Seattle Masterclasses

The Roasting Masterclasses in Seattle are nearly sold out, but there are a few spots remaining for the morning session.  Thank you to those who are attending -- I'm grateful for the faith and support.  I'm excited for the classes, to challenge the participating roasters, and to be challenged in return.

I’ve had to turn away a few prospective afternoon-class attendees due to space limitations.  I’m considering adding a class on the morning of April 21 if there is demand for it.  So, if you’re interested, please email me at scott@scottrao.com.  If there is enough interest, I’ll add one more class.  Thank you.

YES or NO is NO MORE

I had high hopes for YES or NO, but it has turned out to be more difficult than expected to collect questions suited to the format.  So YES or NO is no more.  My apologies.

Many readers emailed excellent questions, but addressing those questions properly often required either more context from them or much more than a simple yes or no answer from me.  I found myself emailing complex explanations to many of the questioners.  That sorta defeated the purpose of the exercise.

If someone has a suggestion for a way to offer a public-coffee-knowledge resource without my neeeding to devote more than an hour per week to the project, please write a comment here.   I'd love to hear your idea.

Bean Probe Project

I’m working on a project related to bean probes. It should be completed in the next month or two.  In the meantime, I’d like to ask readers' assistance to help illustrate some points on this blog about bean probes.

I’m looking for roasters who: -use Cropster -have two or more bean probes of different sizes installed within 4cm of each other in one machine -are willing to send me a screenshot of a roast curve showing the readouts from multiple bean probes. I'm happy to name the roaster of each curve or keep it anonymous, whatever you prefer.

If you qualify, before sending a screenshot please set the time, temperature, and ROR ranges such that your BT ROR curve fills the entire graph from top to bottom and left to right. Please also indicate machine type and batch size (i.e Diedrich IR12, 7kg batch).

If I can gather a few such graphs, I’d like to post a couple here to illustrate the effects of different probes on ROR curves. Thanks.

Photo credit: Johan Harmide