In a happy place

I have not posted here recently and that's partly because all is going so well and stable. There has been hardly any reason to tweak or experiment much at all.

Improvement has been searched for though, but not prompted by a problem that needed to be solved or a gadget that we felt needed to be put to use.

I am convinced that one of the sources of happiness is this: doing some simple task repeatedly, over an extended period of time, doing it with dedication while observing what happens. This can be washing the dishes by hand, baking sourdough bread using one and the same recipe over and over again in minutely different ways, or calmly looking for perfection in roasting coffee.

Not a fanatic approach, not attempting a revolutionary breakthrough, not manically trying to avoid any mistake, but just by doing, embracing the routine with determination while keeping an open mind.


At FC the bean mass starts squirting out heat like a group of sauna guests all more or less simultaneously breaking out in a sweat, even though the temperature in their space has not suddenly increased.

The BT probe sends data about this to the PIDs, it is displayed on the Artisan screen and my response was usually to increase the airflow and then rapidly decrease the airflow as soon as I saw BT slumping again. The idea was to avoid BT to get out of control. I did not want the beans racing towards my planned DROP temp because I want to provide the beans enough time to crack and rumble through their development, creating the full taste and aroma in their potential.

Observing my routine, it struck me that I was probably compensating for the extra airflow ramping up to FC when I was restricting it a little while later.

Next, I practiced restraint. As my Alarms settings in Artisan gradually increased airflow from 30% capacity at CHARGE to around 70% closing in on FC and the heater energy was decreased in two steps approaching the same expected FC temp, I did nothing manually.

Roasting Costa Rica on the Coffee-Tech FZ-94 Red dotted line is BT, blue curve line is RoR, green is ET, black is DT Orange stepped line is heater energy, blue stepped line is airflow

I observed how BT would suddenly increase, but as I did nothing extra, this surge in perceived BT would subside without my assistance and at the given airflow no uncontrolled escalation of the heat-up occurred.

The bean mass could be heard to sustain FC, rolling along while steam and some smoke was seen coming from the exhaust towards the kitchen cooker hood but no worrying increase of smoke.

After about 2 minutes a new, increase occurred and that's when I increased airflow, leading up to my DROP moment, deciding on that exact moment by comparing the BT to an earlier successful roast and looking at the AUC number of the current roast approaching the desired value, as also indicated by the vertical target AUC line on the Artisan screen which had been visible, moving this way and that as a goalie, since the DE point on the graph.

People were already satisfied with my roasts but since this subtle change, it has certainly not gotten worse.

The baristas of Trakteren about my Ethiopia roast

Bob van Geffen about my Peru roast

Constantin Trommlitz about the Costa Rica batch (see profile above)

A friend has offered to open a roastery together, investing in a 6-10kg roaster but I feel that if we did, I would always keep looking back at this time as the most carefree.

All is well, I can roast a batch at home almost daily like my neighbours use their kitchen to almost daily cook their meals and it's enough to keep a couple family members and a slowly expanding community of friends/clients happy with my beans.

The friend is now looking to buy a roaster like mine ;-)

PS Thanks to Arnoud from Hoofdkwartier for such excellent green beans, and thanks to Marko Luther for Artisan!