Coffee Tao

We’re in process of trying to close on a used roasting machine…we’ve been to look at a couple of decent ones but there’s a San Franciscan in a town about 1.5 hours from Seattle that I have high hopes for. We were supposed to go take a look at it yesterday but unfortunately an avalanche in Snoqualmie Pass prevented our trip, so I pushed the appointment back to Saturday.

I’m excited about the San Franciscan because it’s nearly identical to my last roaster, at about half the cost of a new one. Aside from a digital temperature probe, I like to roast as manually as possible, and this machine is fully manual. I don’t really believe in automatic roast profiling, because so many variables from roast to roast can change the final product and need to be accounted for–from moisture levels to batch size to minor differences between yearly crops. Much has been made about turnkey roasting solutions, and I’ve always resisted them; not just because it eliminates much of the roaster’s art which is the fun part of the job after all, but more importantly, because it can’t be relied upon for consistency. Consistency, at least in my opinion, is best achieved by a roaster who knows his profile well enough to know what to change about the roast on the fly to achieve it despite endless minor variances in the green bean from batch to batch.

Anyway, we’re well on our way, and should have a decision on a machine by this weekend. In the meantime we got an amazing package deal on the industrial kitchen equipment we need for the cupping lab/training space (things like hand sinks and a fridge) thanks to a close-of-business sale over in Bellevue, so we’ll be able to truly start remodeling our space soon. When we get all the equipment over I’ll take a “before” picture to show what we’re starting with.