The Coffee Project

The Brazen Coffee Brewer introduces a revolutionary new vision in coffee brewing – where you, are in total control of the brewing process.

Most coffee makers, including most commercial versions, do not allow the customer to change the brewing temperature of their coffee. Before the Brazen coffee maker, there were no consumer versions available with a pre-soak function, and almost all had poor extraction due to poor design of water dispersion.

One of the key aspects of well brewed coffee is making sure the grounds are evenly saturated. Unlike most home brewers which drip from the middle, Brazen brewers saturate the grounds in a shower of hot water, at the right speed, and the right temperature.

Some of the highly innovative features of the Brazen Coffee maker include:
• Accurate temperature control
• Calibration features including altitude correction
• A pre-soak feature and and adjustable rest time
• Manual water release for teas, also the perfect temperature
• A stainless steel carafe

WHY is Temperature control so important?
Having control over the brew temperature enables you to decide at what temperature you would like your coffee brewed. Different brewing temperatures will extract different flavors from your coffee and can greatly affect the character of the cup. Since no single brewing temperature is ‘right’ or perfect, hotter may not always better. In simple terms; being able to choose the brewing temperature gives you control over the flavor of the coffee because the temperature affect how much is drawn from the grounds. Draw too much and it’s bitter, draw too little and it’s weak. By adjusting the grind, the quantity AND the temperature you have greater control.

The Brazen Brewer is designed to prevent temperature over shoot, and glide.
A common occurrence when heating water to a specific temperature is to ‘overshoot’ this target because the heaters are not turned off until the water is at temperature – unfortunately electric heaters continue to heat the water for some time after that. The idea of a glide is this; once your desired brewing temperature is set in the Brazen’s memory, the Brewer is designed, using patent pending technology, to recognize this set point. Program settings reduce the power to the heaters so that they are almost off when the water is at the temperature you choose. By having the glide feature you minimize missing the water temperature you set. A good analogy is to compare it to driving up to a “STOP” sign with the stop sign being the set point. If you are driving at 60 mph when you come to the stop sign, despite pressure on the brakes, the car WILL runs past the “STOP” sign into the intersection, and potentially into great peril. If you de-accelerate some distance before the “STOP” sign (as I am sure you do) your ability to stop exactly where you want becomes much greater. The same theory is applied to the glide feature. The goal is to hit the set point versus racing past it.

For even MORE information about coffee, visit our website www.CoffeeProject.com

Additional info about the Brazen Brewer can be found here.

Yes, Once roasted, the beans do benefit from resting. For two reasons:

First, is out gassing. Freshly roasted beans expel C02 for a period of time which prevent perfect saturation by water. The effect of brewing coffee right out of the roaster is “Bloom”. While the hot water is trying to saturate the grounds, the grounds are simultaneously pushing C02 outward due to the hot water reducing saturation. Resting for a day is fine. (That’s the very short version of that.)

The second reason to let them rest is the same effect that causes leftovers to taste better. Totally empirical and totally personal. But you will find that something like Costa Rica beans are perfect after a day or so, up to a week; while others (Yemen? North African?) tend to start singing after 3-4-5 days. Blending for espresso is a whole range of alchemy and quantum coffee logic of its own, but some blends can be held back for a week or more before they’re just right.

Bottom line is preference.

NEVER put coffee in the freezer or fridge. The reason is condensation. Cold objects exposed to warmer air will attract nasty ambient moisture that settles on your beans. The ONLY way to make that work is to let them reach room temperature before opening up a perfectly sealed container. Its much better to keep them in a sealed at room temperature and use up beans within a week or so.

Keep and treat your green coffee just like dried split peas or lentils. Unless you are storing many thousands of pounds for more than a year, storing tens of pounds in plastic is just fine. Stick them on the shelf away from stinky things like garlic and brand new rubber tires.

Yes, coffee ages, but it’s subtle. Over a VERY long time coffee loses some of its fresh off the farm sparkle, but that is replaced by increased body. Over the course of a year you can tell, but the month to month difference is pretty slight.

Whether you are ordering a bunch of kinds all at one or a lot of one thing all at once, economy will be increased by larger orders. Ordering a single pound of one kind of bean once a week is the most expensive way to go. Twenty pounds of all the same kind would begin the least expensive way to go, and continue getting better from there. Cost effectiveness is in the tiered pricing of some beans as well as being able to ship a lot of coffee all at once to one location.

Our prices fluxuate with the season, and what’s on hand (and what will be on hand due to wars, weather, speculation, government hooha, etc) Sometime you’ll find more bulk pricing options than other times.

DON’T let price be confused with quality. A lot of pricing is about scarcity. Price and quality are totally different. Related, but different. A better prepped coffee will probably taste better and raise the price, but swimming in it probably knock the price right back down again.

Everything we’ve got is good in it’s own way. Like colors, or children, there is no ‘best’, only different. A lot depends on context. And a lot depends on how your day is going.

The Coffee Project has a variety of coupon codes that pop up sometimes. Some of the most common are the birthday codes (tell us your birthday month! orders@coffeeproject.com) and things like “No Rush” for when you’re in no rush to get an order. Our e-newsletter often mentions active codes. But for the most part the prices on the website are pretty much as fair as possible as they are.

The SR500 is currently our favorite roaster. Everything about it is the perfect balance for one or two people’s needs. Function, economy, design, ease of use; all there. After four or five generations it’s just about perfect. It roast about 5 ounces at a time and depending on the effect you want and your conditions, you can overfill or under fill the roaster. Factors include power supply, kinds of beans, amount of chaff, degree of roast. But after a few tries you’ll be an expert at what works.

Roasting coffee is a lot like throwing darts, you get better and better at it the more you do it, And while it’s popular to try and work it all out on paper with a slide rule and computer aided guessing, The Coffee Project’s stance is just relax and have fun with it. No one has to hook their stove or toaster up to a computer to cook an egg or make toast. Bottom line is pay attention. That’s all you need to do.

Coffee is as varied as cheese or wine or bread. There’s a lot of room to be spendy if you want, and a lot of room to experiment with exotica, but there’s also broad and deep availability of comfortable, easy, and familiar goodness. Any doubts in choosing your very first coffee to home roast? Go for our Colombian Patron. It’s got awesome preparation, it’s got a familiar “coffee” taste, it’s easy to roast, the producers are among the most ethical on the PLANET and because the supply is so stable, it’s never that pricey. it’s just a perfect choice to begin exploring from.

Any questions? Just ask.

Its common for home roasters to see themselves in business. Here are a few random thoughts…

“I need a big air roaster” “I need a big drum roaster” “I need a wall of home roasters”

If you ever find a used SonoFresco (Syd and Jerry, Coffee Kinetics) roaster super cheap, buy one of those. New, they are pricey, but they are terrific work horses for 1.25 pound batches that end at about a pound. Easy to fix, very little maintenance. Or consider BBQ roasting.

Home machines are intended for home use. You could run a number of Behmors or Gene Roasters simultaneously, but you’ve also got to factor what your time is worth. IF you can sell coffee at $30 a pound you should. If you can’t, then what’s it really worth for you to stand staring at a home machine for 20 minutes? What happens during the holidays when fifteen people all ask for a pound of beans. And do you really want to take money from friends?

Even though home roasting is super fun and great for small batches of a pot or so a day; find a shop that will roast 20 lbs at a time for you. It might cost .80 to 1.10 a pound for the service but roasting even 3 pounds an hour on multiple machines at home will be highly inconsistent, take all day, and eventually kill a home machine. Selecting that coffee, producing a sample and bagging it up after will be plenty of work for you. You’d still the coffee expert! but spend your time selling and reaching that 20 lb minimum asap.

The FIRST thing you need are orders- even before buying beans. If you can settle on a single coffee and know it well, sell the heck out of that first. Get 20 lbs roasted (you’ll wind up with about 17) and shop that around to hair dressers’, small mom n pop groceries, friends, farmers markets, tiny sandwich shops, and groups. Make them an offer they can’t refuse; because they will. You’re going up against, in the very best scenario, Trader Joe’s $4 a can whole beans. What your pitch to make them part with $15 or so?

The concept of custom roasting at home is appealing but there’s a LOT of competition out there where people are selling roasted coffee for almost the price of green. Whatever your concept is, its got to be a twist on what already works, and people will have got to know about it. Having orders and no roasted beans is a far better problem than having roasted beans and no orders. Sell first, roast after.

Keep it simple. Start with a single core coffee. Even that model it will be VERY difficult to get a business going. Yes, since you are a home roaster you can modify it with some additional components… but don’t go committing yourself to roasting 60 lbs of coffee because you suddenly need tens pounds each of your super cool Holiday blend. You also want your coffee to be FRESH. So get the orders first, roast, then deliver. Or you risk sitting on beans that are going stale.

If you want to make blends, think about dolling up the core coffee you’ve had roasted with small amounts of home roasted. That’s within reach.

Familiarity and consistency are your friends. If your customer liked a coffee, they’ll want it again. And again and again, you hope. Its familiarity and consistency that made Starbucks go from known to huge. If a coffee shop never had the same thing twice, or it was radically different than last time, they probably won’t get many repeat orders. If you can produce even ONE good roasted coffee over and over and over you’ll gain a following. Build on that. Question what practices will be sustainable. Keep them simple.

Simplicity is WAY hard enough.

Another approach is to start with BREWED coffee instead, and hit all those locations mentioned. A couple new / used air pots will cost about $30 each. Make the daily rounds swapping out 2.2 liters of awesome coffee at $1.50 a cup ( fifty 6 oz cups per pound minus supplies) vs trying to move roasted coffee by the pound. Sure. leave a few $5 half pounds of that batch on hand, but don’t plan on it flying off the shelf. Be very conservative with expectations. …Be VERY conservative with expectations.

You may need to make friends with a commercial kitchen to work out of if things get serious. DON’T go buying a kitchen!! just borrow one from a friend. Maybe cross market your coffee to pay for the space…

Learn from others… There are plenty of coffee businesses that no longer exist, simply because they spent more than they made. Those cheap air pots are available out there for a reason. Before you spend anything, think hard about what the net cash in pocket will be in the end. Think about scale… where do things begin to work? Where do they cease working?

… The Coffee Project STILL has stuff on the shelves from the very first home roasting kit produced in Spring 1997.

Listen to your significant other, your parents, people who have success in what THEY do. Listen to your mentors. Work it out on paper (really!) before you go spending. Take your expectations and cut them in half. Take your expected costs and double them. If its still a good idea, go for it!

Even at that, no matter how perfect the plan is, its still not perfect. Plan on a lot of misses before things start to work as first imagined. Have an escape plan too. There really is a LOT of value in taking a concept (buy low, sell high) and creating that whole virtual world on paper first.

Taking a hobby into being a business is a big deal. It’s doable, but it will take commitment and a lot of work.

Do you LOVE The Coffee Project?
Send a movie clip of no more than 15 seconds that says why you love:

1) The Coffee Project
2) Home Coffee Roasting
3) Your favorite roaster
4) Your favorite bean or origin

One clip for each topic. Send us one or all four, to orders@coffeeproject.com

We’ll take the best ones and show the world!
If we use yours, we’ll send you a li’l sumthin’ too.

Roast Magazine is a high quality industry magazine for coffee professionals. What that means to YOU is that it’s not dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Its high grade information stated clearly and in depth for when information really matters. It’s by professionals for professionals. But we guarantee it to impact your daily cup too. Awesome editorial design, images, and clear writing.

This issue includes the second half of “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” about how coffee is chosen and makes it to your cup.

“A State of Flux” looks in detail at the vast changes taking place in Ethiopia’s Commodity Exchange system. What might it mean as Specialty Coffee is required to move through a commodity format?

Read about Brazil in Navigating origins! Alternative Africas in The Coffee Review:Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania

And, How the Pros use a Roast Log. Plus MUCH more