December Days in Germany

-

Last week I was in Germany for a few days. Checked into a nice hotel in a small city where nothing much is happening. Enough stuff to read, some videos to watch in my room where I also installed the basic equipment to prepare fine espresso. 

Listening to podcasts I hiked the (mostly quiet, rainy) streets. 

The shopping street had a small Xmas market where people could drink Glühwein and other alcoholics and eat snacks like spicy mushrooms fried in butter.

gas station cake

Espresso gear set up

old town view

Xmas market drinks

Fried mushrooms, garlic sauce, bun

Hairdresser telling folks NOT to sit there

Thinking of buying a home here?

Collage of clippings in a display window of deserted store

Hate speech spilling over from Twitter on to a wall

A man and his belongings, writing. I offered him money but he waved his arms wildly gesturing for me to stay away from him.

Next to a garbage pail, in the rain, some discarded art work

Picturesque old cobble stone streets

Espresso in room 304

Fairly hard water. Boiling it has what looks like snow flakes of scale floating on top

In a few days the bottom of the kettle covered with scale

night

City square, lots of space


Reacties

Een reactie posten

Populaire posts van deze blog

Tiny Cheap Fluid Bed Roaster by Tije and Jan

-
Afbeelding
(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 fan
Meer lezen

Finished Pavoni & Fuji PXG4 pid: Probe Inside the Ring

-
Afbeelding
Delicious cup: all the work was well invested! At the end of the previous blog about the pressostat and PID working together , I mentioned that I would like to clean up the xmas tree of wires and have as few cables and probes as possible to visually disturb the classic design of the La Pavoni. Getting rid of the probe that was fastened with copper tape to the top of the brew group was a priority. I wanted to hide a new probe in the cooling fin as close as possible to the brew group. This morning I asked Tije if he could do that. He would need to drill a straight hole of 3mm diameter in the 4mm inner ring of the cooling fin that sits as a tight clamp around the brew group. Always the optimist, Tije set to work: First, Tije made a piece of aluminum to fit the inside of the ring. Drilling a thin hole straight through the curved aluminum, if possible tangentially going through the inside of the ring to touch the brew head directly, you need the support of the temporary insid
Meer lezen

TC4+ boards and Arduino controlled roaster by Matthias Gerstgrasser

-
Afbeelding
illustration by Matthias Gerstgrasser On the mailing list for Artisan users , Matthias Gerstgrasser posted a report about his coffee roaster project, with a link to a beautifully illustrated, complete step by step guide of his work on Instructables: A while ago I posted a few messages on here regarding automation for my hot-air popcorn roaster, and was asked if I could share a writeup of what I had been doing with my setup. I know it’s been a long time, but I haven’t forgotten, just got a little sidetracked (more on that below). I have finally found time to do this over the last few weeks though, and compiled a step-by-step guide of how I modified my popcorn machine. This is now available on Instructables: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-controlled-DIY-Coffee-Roaster/   Do let me know if there’s anything missing or anything that could be improved. I intend to keep updating the guide as I find ways to improve it or as new developments occur. I am also discussing b
Meer lezen