dustinfluke.com

So I broke down the kirby motor a couple of weeks ago in an effort to clean that puppy up. You can imagine the grossness that is wanting to roast coffee with a device that used to pick up dirt. I’m glad to say that it was relatively easy to tear this vacuum down  and disassemble the parts that handle the air flow.

Here is the vacuum cleaner base before I began removing parts.

There were 5 screws holding on the front cover. Once removed, we can see the entire front area and propeller. I also had to remove the safety lever on the front from the housing to have some wiggle room.

Here is the back part of the motor as viewed with the switch to the right. The outer housing was held on with 4 screws.

And a view of the left side.

Here is a close up view of the propeller and shaft. Youc an see the dirt that is caked on.

The main shaft will separate by rotating it clockwise. The propeller slides right off. At this point I cleaned the propeller and housing. I still have a little bit of work to do on the metal housing with a wire brush. The plastic propeller cleaned up nicely in the kitchen sink with some soaking and muscle put into it.

Next, I’ll put all the parts back together and start the air flow testing.

As soon as I get all this media stuff figured/fixed/worked out I’ll have some pics and a new post about the roaster project, as well as a book/manual type thing I’m thinking about writing.

It seems that for the past couple of years I’ve always wanted to have a web site that is good, but I’ve never gotten around to it. I really desire a django powered site, but how much do I really need that in favor of something that just works? My wife has a nice looking blog that she actually pushes new content to, unlike my own “is never finished” website that has been stagnating for the last 2 years or so.

That said, I’m looking at the new year hoping for some changes in these areas. I might be using wordpress again, but it’s better than using nothing.

On a side note, I also have an upcoming coffee project I’ll be working on launching. Hopefully this will be the start to a long road of success in a coffee selling and roasting business, but we’ll see where it takes me. I need some dollars to start up, so while we’re waiting on that to be collected, I’ll be working on some video projects I have an idea for. I might even start up the website again, or just publish it as-is so there is more motivation to get this off the ground.

I was kind of thrilled to see that someone is taking some pretty bold moves in the coffee industry. The Chicago Tribune
has a story about how Intelligentsia has taken all the coffee urns out of their stores in favor of per cup coffee. I’ve personally wished that more places would do this, but properly. I once opted for a press pot at LPT (La Prima Tazza) and the barista, while good on the espresso machine, didn’t know how much coffee or how to prepare a press pot. The result was an over-priced flavored water. I’ve often told myself, if I ever open a cafe, I’ll have very little prepared coffee, but more of an “on demand” coffee that focuses on quality and home roasting. We’ll see.

So, I know I put it on twitter, but I just have to record in some way my excitement to discover that the sampler pack of beans I got from Sweet Maria’s a while ago contains flat berry El Salvador Matalapa Estate coffee. I have half of a pound. So what’s the big deal? I was looking for notes on this coffee, and came across this:

Notes: Here’s the scoop on Bourbon coffees (pronounced Burr-Bone). Bourbon coffee is a classic cultivar, named for the island of Bourbon (now called Reunion) where it was originally cultivated. When we call it classic, we mean not just the fact that it is a lower-yeild, heirloom plant, and that it has a very dense seed that roasts well, but also the cup character…..We had a flat bean lot earlier this season, and with that same coffee the Intelligentsia barista won the US Barista Competition. Clearly, this has more uses than just drip brewing. ….

So – I can happily say I own half a pound of national championship green coffee! That is, until I roast it and enjoy it from my drip brewer…

So I’m starting my coffee application. I’ve got loads of notes in my new moleskine, and for the first time tonight, I think I’ve managed to wrap my head around a lot of it. Such as, “Oh, I don’t need to have separate tables of things that are going to have address1, address2, city, state, country, phone, etc. I just need basic places with place types tied to them.” That would allow me to have a place that is more than one type of place, e.g. a business that is a coffee roaster and a retail coffee house. Why did it take me so long to figure that out? So, as I continue to polish up this blog, which currently looks horrible, and learn more about writing up applications, I think I’m starting to “get it.” — Only now I feel like utilizing Nathan’s basic apps.

I guess we’ll see. I sure could use the nice shortcut, given I’ve got quite a few items to build in, and the profiles would also help immensely.

Okay, so I’m reading the latest newsletter from PT’s coffee. They go on about how they won exactly what they wanted – two batches of Esmeralda Especial. After having read sweetmaria’s blog post about it, and viewing the auction results, PT’s Esmeralda offering page is a little bit of a shocker. At an average price of $12.58 per pound they’re selling 12 oz roasted for $32.50. Taken into account they will likely roast 16 oz to get 12 oz of roasted product. That’s almost a $20.00 profit. Oh well, I’m just glad I roast my own coffee, and will seek to get a pound of batch #2 from sweetmaria’s. I may even decide to do a test between PT’s batch 10 and sweetmaria’s batch 10 that I’ll roast myself. Of course, then I’ll be broke.

I’m probably being a little harsh, but I guess even though they have amazing baristas, I’ve just never been super impressed by their coffee. It’s just an opinion. Maybe they can change my mind in the future..

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about roasting coffee, coffee shops, selling coffee, designing a new coffee roasting apparatus for personal use, etc. etc. No – I’m not considering attempting such a venture, but I’m certainly thinking about it. If I could, I’d consider opening a coffee shop / roasterie, but I have little savings, no net worth/assets etc. So there’s no way. Besides, it’s just not the right time, and I have a pretty damn good job that I love (most of the time). Although it does keep me plenty busy, at least busy enough to avoid updating this site. I also have an awesome family that comes first.

While I’ve been thinking about all these things, two goals have come to mind.

1. I want to learn more about coffee roasting, so I’m going to need to do it more often.
2. I want to experiment with creating a fluid bed coffee roasting machine, so that may be a summer completion type project. (For now, the heat gun and bread machine setup will have to work.)
3. I want to establish relationships and face to face contacts for people already in the industry.
4. I want to share my knowledge in hopes of creating a network of people to share knowledge about various aspects of coffee.

I did some searching this evening and found quite a few nice websites devoted to such things. Why, while it’s a pretty stagnant group, I’ve been collecting resources via ma.gnolia on the home roasters group I started. While I will need to think about the direction I want to go with everything, I do want to do some coffee tasting/cupping sometime so I can refine my tastes in order to perfect my own blends.

All in all it’s a lot of stuff, but I’ve decided at certain times of the year, I’ll need to focus more intensely on my various hobbies, namely professional fireworks, coffee, and recently, Christmas light shows.
I’ve also gathered enough knowledge by working at Mediaphormedia about django and Ellington (the product I directly support) that I’ve decided it’s time to ditch Dreamhost (eventually) and have signed up for a Webfaction account.

I’m not really certain what I’m going to do, but I’ve got some ideas, most of which will likely come at the aid of the pros I work with. And most likely I’ll find some new domain name for my coffee ventures, or at least segregate it largely from my personal site, just because it’s more about providing a resource. I’ve seen a lot of coffee related resources out there, and most are largely un-eventful, stagnant, or just plain boring (hey wait, I just described this site). I feel that mixing something I’m really in to along with something else I’m very interested in, I’ll have a nice end result. I guess we’ll see.

So with that, I’m sure that over time I’ll begin to post more and more. I’ve already got some stale videos I’ve been waiting to edit. Here’s to having a nice vacation from work to accomplish some things next week!

Merry Christmas!