Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

The thing that's going to make the single largest flavor difference is roasting lighter or darker, so on this first batch I pull samples at various roast levels. Ideally this covers a range such that on tasting it's obvious that it runs from too light to too dark.

One of these days I'll upgrade the data logging on the lab roaster. The hardware is only a 10 bit ADC with suboptimal full scale range getting fed from a signal conditioner with too broad a range. Channel isolation is bad and signals are noisy. I needed to bust out the math to get this working acceptably, but it would be better to just swap in better data acquisition hardware.

As usual, I start with 2 pounds at the lab roaster.

Time to figure out how I want to roast this #coffee.

daily cat

cat

piano cat

Daily #cat visit.

Wish I had better quality copies of some of these images.

as opposed to normal email that doesn't have any computers involved at all.

Eating dinner with Dad's cat.

bonus cat

Daily #cat visit.

This is the cat I'm visiting after work until my parents decide to come home. She prefers to stay in her own home rather than just move in with someone.

Construction #cat wants to build a shelf.

#cat

Opened the new cupping spoon I was given at Expo. I like the detail with the flame.

This notion of maximizing differences among samples (while keeping the sample preparation the same) applies to every possible variable. Grind is often too coarse.

The importer sent a roasted sample of one of the Ethiopian coffees along with the green coffee. My standard for sample roasts is a little darker, exhibits fuller expansion. My aim with that is to maximize perceptible differences among coffees while not masking defects. This is not to be confused with making the coffee taste as delicious as possible, which comes later in the product development process.

#coffee cupping setup.