Silence and Roasting Smoke

We've been quiet here lately...and haven't been producing much coffee.

I moved our roaster to the shop last week (maybe the week before, but I'm starting to get confused myself on how long this has taken) and thoroughly cleaned it. Top to bottom, left to right, six ways of Sunday. The roaster is probably about five years old and I think I may be the first to give it a thorough cleaning. Such was the start of my troubles...

After cleaning, the drum worked fine. But I broke the heat probe and so cannot tell the temperature inside the roaster, no pre-heat, guessing on what temp I'm roasting to, etc. One is in the mail from the nice folks at Ambex, but I still have a day or two before it arrives.

The cooling tray fan bound up--nothing happening. Once I finally got it unbound (involving taking it completely apart and enough WD-40 inhalation to kill a small horse) it is so loud that I need to wear earplugs. Sigh. It was quieter when it was dirty.

The sweeper has been the thorn in my flesh. The motor runs from the get-go, without the sweeper actually turning. When I get around to turning it on, it moves slowly. Then when I turn it off, it keeps on going. Sigh. It turns out to be an easy fix, I messed something up in the wiring. It will work fine tomorrow.

Ducting is leaking worse than a government employee to the media. New, permanent ducting is being installed next week (hopefully), but now I just am laying the sealant on pretty thick.

So the roasting, for all intents and purposes, has been shut down for about two weeks. I've been out of decaf for who-knows-how-long and I'm beginning to get worn down by the whole process. Thanks to Phil at La Prima, though, who supplied us with an emergency 13lbs that we blew threw in almost one day. I'm hoping that by the end of my 16 hour day tomorrow I'll be going strong, but I've been hoping that for awhile.

Anyway, roasting smoke. I wrote on this blog, some time ago, about distilling coffee smoke. Aside from some interesting culinary possibilities, I'm now wondering if it would be a good way to control the smoke I'll inevitably produce in this residential neighborhood. I certainly want to be a good neighbor. The difficulty, as I see it, is to make sure that no chaff goes out of the stack and into the condensing unit--something not possible with the setup I have. Otherwise, all that will happen is a solid mass of chaff that will back up the roaster and...fire. Once that problem is taken care of, though, this could be a major innovation in the "greening" of the coffee industry. Maybe...I'll keep you posted.