Joel, looking good

He had to wear the dad hat and mom glasses. I am beginning to think
that Joel is incapable of forming a normal smile when a camera is
pointed at him. Regardless, the facial expressions are awesome.

Coffee Roaster

I have been roasting coffee for about 3 years. I have used pans, cookie sheets and I even used a grill once. By far, the easiest method/the method that yielded the best results has been the hot air roaster. I have been using a WestBend "Poppery" popcorn popper from the 80s for about ten years. This is the roaster on the far left of the above picture (the other one was new and less reliable--it only lasted a few roasts). I modified the Poppery a little and it works really well now. These roasters have a cult-like following among coffee roasters.

The first thing I had to do was raise the thermostat temperature by backing the thermostat screw out a bit. It did not get nearly hot enough for a good roast. Then I split the power into two parts: fan motor and heat coil. Each is on one plug, but that is because it was the fast and easy things to do. The heat coil is hooked through the Poppery switch into the wall. The fan is hooked in through an X10 lamp dimmer module, so I can control the fan speed. This adds a ton of control to the roasting process versus how it was unmodified.

You need a lot of air at the beginning of the roast when the beans are dense...and the beans need time to dry out before the temperature gets really high. Toward the end of the roast the beans get large and light (having expanded and lost their moisture) and they sometimes need to be exposed to a higher temperature than at the beginning. So decreasing the fan speed once the beans are mid-roast can give the beans the zing of heat they need to get certain types of roasts. Independent control of the fan and heat allows one to have a nice amount of control.

Good-looking kid!

Asher and Joel enjoy dressing like their goofy parents. Asher wears
this hat more than I do.

Joel's signed art

Joel now can sign his art work! (The art is on the other side.)