chapter 341

The delicious coffee at the Dinosaur BBQ turned out to be the Chris' Coffee Dark Roast Northwest blend. Went down to their national headquarters to pick up a bag and Chris let me take some pictures for our mutual benefit. In State Government we had contracted with their service but used a different blend and the taste was not the same since it was before they began roasting their own beans. You want expresso machines, they got.

Here the Renegade roaster operator in the upstairs of the warehouse runs a batch. It is a Vienna roast of rich Sumatran, Central American and African beans. Not cooked as long or dark as French Roast but it's mellow earthy to an almost slight chocolate flavor.  It's finished during the middle of the second crack. When you are standing there you can hear the popping noise of the beans cracking. 

The cooking is all done by time and temperature. You can see the thermocouple temperature probes for coffee and air temperature on the face of the roaster. This allows for proper cooking in the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) method. I think it simply allows proper balance of heat to achieve the desired cook and quality sought much like the Heisenberg method. This Artisan software screenshot from their web site perhaps best displays the relationships graphically.

First you measure, weigh, and combine the relative proportions of the desired green bean components. I think this next batch was a special blend of Guatemalan for Lakeside Farms. 

Taking a correct sample size of finished product for quality control using the digital Agtron spectrophotometer to measure near infrared roast color quality and recording results. A lot of visual observations, measuring, weighing and note keeping.

Machine weighing and filling up some 5# bags here before the thermal Supersealer conveyor on the right makes ready for packaging during the free moments of the cook process. You don't want to burn the coffee.

Beans and more bean counters. Botanically speaking they are actually seeds from inside a coffee berry.

Downstairs is a larger Jopers roaster seemingly in pretty continuous operation with perhaps some more sophisticated control mechanism.

You cannot capture the size of the warehouse here with packaging material stock. Did not even get into the raw material coffee bean side.

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