At the SCAA expo in Boston I’ll be teaching a sample roasting class. The Sunday PM session that I’m lead instructor for is sold out but I could still use one more station instructor. Currently the class is an optional one for the Roasters Guild level 2 certification but it will probably be required for those going for the level 1 certification next year. If you want the certification and don’t want to take the classes because you already know this stuff, teaching the material counts so you can get the credit that way. Requirements for filling the slot are that you need to have completed the Instructor Development Program (if you go to your profile at scaa.org and check My Pro Dev you should see SCAA Lead Instructor right at the top) and you should also know how to operate a typical sample roaster. Here I mean roasting without instrumentation and consistently hitting a standard sample roast. If you can guide a group of six people through some sample roasting exercises it would be a great help not only for me but also for the people who have signed up for the class.

The class is being offered in three other time slots that as far as I know still have space in them. I’ll be a station instructor for the Saturday PM session so if you wanted a chance to learn about sample roasting from me, this would be the session to pick. In this class you’ll learn about why you should have a sample roasting program, how to put one together, standard protocols for roasting and cupping in such a program, what sorts of documentation you want to keep, and how to operate typical sample roasting equipment. Even if you don’t currently have a proper sample roaster a lot of this is applicable for anybody who wants to make good decisions about what green coffees they want to buy.

I know I’ve said that I’m teaching other classes previously, but I think it’s unlikely that I’ll get rescheduled again this close to the event. Aside from these sample roasting classes I’ll also be a station instructor for the CP151/152 brewing and extraction class on Friday (April 12). That’s another one that I expect will be highly informative.

In any case, if you were planning on going to this event, you should make the arrangements sooner rather than later. The Boston marathon is happening immediately following expo so the longer you wait, the harder it will be to find a room.

Feature teaser showing that, yes, I really am still working on Typica.

In the current release versions, the logging is really designed around production roasting. If you want the roasting data in the database you need green coffee in inventory and a roasted coffee item. For production roasting this isn’t a problem (well, yes, it can be, but that’s an issue for another day) but what about working with pre-purchase samples? Right now, the options for dealing with those sensibly aren’t very good.

In this screen shot we can see some work toward improving the situation. On the left we see details of the green coffee. The name of the coffee, the vendor the sample comes from, the date the sample arrived, and a table where it’s possible to enter any other details about the coffee that you may want to keep track of. This isn’t a final version of the interface. There are some use cases such as multiple roasts of the same sample (either with different profiles or for verification against arrivals) which this doesn’t yet attempt to deal with.

On the right we can see details about the roast. Target roast profiles for sample roasting are kept separate and you can select an existing sample roasting profile or come up with a new name for that on the spot without needing to go to any external interface. It is, of course, still possible to use any past batch as a target roast profile through the usual means. The weight fields have unit selectors (I haven’t forgotten about you metric users and really, for sample roasting, who uses anything other than grams?). If you must, you can use different units for the two weights and everything still works right. Also note that the Submit button is disabled. It won’t be enabled until all of the required data is available.

Some of the ideas seen here will be spreading out to other parts of the program and there are other parts and changes needed to really make sample roasting a joy with Typica, but this is something that is being worked on.

One other interesting point to note: this was done with no modifications to the core C++ code of the program.