User Innovation: building your own coffee roaster
There are other Vital Grills, eg. from Gourmet Maxx, but they don t seem to be suitable for roasting coffee. Any other chicken roasting oven oven will do it as well if you build a drum by yourself. ’
Some industrial coffee roasting companies use the hot air roasting method: Hot-air roasters force heated air through a screen or perforated plate under the coffee beans with sufficient force to lift the beans. Heat is transferred to the beans as they tumble and circulate within this fluidized bed. There are two temperature thresholds called "cracks" that roasters listen for. At about 205–207 °C, beans will emit a cracking sound. This point is called "first crack" bean doubles in size, becomes a light brown color and experiences a weight loss of approximately 5%. When the beans are at about 224–227 °C, the beans emit a "second crack." This is the dividing point between medium and dark roasts. !
The degree of roast can be determined by the colour (Agtron scale), the bean s inner temperature and the sounds during the process, the smell and the taste. ’
Capacity 20 kg, used for gourmet coffee with pleasantly good results. Problem, not everyone has such a gourmet coffee place around the corner.
The roasters shown on the pictures have a capacity of 1200-2000kg/h http://www.diedrichroasters.com http://www.probatburns.com
Rather freshly roasted coffee is much more aromatic than coffee roasted 2 months ago People have their personal gusto, some like it more bitter, some rather sour, roast like you want, create your own blends People can roast portions of the size depending on their consumption Depending on the intensity of roasting, the coffee tastes rather sour or rather bitter. For light roasting, it s rather sour, but less bitter. An intense roast tastes a little sweet but also more bitter. ‘
The Vital Grill comes with a drum for french fries. Fill the wholes on the sides of the drum so that beans don't fall out.
You also need to get rid of a security feature: Bypass the overheat protection function with a bridge. That brings you to the dangerous side. Now the Grill doesn't turn off every time it gets a bit hot. Like this the roasting process will not be interrupted.
The PID serves to control heating in a way to get a stable temperature. PID: proportional–integral–derivative controller
Italian engines for Italian coffee
The electronic parts can be bought at stores, eg. Conrad, or at specialised internet shops. There are endless threads on the topic that can be found in relevant forums www.kaffee-netz.de www.coffeeforums.com www.coffeegeeks.com
The manufacturers of home roasters can profit from economies of scope e.g. when they produce other similar home use products like ovens
However, some companies advertize their products for dual use • An unmodified chicken grill is advertized as a coffee roaster (Chinese company) • An popcorn popper is advertized as a coffee roaster or vice versa
interpretive flexibility (in this of the producer / its marketing department), but still... no modification or upgrade kit
Chaff collection: Separates coffee bean peels and gases exhausted during roasting from the beans www.genecafe.com Other coffee roasting machines for using at home: Alpenröst von Swissmar, not produced anymore since 1999 Behmor 1600, www.behmor.com Hottop, www.hottopusa.com “
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Relation to lecture (educated guess as it s only our 2nd lecture) ’
Drivers: dissatisfaction: strive for better coffee. (Custom needs lead to custom products). market deficiencies: (market failures might be too strong for our case). There s no or only small market. Small market segment (might change), no economies of scale resulting in rather expensive devices experimentation at two levels (a) development and (b) application of device: new coffee bean mixtures, roasting flavors etc. Enablers: exchange media: fostering diffusion of ideas and innovation technology (digital photography, blogs, forums), collective endeavor Culture: or context in which the innovation takes place. Not only coffee culture but also collaboration and competition culture (code of conduct), exploration/experimentation culture, create a public good etc. Risks: The legal liability as opposed to a manufacturer, who has to comply with security standards and the like. ’
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Lead user (as seen by Eric Hippel): users ahead of the majority of users in their populations in respect to an important market trend, and they expect to gain relatively high benefits from a solution to the needs they have encountered there. (see page 4 of democratizing innovation) Chicken egg problem: roasting process well known as well as technique/technology. Users don t innovate the process nor do they change the underlying technique (technology). Innovation takes place at the miniaturization dimension and the novel usage of existing or incrementally enhanced devices and tools. ’
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Miniaturization: : e.g. downsizing from 300kg roasting capacity to 300g, thus a hardware innovation if using the terms of P. Faulkner and J. Runde (see lecture papers). ‘
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Why we argue a line has to be drawn to identify lead user: We assume coffee has first been consumed in Ethiopia, where it is still nowadays roasted in pans over open fire.
Interpretive Flexibility (Wikipedia): The concept belongs to the Social construction of technology, which argues that technology does not determine human action, but that rather , human action shapes technology . It also argues that the ways a technology is used cannot be understood without understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context Interpretative Flexibility means that each technological artifact has different meanings and interpretations for various groups. The most basic relevant groups are the users and the producers of the technological artifact. The groups can be distinguished based on their shared or diverging interpretations of the technology in question. Just as technologies have different meanings in different social groups, there are always multiple ways of constructing technologies. The different interpretations often give rise to conflicts between criteria that are hard to resolve technologically . Different groups in different societies construct different problems, leading to different designs. Interpretive flexibility refers to the way that the same artifact can mean different things to different social groups. This flexibility is linked to the way that different social groups frame technology and it has implications for its adoption and further development.
Feuer und Flame fuer/vom Kaffeeroester
The electronic parts can be bought at stores, eg. Conrad, or at specialised internet shops. There are endless threads on the topic that can be found in relevant forums www.kaffee-netz.de www.coffeeforums.com www.coffeegeeks.com
