I’m getting to know my new coffee roaster. It is a shiny red and stainless steel North Roaster made in China. It is a solidly built machine that has local support if it is ever needed. The roaster has four temperature probes, three of which send data to my laptop. The other is for the PID ( proportional–integral–derivative ) control on the control panel. A common example of a PID is the cruise control on a car. This one shows bean temperature and, as an added safety feature, is connected to an automatic system shut down if the it reaches a preset temperature. The software on the laptop is Artisan roasting software, which logs five sets of data that the three probes send to the computer.

1.    Environmental temperature. This is how hot the air is in the drum.

2.    Bean temperature. This is the temperature of the bean mass.

3.    Incoming air. How hot the air is that feeds the drum.

4.    Delta Bean temperature. This calculates the “rate of rise” of the beans, which is how fast the beans are heating up.

5.    Delta Environmental temperature. This is the rate of rise in the air mass of the drum.

Numbers 4 and 5 are computer calculations from samples taken at three second intervals and are used to calculate certain markers in the roast such as

1.    End of drying. The point where the beans start turning yellow as the moisture content of the beans declines.

2.    First crack. This sounds like popcorn popping. The first of two sounds the beans themselves make during the roast when the coffee bean has expanded and its moisture begins to evaporate. This moisture forms steam, and then pressure, that forces the beans to crack open.

3.    Second crack. This is more of a Rice Crispies snap-crackle-pop. The cellular matrix of the bean actually fractures here, allowing oils to migrate outward.

This is a sample of what the graph looks like.

Green is incoming air temp

Red is environmental temp

Dark Blue is bean temp

Lighter Blue is delta bean temp or rate of rise of bean temp

Gold is delta environmental temp or rate of rise in air temp

  

This is not automation. I still control the heat and the airflow. It is just a way to record a set of data points that you can try to duplicate. All these factors combine to determine what the coffee will taste like.

 I was paging through a home brewing catalog some fifteen years ago when I noticed green coffee beans for sale. Why did a beer supply catalog have coffee beans for sale, I wondered? This made me Google coffee roasting. One of the many ways home roasters roasted coffee was with a paint stripping heat gun (think hair drier on steroids), a bowl, and a spoon. This intrigued me. I had the equipment already, all I needed was to get some unroasted beans. I went to a local Dunn Brothers coffee shop and persuaded the barista to sell me a pound of green coffee beans. My first attempt at roasting was very iffy, but the results were better tasting coffee than I ever had. It was probably more the experience that made it better than the coffee itself. I was hooked.

 I joined some online home roasting clubs and started to purchase five pound lots of green coffee. There was a lot of good advice for a newcomer to the art of roasting. It turns out that five pounds turns to four pounds after the beans are roasted due to loss of moisture. It also turns out that the beans double in size.

  Five pounds turned into ten, and ten pounds turned into twenty. My family and friends started taking a shine to my endeavors. I couldn’t keep up with the heat gun roasting, I needed something with more volume. I purchased a perforated stainless- steel drum that went on a BBQ spit. I also needed a heat source that had the oomph to get a kilo of green beans to the proper temps required to roast. I had a “jet” burner, like a turkey fryer burner, fueled by propane. That should be plenty of heat. Now I needed to contain the heat. I sacrificed an old Weber Kettle grill. I cut the bottom off of it so it sat on the burner. I had to sit and turn the spit by hand, but this more than doubled my volume.

 After a few years on the improvised roaster, and selling roasted coffee at the local Farmers Market, I got a chance to lease time on a REAL commercial roaster - it’s capacity was six pounds. Four years later the owner purchased a larger roaster. I was roasting on a ten kilo capacity commercial roaster. I now have a one kilo roaster at home due to limitations of the Cottage Industry License that I must have to sell at the Farmers Market.

 After all the upgrades to my roasting equipment, I still think I learned more about roasting coffee from the heat gun – bowl roasting that I started on. Why? Because I had to pay attention to the sights and sounds and smells that are produced during the phases of the roast. It was relatively easy to transfer that knowledge to a commercial roaster.

To be continued………

Getting the flu may have saved my life

  I am 3 weeks post-surgery. A major surgery that was not expected. It all started with the flu. Even though I had a flu shot in October of 2014, I came down with the flu shortly before Christmas. I missed all the family functions which are very dear to me. I don’t remember ever being this sick. It was a respiratory thing this time instead of the “stomach flu”. I was sick for about 10 days.

  After seeming to recover from the flu, I had a colonoscopy scheduled in January. Yea, getting old sucks. Two days after the colonoscopy, I started having difficulty breathing. I went to Urgent Care and was told to go to the Emergency unit at the hospital. I spent the better part of the evening being tested to see if I had a heart attack. The following day I had an echo stress test and found my heart was healthy, thank God.

  I then went to my primary physician. He started treating me for COPD/asthma. Although some of the symptoms were present, none of the treatments seemed to help. He suggested a sleep study, but my insurance said they wouldn’t cover a sleep study (more about this later). I was prescribed a rescue inhaler to cope with bronchial spasms. I didn’t have bronchial spasms. As a matter of fact, I felt much better after strenuous work than I did just sitting. I was also prescribed a daily inhaler.

    By September, after no progress in aiding my breathing, I was referred to a Pulmonary Specialist. She ran blood tests and ordered a CT scan of my lungs, and a sleep study. I told her my insurance wouldn’t cover a sleep study. She said if it is called polysomnography it should be covered.  It was. She ruled out COPD/asthma. The polysomnography found that I have severe sleep apnea. My brain was “waking up” 57 times per hour because I wasn’t breathing right. I am now using a CPAP device when sleeping. That is not the life-saving part of this story, at least not the most significant.

  When the CT scan was evaluated, there was a shadow in the upper lobe of my left lung about the size of a pea. The Doctor said it may be nothing and suggested another CT scan in 6 months. I came back in March of this year for the follow-up scan. The shadow had not moved or grown. I was told a biopsy was needed. The biopsy was scheduled for two weeks later. It came back positive for cancer. The cancer is called “In situ pulmonary adenocarcinoma”.  I prefer the name it used to be known as, Bronchioalveolar Carcinoma, because the recovery rates are better when narrowed down to this name. I had smoked cigarettes for 20 years, but I haven’t smoked for the last 25 years. This was the probable cause.

  I was scheduled for oncology and surgery consults to occur within the week, and scheduled for surgery to remove the upper lobe of my left lung the following week. On Tuesday April 5, at 11 AM, the surgery was performed. Surgery took about 4 hours. I was in a room with my family around me by dinner time. I ordered a chicken Caesar salad and chocolate pudding for dinner. I wasn’t all that hungry, so the pudding was a priority. I was walking by 7 that evening - had to keep the lungs clear and working. With all the tubes from all the different places of my body, I looked like a Borg from Star Trek.

  The bladder catheter was taken out Thursday, no more just sitting and drinking coffee without getting out of bed. On the Saturday following surgery, the drainage tubes were removed and I was switched from a Fentanyl epidural to oral oxycodone for pain management. I could now walk the halls without the rolling tree that held medications and tubes.

  Sunday, around noon, I was released from the hospital and was able to go home, limited to lifting no more than 10 pounds. I quit taking the oxycodone on Wednesday (that stuff scares me). The next morning, I found myself sleeping on the incision with no pain.

  I breath well now – better than before the surgery, but I need to work on my stamina. My biggest worry is sneezing. I sneezed on Thursday and I didn’t feel well for about 4 hours. I can cough without pain if I put my back up against a wall to give support to the incision area. This will eventually get better.

  The post-surgery consult with my oncologist was very heartening. I was told that a CT scan every 6 months for a couple years is my follow up treatment. Thank God, again. I don’t have to go through Chemo or radiation treatment. My post-surgery consult with the surgeon went very well. Just three weeks post-surgery and I am cleared to do what I am comfortable doing. That means I have to go back to work soon. Is that a plus? YES. I can get back to normal after having only a brief detour into chaos.

 Over the course of the last 17 months, I have had EVERY orifice in my body checked out. I’ve had CT scans, CT/PET scans, MRI’s, and X-rays. I even had a Cystoscopy (Bladder Scope). There is only one way in and the camera must have been the size of a….well, it seemed like it at the time. I am healthy now. I have the tests to prove it.

   If I hadn’t gotten the flu, the cancer may not have been found until it was too late. I never thought I would say I was glad I got the flu.