Up and Running

Up and Running by detourcoffee

March 16, 2009, 2:12 pm
Filed under: coffee, espresso, roasting | Tags: Anfim, Diedrich, La Marzocco, roasting

Well, it’s been a long road to get here. Weeks of renovation and stripping down and cleaning the very dirty IR12 have paid off, the roaster is finally up and running and I’ve already run about 5 roasts through it.

 

The chimney install took a bit longer than expected due to Selkirk missing 3 parts in the order. My gas guy, Lee, a great oldtimer (who also had a remarkable resemblance to my dad), probably lost money or at least time on the install. He thought he could do it in a day but it took more than 3. Installing a roaster in an older building presents a bunch of challenges: requiring two separate kits to get through the ceiling and the sloped roof, which give more than adequate room from combustibles. Lee seemed to really enjoy the challenge of engineering the whole install and his thoroughness instilled me with confidence.

I was really excited to spark up the roaster for the first time and momentarily it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. There must have been some residual air left in the gas line and the pilot took ages to light. My first batch was a mélange of beans to clean the roaster out, being the first roast to go through it in probably a year. It went pretty well and I roughly hit the target times and temps I was looking for even though I wasn’t roasting a full batch.

As you can see from the pictures, I got a bit crafty with the install and stapled a few of my first burlap bags down to the roaster base and epoxied over top.

At the “front” of the shop you’ll notice our counter, which is actually an 8′ long antique woodworking bench. If you look closely you’ll also notice our other exciting purchase, a La Marzocco GS3 paired with an Anfim Super Camaino. I’m really loving the GS3, which spent the first couple weeks on my kitchen counter before going down to the shop. The ability to maintain stable temperature on back to back shots and dose pretty consistently from the Search modified Anfim has been great. I’m really looking forward to being able to communicate with wholesale customers about dose, temperature, volume and timing when it comes to espresso. Around the same time I spotted a good deal on a used GB5 on ebay but I was drawn to the portability of the GS3 for coffee events and getting a water line to the espresso machine location would have been a challenge. My only complaint is the steam wand performance. It is really hard to get good microfoam from the cool touch steam wand. Similar complaints have been discussed online and the common solution seems to be replacement of the wand with a new non cool touch version.

In the coming weeks we’ll be working on our espresso blend and will be receiving some more coffees. A nice Ethiopian Sidamo, Tanzanian Peaberry, Columbian, Mexican and Guatemalan (some of which we cupped in an earlier post) will be joining the line up. We hope to open our doors to the public in a couple weeks and will initially open strictly on the weekend.

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