Coffee Tao

Now that I’ve spent the last two months or so filling out forms for permits, purchasing a roasting machine, finishing the buildout for the roaster, and opening some coffee accounts, it’s time to make the formal announcement: WayOfCoffee.com will soon be changing to become the official site of our new roastery, Fremont Coffee Roasters.

Starting this blog was a way for me to stay connected to the coffee world after I left my roasting position at Greyfriar’s Coffee and Tea to take a dot-com job. Sooner than I imagined, I found myself in a position to open my own roastery here in Seattle without needing to leave my current job. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we will be formally opening Fremont Coffee Roasters for business very soon.

As a result, Coffee Tao will undergo a little makeover to become the site for Fremont Coffee Roasters. I’ll still blog about all things coffee–more frequently now that our spare time isn’t fully taken up by laying gas and electric lines, designing sales materials, etc.

So keep an eye on this space, as we’ll open the new site (and the business) very soon. I look forward to not only continuing to discuss coffee-related news and reviews, but also offering fine roasted single-origin coffees and pursuing my vision of offering a hand-selected array of direct trade estate coffees.

See you soon!

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Seems we’ve figured out our flame issue–a dirty thermal coupling was causing the flame to go out at temperatures above 380 degrees. We’ve partially disassembled the burners, cleaned it, and realigned it. Our initial test run was promising, but I’m going to give it a real shot today.

Apologies if it seems like I’ve been quiet on the coffee front lately; we’re just putting our heads down and our nose to the grindstone trying to get to production status, and there’s a lot of niggling details to pay attention to. I keep reminding myself not to get impatient, because the truth is we’re ahead of schedule and under budget, but I still feel like we could have done this faster. Though it’s always easy to think that way with the benefit of hindsight, of course.

So close! Hopefully here in a couple of hours we’ll turn out our first true batch of coffee…

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Used the machine for its first roast today.  How’d it go, you ask?  Terribly, ha ha…turns out our gas pressure is too low, so the flame kept going out.  I tested it with a pound of Brazil Cerrado–almost got something manageable, but the third time the burners lost their flame, I couldn’t relight it for love or money.  The result was a baked bean that took nearly four full minutes between the first and second cracks.  Yeesh.

Well, we’ll fix the gas line tomorrow (I hope) and try again.  We’re almost there, just a few more bugs to work out.  It’s a busy time and we’re very excited, but equipment installation–especially when you’re doing it on your own–takes a lot of attention to detail, and a lot of trial and error.  We’ll get there.

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