User Innovation: building your own coffee roaster

There are other Vital Grills, eg. from Gourmet Maxx, but they dont
seem to be suitable for roasting coffee.
Any other chicken roasting 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 205207 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 224227 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 beans 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, its 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: proportionalintegralderivative 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:

Alpenrst von Swissmar, not produced anymore since 1999
Behmor 1600, www.behmor.com
Hottop, www.hottopusa.com


Relation to lecture (educated guess as its only our 2
nd
lecture)

Drivers:
dissatisfaction: strive for better coffee. (Custom needs lead to
custom products).
market deficiencies: (market failures might be too strong for our
case). Theres 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.

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 dont 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.
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).

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