Tuesday, May 9, 2023

How To Roast Coffee - May 9th 2023

A New App to Tune Your Roaster

BH Unlimited Update, May 9th 2023

When your coffee roaster finally arrives at your roastery, it's tempting to jump in and start roasting right away. But there are a few things you need to do first, if you want to get good results.

If you don't take the time to tune your roaster, you might never get the consistency and quality you're looking for. Even if the manufacturer assures you that everything is set up correctly, it's wise to check for yourself.

This week in How To Roast Coffee with Scott Rao, our next chapter shows you how to correctly tune all the settings on your roaster, beginning with drum speed. Getting the right drum speed is often overlooked, but vitally important — this week's lessons explain why, including an interactive app that visualises exactly what happens if you get the drum speed wrong.

Your Questions for Cxffeeblack

Renata Henderson and Bartholomew Jones from Cxffeeblack in Memphis are filming an AMA session for us next week. Cxffeeblack is a social enterprise set up with the intention to reconnect the Black community with the Black history of coffee and to create more opportunities in the industry for people of colour.

Cxffeeblack have just launched the Black Barista Exchange Fundraiser. The fundraising is achieved via a pre-sale of a sneaker design, and not just any sneaker … this sneaker. If they sell 1000 pre-orders by October, Cxffeeblack will use the funds to sponsor four baristas from across Africa to attend the Color of Coffee Collective 2024 and a whole lot more besides.

They're also expert roasters at Cxffeeblack — Renata Henderson, their head roaster uses a spouting bed roaster from Coffee Crafters. So maybe you'd like some tips on ways to navigate your way around what could well be a much smarter way to roast? Or maybe you'd like to know more about how to set up a social enterprise? To send your questions through to Renata and Bartholomew, here's a link to the form we're using. You've got till Monday to get those Qs in.

BH Tools

Rings, Combs, Tampers and Bowls are in stock at our Australia, US and Hong Kong warehouses. Head to www.baristahustletools.com

Quick links

Did you catch our latest blog post about the research into organic acids in coffee? One of the authors of the paper in question — Birke Rune et al 2023 — Morten Munchow got in touch this week to tell us about a 2-hour free webinar on the 17th of May with a panel of the four researchers behind the work. They're doing a presentation followed by a Q&A. Here's the link to sign up.

Nice article here from Anne Mercer about the gadgets that caught her eye at the SCA expo in Portland.

Coffee Education — Without the Advertising

BH provides a level of detail about coffee production that platforms like Youtube are unable to obtain, because we are a subscription service — our members pay us to produce the best, most detailed information for them, rather than creating videos that get the most views for an advertiser.

At BH we never do ads for other company's products on our website. There's no product placement in any of our courses, newsletters or blog posts. Our only income comes from what you pay for your subscriptions.

When you see machinery or coffee gear mentioned in any of our educational material, or featured in our course videos, we have chosen to use that equipment because we like using it, because we think it's historically significant in the evolution of the espresso machine, or because it shows you something you need to see about modern coffee culture. It's as simple as that.