Custom Ikea Home Espresso Bar

I just completed setting up my custom Ikea coffee bar.  I built the bar out of a 3-drawer 15" cabinet and a 21" 2-shelf single door cabinet.  The countertop is laminate, but it seems pretty durable. 

Featured on the bar is my Quick Mill Vetrano, a Macap M4 espresso grinder, and a Breville Ikon grinder used for press pot and the occasional cupping session. 

The new bar is quite a nice upgrade from my previous version, a kitchen cart on wheels from Lowes.  The cart worked fine, but it was top heavy and wobbly. 

The unit is free standing on adjustable steel legs, which allowed my to compensate for a slightly sloping floor in the breakfast nook.

Since this is a dedicated coffee bar, separate from our kitchen, I couldn't resist going with an in-counter knockout chute.  The chute is by Rattleware and was ordered from Chris' Coffee.

 

 

Interior view showing the waste basket.  Notice that the knock chute is deep enough to actually go into the opening of the waste basket.

 

 

 

I mounted my power strip to the inside wall, providing easy access to the appliance timer.

 

 

 

The Ikea drawers are great, they run the full depth of the cabinet and pull out completely.  I haven't totally decided how to arrange all of my coffee bar paraphernalia.

Variac + Kill-A-Watt + Behmor = Better Results

I'm seeing much better results with my Behmor now that I added the Kill-A-Watt device.

I like to keep things at around 118VAC throughout the roast. Without the Variac, the voltage will drop down into the 111-113 after about 7.5 minutes. The voltage with no load at the outlet I'm using is around 122VAC.

The Variac is not a "set and forget" device. The voltage in my house seems to fluctuate quite a bit and the load of the roaster changes throughout the roast cycle. To keep things at 118 I have to keep an eye on the Kill-A-Watt and make frequent small tweaks to the Variac.

With consistent voltage I can predict C1 & C2 within a few seconds for a given coffee. I keep fairly detailed log which makes it easy to compare crack times between batches. P2 seems like the best profile to me, but it's important to do a couple of P1 roasts so that you know when to expect C1 to start.

I set things up with P2 so that the temp drop occurs right after C1 gets rolling, otherwise it seems like the first crack is either very brief or very late.... makes me wonder if the coffee is baking in those cases.

Coffee Travel Kit

Life has been pretty busy with lots of non-coffee stuff lately so I haven't put much time into this blog. Hopefully I'll have some bandwidth available soon to share some thoughts and experiences about my Behmor 1600 now that I've been using it for a few months. Anyway, for now a quick post about coffee while on the road.

My wife and I just returned from a week of vacation at a resort in Jamaica. I brought along my travel kit which consists of the follow:
- PeDe hand grinder
- Bodum 3 Cup FP
- Bodum Mini-Ibis Kettle

This is actually my cubicle coffee bar that I usually keep at work. Whenever we go out of town I just have to remember to bring it home before the trip. It's a great set up because everything is pretty small and sturdy. The only thing I'd like to change for now is to get a french press that is not glass. I've already had one of these Bodums shatter in my carry-on bag.

I've been thinking about trying out one of the Handpresso devices that I've seen advertised on CG, but I wish it wasn't pod use only.

What to you use when traveling?

Basement Roasting Shrine

I've been roasting in my basement for quite a while now- I had rigged up a 4" dryer duct and vent to direct most of the smoke and fumes from my iRoast2 out a nearby window. Here is the original set up before the Behmor came:

Once the Behmor arrived I knew I needed to find a different ventilation solution since the smoke doesn't just come out of one convenient opening like with the IR2.

The range hood in my kitchen is the kind that just shoots the air back into the room, so roasting under it was out of the question. I decided to swing into the Sears Outlet near my house to see if I could find a good deal on a range hood for the basement.

I was able to score a 36" hood with a 200 CFM rating that had all of its parts intact for $38. It is in rough shape cosmetically, but since it's in the basement I could care less. I found a 3.25 X 10" to 4" reducer and did a little creative engineering to hook the hood up to my existing dryer duct.
Here's a close up showing the reason it was for sale at the scratch & dent outlet:

The results are great. With the quietness of the Behmor along with the excellent ventilation, I can now roast a batch of coffee without anyone in the house even noticing.

Behmor 1600 Inital Thoughts

Up until now my only roasting experience has been with my Hearthware iRoast2, which I've had for a little over a year now. The IR2 has served me well, but the small batch sizes and noise were beginning to be a PITA. I've been following the hype about the new Behmor 1600 roaster and decided to give one a try.

I've run through about 10 roasts so far and wanted to briefly post some initial thoughts.

What I like

• Silence - The Behmor is incredibly quiet. Coming from the iRoast2, I can't stress enough how much of an improvement this is. I had never really heard the sounds of C1 & C2 until my first batch with the Behmor. The ability to hear what's going on will lead to better repeatability.
  
• Back to back roasting - I like the ability to roast multiple batches back to back. This allows me to do longer roasting sessions less often.
• Batch size - The flexibility to roast a range of batch sizes is one of the biggest selling points for me.
• Price - At $299 with 8 pounds of green coffee from Sweet Marias, it's a great deal. I think the Hottop roaster is probably better in many ways (temp control and cooling speed), but at more the double the price, it's hard to justify.
  

What I don't like:

• Cooling - I don't have temp readings to back this up, but it does seems to take a really long time to get the beans cool. You can open the door during the cooling cycle (which I think is a must), but you'll end up with chaff flying everywhere.
  
• Limited control - No ability to change power settings on the fly. The roaster allows a decent amount of control before you start the roasting cycle, but once you start there's not much that can be down to react to changes. I will probably try using the Variac to bring in some on-the-fly tweaking.
  
• Lack of thermometry - It would be nice if there was a way to have some idea about the temps inside the roaster. However, the lack of control during the roast kind of makes it less important. Any kind of temp reading from inside the roaster would be helpful mainly for logging and repeatability.
  
• Poor visibility - The unit does have an on-board light, but it's still difficult to really see what the beans are looking like. Apparently the chaff collector can be modified to improve visibility, but I think I can do without making this mod. I have found myself paying more attention to the sounds and smells, and also relying on my roasting logs to predict the onset of C2.
  

So, How's The Coffee?

My first few batches using the P3 or P4 profiles, which deliver a slow ramp up to full power, were all pretty disappointing. The aroma was "missing" or weak, and the flavor was flat and uninteresting. I suspect the slow ramp up is stretching out the time to reach C1 too much and possibly baking the coffee.

Lately I've been using P1 (full power) and P2 (s-curve) and have found the coffee to be much better. P2 shows the most potential if you have good data to predict when C1 will start for a given coffee. The trick is to have the lower power stage kick in just as C1 gets going. The roaster reduces power to 70% in the second stage for a few minutes, then kicks back up to 100% to finish it off.

Bottom Line
Even though the results haven't blown me away yet, I can definitely see potential in this roaster. I think the keys are avoiding the P3, P4, and P5 profiles and sticking P1 or P2 - watching, listening and smelling carefully to know when to stop the roast.

Macap M4 Doser Mod

I spent a few minutes searching the web for some instructions on disassembling the doser on a Macap grinder but came up empty. I decided to go for it on my own and documented the steps along the way. It isn't really very hard, and it's probably very similar to the Mazzer doser which has been documented a number of times.

My goals were to improve the sweeping action of the doser with the electrical tape mod and to quiet down some loud buzzing sounds coming from the plastic housing and the metal dosing sector.

Tools needed: small Phillips screwdriver, 5mm Allen key, 7mm socket or small wrench, pliers, hobby knife, and black electrical tape.

The first step is to remove the two 7mm machine screws that hold the plastic housing onto the grinder body. They come out without much resistance and the housing pops right off.






The doser with the plastic housing removed.








This nut is covered with a slotted plastic cap that you can pull right off with your hand. The pin near the top must be removed - I used a small nail and a pair of pliers to get this done. Once the pin is out, remove the nut.





After the nut is removed, the top of the dosing star will slip right off. There are three screws on the bottom of the star can be removed if you want to clean everything.






The flat metal piece is the dosing sector. This was the source of alot of vibration in my grinder. I decided that for my usage, this thing serves no purpose so it was left out during the reassembly.






To get the doser body off of the grinder, turn it on it's side and remove the three small screws on the bottom plate. Next, use a 5mm Allen key to remove the single bolt that holds the doser in place.

The doser is now removed

There is a plastic cover on the bottom of the doser held on by two small screws. Remove the cover and use a small nail to push out the set pin that holds everything together. Once the pin is out, you can slide the lower doser star out.





The lower dosing star showing the built up coffee gunk.








Close-up of the tape mod. I put the tape on the trailing edge of 3 of the vanes. I folded up the bottom edge of the tape so that there would not be any adhesive exposed inside the doser.






Since I grind per shot, the metal dosing sector serves no use to me. I decided to leave it out... less places for coffee to get stuck and much less noise.






There was alot of buzzing coming from the plastic to metal contact on the doser housing. I used a single layer of electrical tape to help create a snug fit. The tape cannot be seen once the cylinder is in place.





One other change I made was to use a piece of padded double-sided tape as a bumper for the dosing lever. This change makes a big difference in sound since I thwack the dosing lever aggressively while grinding.





Doser sweep - before & after
Here's a shot of pre-tape mod doser sweep. The Macap sweeps fairly clean right out of the box. There is always a bit of coffee packed into the edges though.






With the tape mod, the doser sweeps out absolutely spotless! This picture was taken after a couple of shots and just a few thwacks of the lever.

My Home Espresso Routine

Here's a recent YouTube video showing my complete espresso routine. I'm not usually so slow in my movements, I guess I was moving slower so that my camera person (wife) would know where I was going.

I use a pretty light initial tamp paying alot of attention to the alignment of the tamper piston with the basket. I also follow up with a NSEW side-scraping tamp... personally I find it gives me more even extractions. I acknowledge that this extra step would most certainly not be practical in a real coffee shop.

This shot was 18g of Espresso Aficianado from Counter Culture, pulled in around 28 seconds, resulting in a 1.5 ounce ristretto. Overall, I'd say the shot is typical of what I'm pulling lately.