We're in Business!

I haven't shared anything on my blog for a couple months and there is a valid reason. Mainly I have been finishing my Masters of Science in Information Systems Management and secondarily I was running out of options for how I was going to roast out of the third floor of our home. With that said, on to the great news.

I graduated a couple of weeks ago and I have started to have more free time back in my life. I have used that free time to get my roaster setup. Within the last two weeks I completely cleaned and pressure washed my garage, moved the roaster down three stories back into the garage, purchased additional shop equipment such as various sizes of bags, purchased multiple containers to hold green beans to maintain freshness and humidity levels, installed new outlets for power around my roasting shop, put in a new work table, but most importantly I have my Diedrich IR-3's venting and gas hooked up and my sweet red bundle of hot roasting goodness is producing some of the finest fresh roasted coffee in Seattle.

The whole process started out with seasoning the drum. I purchased 30lbs of leftover (past years) green beans at a greatly reduced price from Atlas Coffee. They probably should have been free since I suspect they will be getting a lot more business from me in the future. Oh well. The next step was loading the drum with about 3.3lbs of coffee and taking it to Vienna roast so that the beans get nice and oily and coat the entire drum with nice oils. The seasoning process is a great opportunity to get to know the roaster without worrying about performing all of right air flow and gas flow operations at exactly the right times and you don't have to worry about getting the right consistency since you are throwing away all of the beans anyways.

After eight batches of oily goodness the drum was seasoned and I was ready to try my hand at my first roast for consumption batch of coffee. I decided the I would go with my 35th Ave Espresso blend since I knew exactly how deep I liked to take the blend. Sixteen minutes later and about 10 seconds in to second crack a nice full city roast with just a couple splotches of oil came pouring down into the agitator. It looks beautiful and the roast is so even! I will try and take pictures of the machine and the process over the next couple days and maybe I can even post a video or two on Youtube of the roaster in action.

Thanks for everyone's support!
Look for more news soon!