Trials and Tribulations

I have been woefully derelict in my duties here at the BSCB. But spurred by responsibility to my readership, which has continued its furious ascent, barreling into double digits (!!!), I am back, and promise to be better than ever.

Several events at the BSMS (Bittersweet Mother Ship) and our satellite stores have kept me actually working at my job instead of just blogging about it.

Most recently your intrepid narrator was forced to answer that most ancient of coffee roasting riddles: How do you install a k-type thermocouple in a hole you have accidently and irreversibly drilled in the door of your roaster for a much bigger type of thermocouple?

Here, for comparison, is a side-by-side photograph of a k-type (the orange wire), and that other type (the one that looks like C3PO's nipple), for which the hole was drilled.

As I'm sure you can tell, the k-type did not even begin to fill the significant hole we'd had drilled in the door of our beloved Diedrich ir-3. I was at a bit of a loss. Fortunately, Steve (Qui Gon to my Obi Wan) offered this solution: "So just get a bolt the same size as the thermocouple, drill a lengthwise hole in it - see what I'm saying? - then use like maybe a rubberized epoxy to cement the k-type inside the hole and we'll screw it in." Which just about knocked me out of my chair it was so obvious.

Unfortunately, rubberized epoxies appear to have a maximum temperature rating of about 400 f (our roaster regularly reaches temperatures close to 450 f). So my first crack was a silicone gasket maker made for sealing stuff like exhaust systems. This, however, proved to a be a little too gummy and didn't retain the k-type. My next stop was JB Cold Weld, which has lived up to its name, firmly holding the k-type in the middle of the whirling bean mass.

Here's my mock jig holding the bolt and k-type while the jb works its magic.

As you can see, we operate with a maximum of sophistication here at Bittersweet Origins, Coffee Division (BSOCD, or Be Socked!, which I find both hilarious and a good piece of advice).

So now, riddle answered, we can tell the surface temperature of our beans! While air temperature provides a reasonable estimation of bean temperature, surface temperature is both more accurate and, when cross-referenced with air temperature, provides valuable clues as to what is happening inside the bean.

Furthermore, we take away two important lessons. First, think twice, maybe even thrice, before you put big holes in expensive pieces of machinery.

Secondly, once you've put that big hole in the machinery, don't stop until you've patched it up. Or, as a wise, green, two-foot-tall puppet once said "Do or do not. There is no try."