This is gonna be personal.First, the explanation. Deft. It is skill with the hands… It is only and nothing more than manual labor. For sure, everyone that touches and somehow affects the quality of coffee is engaged with it in a personal way. That’s it. My part in this is that I am a roaster of coffee—the next to last step in its preparation before consumption. I find coffee to be everything and more than what helps me wake up in the am… it is food. And like every other food, it can be bland and nothing more than sustenance, or it can transcend the ordinary, the merely not-dead and become an integral part of the complexity and richness of life. A symbol… no. More than a symbol. An actual push towards being able to wake up each day and, with bleary eyes and mind, make determined steps toward declaring this is a day I will live the way I intend. Go always toward our dreams.
If our lives have ever come to a point where all we are looking to do is wake up in the morning and get on with our day, all we are doing is being a single tooth in one of an uncountable number of cogs, twittering and twirling through our lives on some other body’s path. But what fun is that? None. I say it is not about treating ourselves to a treat. It is about living every day with the intention that it is a day worth doing something. And if quality is not an integral part of that, then what is the joy of life? Give it your best… Good beer. Good friends. Good whiskey. Good work. Good food. Coffee. Love. Sex. Freedom. Coffee. (Did I actually say coffee twice?)
So anyway. First things first: the roaster.
Simply stated, I want a small device that will allow me to articulate, experiment, and otherwise roast coffee to what I hope will eventually be a very fine degree of precision. One that will evenly distribute the heat through the drum, one that will be also be highly responsive to the application of heat (competing agendas, really). But more than trying to achieve the “perfect” machine (can that exist?) I intend to build one that will allow me to alter it in order to experiment—change drum dimensions, change drum materials, change drum design and know how each shift in materials, in dimensions, in design, affects how the roast progresses.
I have no illusions that this roaster will be what make good coffee. I named this experiment Deft, afterall. I wrapped it’s name around skilled fingers, around the notion of manual labor. What moves the fingers? The soul. Passion drives the soul. And without someone, someone with vision seeing where to take the coffee, then it is simply lost.
So anyway, back to the device itself. Here is my checklist:
Roast 0.25 – 1.25 lb (green) coffee, continuously
Roast so evenly. Very evenly.
Infinitely adjustable flame, such that the roast can extend between absurd extremes (4min roast to 25+min roast times- this is about being able to stretch or compress sections of the roast, not getting a 30 min roast.)
Able to replace drum with other composition, other dimensions
Able to adjust drum rotation speeds
Able to easily (relatively) change out flame design (design of the flame delivery)
THE DRUM SHOULD:
Distribute the heat. Evenly.
Allow the roast environment to be highly responsive
Be non-reactive to the coffee (wrt to the flavor) - traditionally, drums have been made of mild carbon steel, but Stainless Steel is intriguing to me…
1) Steel (mild, carbon)
2) 317 Stainless Steel/Copper
3) 317 SS/Aluminum
4) 317 SS/Copper/Aluminum
5) 317 SS/Mild Steel
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