Artisan v2.1

This is the Artisan version we will use to prove Scott Rao wrong (or right). We extended Artisan in various ways to facilitate the application of his roasting theory.  Thanks Scott, for pushing us!

Profile Analyzer

Roasters often want to analyze their roasts to measure consistency, look for aspects of the profile that can be improved, and to create metrics to score the roast against a set quality measures.  Artisan offers many ways to provide information on a roast.  These include the Statistics Summary, Plotter and Math tabs, AUC (area under the curve), and many others.

Artisan v2.1 adds a new set of features to provide additional insights.  These features continue Artisan's heritage of exploring new ways of interpreting roast data.

Background Images

Artisan v2.1 allows you to show an image in the background of your profiles. This can be any image you choose.  It could be a logo, a picture of your roaster or anything you choose.

Symbolic Formulas: Basics, New Variables and Applications

Each Artisan input channel can be intercepted by a symbolic formula before its data is forwarded to the corresponding curve. Symbolic formulas allow to change data retrieved from the input source before it is further processed, displayed and stored in the internal data structures. In that respect, the use of symbolic formulas is usually destructive to the original data received. From Artisan v2.1 on, symbolic formulas can also be applied to the two rate-of-rise channels.

In this post we recap the basics of Artisan's symbolic formula mechanism, describe the new variables that have been added in Artisan v2.1 and explain their interplay by discussing useful applications.

Automatic Gas Control

Elvio (Mestre Cafeeiro, Brasil) is demonstrating how he uses a Phidget RC (see Artisan v1.6.1) to automate the gas control on his Atilla roaster.

Thanks for sharing!

Artisan 2

Here is artisan 2!

Using Artisan Designer

An excellent video by Alan demonstrating how he uses the Artisan designer to develop roast profiles. 

Thanks for sharing!

How to document sampling?

Someone just asked how to document the moments she takes samples mid-roast using the tryer?

How close?

Ever wondered how close you duplicated a previous roast profile? A standard measure in statistics to express the average error between a curve and its target is know as Mean Squared Error (MSE) which computes the average of the squares of the single discrepancies between the data values and their targets.

weight • volume • density

Knowing the density of your raw beans is key to adjust your roast profile. Knowing the density of roasted beans is important for successful blending. Keeping the bean density of a product constant helps to keep your customers happy.

Keep an eye on the delta!

Once you have developed a profile for a coffee you want to precisely duplicate that one in future roasts. Artisan allows to load this successful profile in the background serving as a template for your production roasts. While seeing the delta of your current roast curve and that template helps you to decide if you should slow down or speed up your roast at any moment, especially if zoomed into the graph somewhat. However, often a numeric value expressing this delta is easier to work with. What about adding another LCD to show this delta?

On Idle Noise

This note describes how I improved the measuring system of my roasting machine to get more accurate roast profiles, like the one shown above. I got motivated by the work of Scott Rao.

Artisan v1.6.1

It is our pleasure to announce the release of Artisan v1.6.1. Many issues have been resolved and many suggestions, reported via the Artisan Issue Tracker, have been implemented.

UPDATE March 20, 2019: Artisan v1.6.2 has been released with a bug fix for Mac OS X 10.14.

Running Artisan on Raspberry Pi

This post describes how to install Artisan packaged releases and Artisan source on the Raspberry Pi. The process has been tested on the RPi 2B, RPi 3B,and RPi 3B+ but should work for on any RPi running Raspbian Stretch.

By Dave