Diy on The Infinite Unknown

Home Coffee Roasting - Hobby That Tastes Great

Jared Watkins — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I never drank coffee before about three years ago, but I’ve been roasting and brewing it at home for much longer. The story starts about ten years back when I met my wife in Seattle. She’s a big coffee drinker, and one of the things I started doing was making her coffee in the mornings. I tried a bunch of different brewing methods and eventually landed on the Aeropress, which just gave me the most consistent results making one or two cups in a morning.

Actually, we didn’t get serious about coffee until we moved to the Dallas suburbs. There was this fantastic specialty roaster there, Addison Roasters, that carried single-origin coffees from all over the world. At any given time you could walk in and find a dozen or more different single origins available by the pound. I got fascinated by the regional differences, what makes something specialty grade, the whole business side of it. I wasn’t roasting coffee myself yet (or even drinking it, really)—just buying the good stuff and learning. I also picked up a few books on the subject.

Pandemic Opportunity

Fast forward a couple years, we’re in Northern Virginia (not long after Amazon picked the area for HQ2). Then the pandemic hit, and like the rest of the DC suburbs, lockdowns, restrictions, all of it. Bored and stuck at home, I decided to start roasting coffee. I bought a used Artisan 2.5 from a local shop that was upgrading their gear, set it up in a spare room with 220V power and a window for venting.

Over the next couple years I gradually hacked on it to increase performance. Airflow improvements, better chaff filtering, eventually it became an Artisan 3 (the 3-pound model) inside. It was cobbled together with hoses everywhere, not pretty, but it worked and I learned a lot. One of the problems I solved was with the exhaust blower. It was a cheap blower that vibrated like crazy. When I bought it came hard mounted to that little wire cart but it made a ton of noise and vibrated the bean cooler pretty badly. So.. simple fix.. I separated the two bits of plywood and added some little eyelets and some parachute cord zig-zagging between them to make a vibration isolated suspension mount. So the blower motor actually hangs under the lower shelf with the two boards only connected by the parachute cord. I didn’t expect it to work so well so didn’t bother to make it look good. It took me all of about 15 minutes but drastically improved the noise while roasting so I just left it.

Once I had the setup dialed in I started selling to the neighbors. People were stuck at home and didn’t want to go out, so I built a little pickup box outside and ran orders through Stripe and advertised through Nextdoor. The Stripe setup turned out to be overkill as everyone preferred to pay with cash in the dropbox. I wasn’t trying to build a business, just pay for my hobby. Three or four single origins in rotation, and it worked great for a while with enough repeat customers to pay for the coffee and make it worth my time. That lasted for a couple years until we moved again.

New Gear

I’ve been following Coffee Crafters for years as they make the roaster I’d been using. They’re an American company doing their own design and manufacturing, which I really respect. When they released the Valenta series in early 2025, I bought one. I crated up the the Artisan and went all in on the Valenta 3. It’s cleaner, way more compact, fits on a little rolling table in my office. I still roast periodically with a few single origins, though I’m not selling to neighbors anymore. (Could if I wanted to. This thing makes it pretty easy.) I had to make some improvements through. I added a dedicated Raspberry PI with screen to run the optional roasting software (also confusingly called Artisan) and then made a few other modifications.

The Airflow Problem and My Fix

Here’s the thing I’ve dealt with on both machines: airflow control during the roast is finicky. As beans lose density and expand, they float differently in the air, and the rate of heat transfer changes. The idea is simple: start at max airflow, dial it back as the beans dry and expand to maintain a sufficient loft without blowing beans out the top. It also helps you manage the transition from the drying phase to the development phase and you get faster roasts and better flavors.

Roasting temperature matters most (I aim for 415F for most beans), but the roast length and airflow management matter too. You want to hit temperature fast without over-extending the roast (baking the beans).

The factory loft air control is a little crude. A solid-state relay uses the voltage through a potentiometer to modulate power to the blower motor, but the dial doesn’t give you fine control. So I added a second pot in series, rated at about 10% of the factory range. Now I just set the factory knob at the max for this bean mass (usually around 4) and use my secondary adjustment which gives me a full rotation to play with rather than just 1/10 of the arc on the factory knob. Much finer control. That’s important because if you slip and cut loft air too much you risk stalling the bean fountain and scorching the beans or even starting a fire.

Small Equipment Rack

Jared Watkins — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Racks for computer or other 19″ gear don’t have to be expensive.. but they usually are. I had a heavy 2U UPS and a few half-depth servers that I wanted to keep together so I built this little rack over a couple nights. It’s made using 3 each 8′ 2x4s and 8′ 1x4s along with some wood glue, wood screws, and some 1/4″ bolts to attach the rack rails to the frame. The rails I picked up from Parts Express and they give me 12U of rack space for equipment that hangs straight down. The whole thing is on wheels and is very sturdy once it’s all together. The equipment I have in there weighs about 120 pounds and it’s easy to roll around.

Download the Google SketchUp Model file here that has the specific dimensions: Small Equipment Rack

My first hybrid: an Electric Utility Bike

Jared Watkins — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always been interested in alternative/distributed energy systems and that includes things related to transportation. So over the last few months I looked into the current state of things to find out if there is a viable electric vehicle that could be had today. While there are some very interesting things out there.. nothing is available in NC today or in the near future that is what I’d call reasonable. Some of the more interesting ones are the Vectrix and the Venture One. The Vectrix is a large electric scooter that has reasonable performance but what I’d call an unreasonable price of about 10k. The Venture One looks like a really fun tandem two seater that will be avliable in all electric or a nice hybrid drive system. No firm pricing or availiablity on that one yet though. Many of these new vehicles are being developed in CA and will only be for sale there for a while.. since no dealership or support system is yet in place for them.

So once I knew where I’d be moving I started work on another option, an electric bike. It’s now basically finished and I’ve started trying to get the hang of it. It’s based on an Electra Townie frame with the Xtracycle extension. The low seat and forward pedal position makes this comfortable to ride and even I can put my feet down without getting off the seat.. which should make it safer and easier to handle. The Xtracycle extension gives it a longer wheel base, cargo bags in the rear and a nice place to mount the batteries. To that I added a Crystalyte 5305 electric motor, Cycle Analyst computer, speed controller, and a 4 pack of 20AH BB batteries that are made for electric vehicle use. I seriously considered some of the new LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries but it seems there isn’t a good source for high quality, small quantity cells (that are the right size) or a proven battery management system for these yet. Hopefully by the time my pack is ready for replacement there will be.. I can then loose about 15lb and gain about twice the performance. Read more for a collection of Ebike and related links.

http://www.ebikes.ca

http://www.electricmotorsport.com/

http://www.valence.com/

http://www.thunder-sky.com/

http://www.exertrike.com/

http://www.electricrider.com/