Good thing I always watch my roasts or this could have been a disaster. I was standing there watching and all of a sudden I see a piece of chaff burning. It went out immidiately so I think nothing of it. Then a massive smoke plume bellows out the chaff collector.

:siren:  OH SHIITTT PANIC!11one :siren:

I yank the power and pull of the chaff collector and it’s jammed with chaff causing the temp to rise and set fire to the chaff inside.

Since I reacted so fast nothing happened, or the plastic stuff the chaff collector is made of can stand extremely high heat.

I always empty the chaff collector after 3 roasts. The problem was that the last 3 roasts was all dry processed coffees (DP Brasil, Yemen Mattari, DP Sidamo) so they released way more chaff than normally.

Just goes to show you that you should never leave the roast, this all happened over the course of 20 seconds.

On the topic of wine almost everyone drinks wine for what it is, the aroma, the flavour of the wine. Yet coffee has to be endlessly basterdized with milk, syrups, whipped cream and who the hell knows what else..

WHY?

You don’t see people mixing all kinds of crap into wine.

Wine is enjoyed for what it is, why can’t people enjoy coffee the same way?

There’s so many single origin and single estate coffees, just as many as there are grapes and the wines they produce.

I started out using a drying stage, about 5 minutes at 180, then ramp to full blast until 1st crack, then back of once 1st was rolling, useually landing me at around 16 min total roasting time.

This profile gave me a flat taste on most coffees, just generic “coffee” taste. Slow ramp to first crack washes out fruity tastes most, probably because these are the least dominant and easily lost.

What I have found works best on the Gene Cafe (Probably also on other roasters) :

(Please note that these temperatures are not bean mass temps.)

Fast ramp up to first crack, full speed ahead at 250C. should happen around 9 minutes.

As soon as first crack is rolling, back down to 230C to slow down the roast so it doesn’t run away from you. At first crack the beans actually starts to give of heat themselves, so if we do not slow them down you will get a runaway roast that often starts 2nd crack while 1st crack is stil going, very bean dependant. It is important that you don’t lose to much heat in 1st crack. First crack is when the sugars caremelize and loss of enough heat so that you stall 1st crack in this phase will impart a baked taste and ruin the roast.

This should get you to second crack at around 14-16 minutes with a constantly rising temperature. I find that if the temperature curve is allowed to fall at any point it dulls the flavours at best and at worst gives you a baked taste.

Please note that this is a general profile. The harder the bean (Higher grown, SHG/SHB etc..) the longer it should roast to maximize flavours.

I have also noted that is is a bad sign if you get tipping. Tipping is small pieces of the beans breaking of under 2nd crack. It means you went to fast into second crack and the roast will not be good. Shoot for no faster than 4 minutes from first to second crack and no longer than 6. Yes, this takes a lot of experimentation and times are very bean dependant so stick with a few beans, buy a ton of each and get to know them well. It’s amazing how much you can get out of a bean when you learn how to roast it. Knowing how to roast a bean perfectly means the difference from thinking “this coffe is bad” to “wow this is amazing” I think most people dismiss a coffee bean after roasting it a few time willy nilly and then move on to the next, constantly looking for something that they will probably only get by luck. When I started I tried a Harrar because I read about the blueberry notes, rosted it a couple times and didn’t taste anything. I roast the same bean now and with the right profile I get a facefull og berries. I don’t think this is because my palette is better now, my friends that still mostly drinks supermarket swill are noticing it to.

This is now my new generic Gene Cafe coffee roasting profile for most coffee beans and I am getting fruits, berry, jasmin, and other flavours from familiar beans that never showed these flavours before in the cup.

Ristretto means restricted, not short. A ristretto should run the same time as a normal shot.

So in order to get a proper ristretto shot grind a hair or two finer and let it run for about 22-30 seconds depending on taste.

The finer grind means you get less volume because you restricted the shot.

I was on a quest a long time to find out how to make my own home made lactose free milk because soy milk and other substitutes tastes like ass and doesn’t foam correctly for latte art, it’s easy.

Go get a bottle of those pills you can take when if you want to eat something with lactose in it. They come in different brands, the one I use is called Lactrase in europe, in the US there’s a brand called Lactaid.

You’r supposed to break open the capsules and dump the contents on the food when you eat it. The capsules contains the bacteria that your stomach has stopped producing, causing you to become lactose intolerant.

To make home made lactose free milk, simply take two capsules and break them open and dump then into the milk carton. Leave in the fridge for 24 hours and voila, lactose free milk of any type you want.

It’s also MUCH cheaper than store bought lactose free milk.

The key tip for better milk steaming on la Pavoni Europiccola is to plug 2 of the holes in the steaming tip.

Make sure the 2 holes you leave open is not pointing into the side of the milk steaming pitcher or else you won’t get as fast a swirl to your milk.

When I started steaming on the Europiccola I had problems because it just heats the milk to fast when you are new to frothing milk. Plugging up 2 of the holes took care of that perfectly.

The Europiccola sure has powerfull steam for such a small machine.

You can also have a look at my page about steaming and frothing milk

Another clear sign that the Brita brand is not al they are hyped up to be is that they are not allowed to advertize in the US where the strict FDA rules applies, because they just don’t work as advertized.

Get yourself something like the DVA-LT4 or DVA-LT8 ion exchange water softener instead. They are cheap and can be recharged easily for the price of a kilo of salt.

I have the DVA-LT8 and have been using it for about a year now. It’s very easy to recharge and one charge using a kilo of salt allows me to decalcify about 500 liters of water before a recharge. I check once a month using a TDS/PPM/PH Hanna meter. If you get a meter make sure it can measure pH as you can’t use TDM/PPS meters on an ion exchanger as TDM/PPM measures dissolved solids and ion exchangers works by simply swapping calcium ions for natrium ions so using TDS it looks like the filter isnt doing anything. Using a pH meter reveals the true story.

Anyways, here’s how you recharge a DVA-LT water softener:

The upper walve handle is used to open the water intake when turned to the large opening so you need to connect the large opening on the upper valve to your water pipe. When in upright position the water intake is closed so you can unscrew the top and fill it up with salt to recharge. When the upper valve is turned to the small openening, the water will flow right through the valve, bypassing the water softener so you can drain unfiltered tap water I guess, I never use that position.

The lower valve is used to drain water or when recharging the dva lt8 water softener. When the lower valve handle is turned to the large opening filtered water flows as fast as possible. This is the normal mode of operation when you want to draw water for your espresso machine. When the lower valve handle is turned upright the filtered water flow is stopped. When the lower valve handle is turned to the small opening filtered water flows just like  normal operation, only it flows much slower, this position is used when recharging the dva lt8 water softener.

To recharge the unit turn the upper valve handle to the upright position, this stops the water intake from your tap water pipes into the unit. Now there’s no water pressure and you can unscrew the top. After opening the top, turn the lower valve handle to the large opening so the remaining water drains out. Now fill the unit with about a kilo of course kitchen salt so it sits on top of the small granules of filter material. Now we are ready to recharge.

Screw the top on. Make sure the lower valve handle is now turned to the upright position. Open the water intake by turning the upper valve towards the large opening letting the water from your water pipes in. Now the unit is under pressure. Turn the lower valve handle to the small opening and let the water slowly trickle out for about an hour or so until the water no longer tastes salty.

Your dva lt8 water softener has now been recharged and is ready to soften your water again.

(Degrees C has been rounded to nearest whole numbers)

• 275F/135C Nothing much going on.
• 275-300F/135-149C  Beans turns greener.
• 330-345F/165-174C Green turns to yellow.
• 350-355F/176-180C From yellow to tanned yellow.
• 360F/182C Light tan.
• 370F/188C Medium tan.
• 375F/190C Dark tan.
• 385F/196C Light brown.
• 385-390F/196-199C First crack begins.
• 400-405F/204-207C Rolling first crack – then slowing down.
• 410-420F/210-215C Nice medium brown.
• 415F/212C Second crack beginning.
• 422-424F/216-217C Rolling second crack.
• 425F/218C Beans turn oily and smoke a lot.
• 426-428F/219-220C  Second crack slowing, lots of oil

Beyond this point there be dragons, starbucks like, better get the fire extinguisher out.

The next day I do my useual routine and pull a shot.

WOW.. I swear it was like someone dumped peanuts and almonds into the beans while I wasn’t looking, it was amazing.

I try and pull another later and… nothing. :wahhhhh:

Been trying all week to replicate it, but I can’t. I can get hints at the same peanut and almond aroma but nothing like that shot, it was so in my face you know like those sirups with peanut and almonds only this was straight up the beans real taste.

The variables I’m missing must have been in the dose, distribution, or temperature. The roast was my exact same profile for MM. I think I’m gonna have that temp. probe mod done to my Domobar Super, then at least next time I would know the temperature.

It was soooo good, the quest continues.