A Journal, with Pictures

The next step in expand­ing our enjoy­ment of cof­fee is to roast our own green beans. We invest­ed in the Ail­lio Bul­let R1 roast­er and allo­cat­ed a cor­ner of the laun­dry room for our roast­ery. Roast­ing cof­fee pro­duces some smoke so this neces­si­tat­ed installing a hood and duct­ing with a remote exhaust blow­er. It’s com­pact but it works great, in spite of requir­ing a lit­tle bit of engi­neer­ing to make every­thing work effectively.

The Bul­let roast­er is con­trolled by either or both a lap­top or man­u­al­ly through the con­trol pan­el on the front of the machine. The roast­er (machine) is very capa­ble with great con­trol over the process. The roast­er (Me) is doing a great deal of learn­ing about the fas­ci­nat­ing process of select­ing cof­fees from around the world and roast­ing them to per­fec­tion. It’s a whole new world enjoyed by a sig­nif­i­cant com­mu­ni­ty engaged in the process. I hope to share what I learn as I make the jour­ney on this site.