(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...
Roasting coffee beans, you want to be as consistent as you can, replicating a successful roast while collecting enough data (besides what you see, feel, smell and taste from the coffee) to get an idea what you may be doing wrong if the results are not so good all of a sudden. The Artisan software for coffee roasters has a feature to help you keep track of volume and density of your beans. Density is a word for the weight of a certain volume of beans and it can be measured in grams per liter. Your green beans are obviously more dense than the roasted beans: roasted beans have grown a lot in size and they have lost weight (moisture) in the process. In his new book “ The Coffee Roaster’s Companion ”, the famous Scott Rao explains these things: “Ideally, water should account for 10.5%-11.5% of green-coffee weight.” (p.3) “Coffee loses 12-24% of its weight during roasting, depending on initial moisture content, roast degree and inner-bean development during roasting. T...
Peter van der Weerd had an alternative for my original vacuum breaker. The (tiny bit of) water and steam that comes out at the start of the day is now released into the drip tray. The way it was originally done was no problem since the little amount of water coming out evaporates quickly, but my machine has glass side panels and they would get steamy opaque at the start of the day. Now they stay dry. Unscrewing the original anti-vac: The original is out: The new one ready to install: Almost in: Tight enough: The little silicon hose that I have used before when I briefly had a Non-Return Valve is now used and it connects the anti-vac with the nipple I have on the front of the machine: The nipple. When the machine starts up, this is where the "prrrr....shshshsh.... flop" sound and moisture comes out.
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