scales ...
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When to change the Brita cartridge?

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100% to 0% The Rocket Giotto espresso machine at my girl friend's place uses water from a Brita filter . This filter has a timer that counts down from "100%" to zero over a number of weeks but that time span is totally unrelated to the actual use of the filter so it's useless as a reminder to change the filter cartridge for a fresh one. Unpredictable I reset the timer a few times before replacing the filter but then I mostly forget how often I have reset it and I take out a new cartridge when I start to feel worried about the water hardness, which is subjective and unpredictable. Brita themselves suggest replacing it every two months or after every 40 gallons of water taken from the pitcher although local water hardness may vary greatly and thus influence the life span of a filter cartridge. So that's not a great help either. It would be nice if Brita supplied a test kit to see when the water quality delivered by the filter is deteriorating. Predicting ...
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