Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

I think I need a better answer to, "how's your Dad?" than, "well, he died in September, so..." Any advice?

Cat time

Tonight's grocery run is the most disappointing one since that time when not 1 item in the ice cream section had cream listed as the top ingredient.

Tonight the cat is alternating between rolling around and hugging me depending on which room I'm in. These rooms will now be known as the rolling room and the hugging room.

I think I've figured out where to put a picture of my cat in the book. (What does my cat have to do with roasted coffee product development? Absolutely nothing, but cats make everything better.)

New decaf coffees are now available through the shop's web site. A couple days later than I hoped to get that up, but it's done now.

https://wilsonscoffee.com/

The current design starts each chapter with the tl;dr version so if you want to fake having read the book you only need to skim 5 pages.

Spent some time last night working on chapter heading layout and ended up with something that I think I might like. Later I'll need to swap in real photos instead of the Atelier Firis fan art that's currently acting as a placeholder.

This is one of those areas where people get themselves worked up at the potential complexity, but it's something that you build up to in straightforward and easy to manage steps.

After I'm done with the book I think I'll do some videos that walk through exercises from the book starting with blending for espresso.

Once I've created the images, put those in place, and gotten through at least a couple rounds of editing I'll be contacting the people who agreed to do technical review for the print book and find out if they're willing to take a look at this one as well.

It's a somewhat opinionated guide to roasted coffee product development. Five chapters. Starts with having a plan for your product line, moves to sample roasting and cupping practices (sourcing coffees that align with your plan), then figuring out how to roast those coffees, a chapter on blending, and ending on finished product quality testing.

I have an ebook draft done. It needs all of its figures and photos, editing, layout, and technical review, but the draft is done. Very much hoping I can get that slammed out by the end of the month, but it could take longer.

My father made the local newspaper's list of notable people who died in 2019.