Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

The lighter roast only had slight changes from the initial exploratory roast which again boosted intensity, this time of a nutty flavor that I wanted to highlight in this coffee, but also had the pleasant surprise of introducing just a little bit of a honey flavor that connects well with the sweetness in the cup.

The roasting plan for the darker roast is likely to look strange to people who get their roasting plans from others. I massively stretched out the period after the color change from yellow to brown prior to first crack and then pushed faster through to the end. The goal was to get a cup where the smoky flavor expected of a French Roast dominated the cup without sacrificing intensity of flavor (identified as a problem in a faster exploratory roast) or body.

Test batches with the new coffee from Brazil turned out very even in roast. 0.4 points difference between whole bean and ground degree of roast measurements on the medium roast, 0.0 points difference for the darker roast.

By project all I really mean is a folder where I can start dumping files as I work on things. My expectation for this one is that it's something that I'll work on a little bit at a time over the next year or two. I'm not in any hurry to work on it as there are two other books in progress that I want to get out first.

Did some work figuring out the roasting plans for a new coffee from Brazil. I've also set up a new project where I can collect my notes for that roasting journal project I mentioned earlier and typed up today's work into that.

The past week was not great for finishing the book and I think the earliest I can possibly get it to the point that I'm ready for feedback is end of day Tuesday. I'm getting exhausted and need this to be done. Then I need a day off for intensive napping with the cat.

I want to get at least one more figure done for the book tonight, but it'll have to be after I eat some food. Lots of good text revisions done today as well.

My sister is having her Internet access restored after a multi-day outage. I already told her that it was extremely unlikely that the problem described was in her house and the technician has now reached the same conclusion. This failure to notice problems with their equipment in their own racks for multiple days is what got me to switch providers at my house a long time ago.

(I'm trying to stick entirely to the easy and practical math and not going off into crazy impenetrable stuff that the reader probably can't tune to match the thermodynamics of the equipment they're using even if they did have a reason to expect it to be useful)

Added math to the book, including a very small number of problems for the reader to solve. I expect the reaction at that point is going to be, "WTF is this math doing here?" but I promise it's useful.

Last night's dream was very long. I was hanging out with someone (who, why? don't know) at a small library (set re-used from another dream some years back). He was working on a paper. I found some fiction to read (in the dream I had already read the book) and got about two thirds through that. Put the book back on the shelf when it was time to leave. Then we went to a net cafe where he streamed Sim City, hooked up with 2 more ppl. At the end there was a ride on a bus with extremely tiny seats.

I've warned the cat that she's going to fall off the couch if she keeps rolling around like she is.

This explains a depressingly large amount of accepted (but wrong) ideas in coffee roasting.

Breaking down roasting data like this makes it easier to verify successful control outside of intended roasting differences. If the graphs of data before and after the intended change line up, it's fair to attribute differences in flavor to the intended difference. If unintended variations can be seen, those might be the source of some differences in flavor. If you attribute flavor differences from unintended roasting differences to the intended change you'll confidently reach wrong conclusions.

This one shows two batches of coffee in four graphs: one with all the data, one showing the region prior to an intended change in roasting, one showing the region of an intended roasting change, and one that shifts data from one batch along the time axis to make it easier to compare the range after the intended difference.

Did another full page figure for the book. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up some motivation to continue working on later needed tasks after dinner.

Customer conversations are pretty dark today. While looking the place over I heard three separate conversations at different tables at the same time about different people who got shot.

Someone abandoned cassette tapes on the reading shelf. They're all like weird religious knock off music aimed at kids. Do kids even know what cassette tapes are these days? Can you even buy a walkman in a brick and mortar store anymore? The whole thing seems ill-conceived.

Entrance to the building is not on the same street as the address if you did happen to know the address. Poor communication skills seem to be a core value as the receipt I got also has the name of my business wrong because why bother listening (or reading it off the check) when you can just make some shit up. They're also claiming I'm purchasing the extra bins, but those bins remain property of the city so purchase isn't exactly the right word there.

Needed to deal with the Dept. of Public Works today, but it's as if the city has gone out of its way to be as unhelpful as possible. The letter letting me know that I needed to contact them because of changes in how business recycling pick up is handled says that to do the thing we need to do, call a phone number. Call the number, they say they can't do anything over the phone, I have to stop by the office in person. Address not volunteered, also not any of the addresses on the letter.