How To Roast Coffee With Scott Rao

[Music] This episode is brought to you by the future. Only had experts look into the future, which is totally possible by the way, and then report back about what things will taste like when we get there. Learn about bold ideas, the dawn of day you care for the rise of fiber in the future of Taserport on Oatley.com. Welcome back to the coffee show, everyone, and my gosh. I'm spoiling you this year. 2020 CX, everyone's just getting off to an absolute roar of a start. Well, here on the coffee show, we are. You're in for another treat, ladies and gentlemen, because we have for you, none other than world-leading coffee roasting expert Scott Riao. Welcome to the coffee show. Thanks, Kirk. Nice to be here. It's so fantastic, because I see you, you know, with the exception of the COVID years. You're here once a year, pretty much every year. You love Australia. I do. It's a, and you're a big time surf, a guy. I'm not a very good surfer, but I love surf. You bet, Tispet, you dabble. And what are you doing here this time around? Just chilling? Mostly chilling. Just a whole day. Yeah. Having a good time, I'm going to brew some coffee at Calera and Sunday, but otherwise kind of chilling. You're doing Australia. You'll say, you'll say me there on Sunday. I don't know if anyone can sort of deduct from following you on Instagram, but you kind of, you're taking my mind. Yep, everything's on. You kind of live in a metic loft style. You don't have like one place that you are all the time. You're always in a different part of the world. Yeah. Tell us about it. I'm running it from the law. You're running from the law? Yeah. All right. So they just, they got it out for you. Yeah. That's it. My baker. I like it. But you are traveling quite frequently. Yeah. Most of the time. Yeah. Do you ever get over that? Not in a while. But overall, it's pretty fun. Okay. Like anything, trade-offs. I mean, it's always new. It's always interesting. It's never boring. Sometimes it's a little tiring, but um, yeah. And you also just had yourself a delightful little co-ferment latte, denna, my denna, my show. Which I forced you to have today. You know, you can voluntarily ask for it, but I think it's a tab. I actually had two co-ferments today. Okay. Who was first? I went to tone coffee roasters. How was that? It wasn't, well, it wasn't stated as a co-ferment, but it was a farm that I know always does co-ferments. And um, uh, it was, in milk, it was, it was okay. As espresso, it was quite intense. Okay. Yeah. And then how's the, uh, the apple? The, the declared, uh, government house, the, uh, we called the apple custard pie. Uh, it was good. Very, very fruity. It's been more, it's very fruity, but more mild than yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm sure we'll talk about co-ferments later, but I think that there's a place for it. I would like to see co-ferments get toned down a bit. Mm-hmm. Where they're adding a little dimension, or something novel to the coffee, but not overwhelming. Yeah. A cup. I think that that would make it a more sustainable, popular thing. Well, one of the, one of the best ways to do it, I think currently is to blend it, which, it's probably a better option, really, because co-ferment in coffee is expensive. So if it's more intense and you can blend it, then it's more cost-effective and you have a similar effect. But, um, I mean, before we get into the co-ferosant stuff, I kind of feel like co-ferment has been one of the best things that's ever happened to specialty coffee in a way, because, like, I've previously, when I had sub-zero coffee, and I've got a freezer full of, like gages or whatever, and you pay $20 for it, a customer does, and they, we describe the farm, and we describe the nodes and stuff like that. And, you know, very rarely de-accapture a customer and make them a lifelong customer, and just a fan of that, because it's just hard. None of everyone's into that. But do you whack strawberry cheesecake or apple-custed pile on a box, and the people just get it. Like, it's, like, it's kind of like the TikTok effect. You know, the other day I have to click once or twice, and you've got the product in the hand. They know everything that needs to know about it to enjoy it. And, like, I feel like that's kind of something special, specialty coffee is needed, and, you know, co-ferment gets them through the door to enjoy the other things. I really don't think it's the threat of the rest of it. I think it's interesting that, especially coffee had that, and it has waxed and waned, in a sense that when I got into coffee in the '90s, hazelnuts and vanilla coffee was quite popular. And what roasters would do, like, I worked for a roaster once where, in their basement, they would have buckets of beans, they would pour some pre-weight amount of flavored oil. They put the lid on the bucket, they shake it, the oil's get absorbed into the coffee, and then they would just grind it in brew, just like any other coffee. And that was a pretty staple offering, at least in the U.S. Like, you would go in a shop and there'd be a batch brew, Colombia, and there'd be a batch brew, hazelnut. And that was incredibly popular during the '90s. And it's quite similar to co-ferment in a sense that there is a very intense, easy-to-identify flavor. Yeah, that gets a lot of people interested in specialty coffee, and then maybe over time those people pursue less intense flavors. Yeah, not a great 100%. But let's get into the coffee roasting stuff now. And I think the goal of today's podcast is, obviously, to inform as many people as we can, as much as we can about coffee roasting in the time that we're here. But we want to cater to people that have, like, a beginner level, an intermediate level, and somewhat advanced level of roasting. So, the way we're going to start this is that I want to, I guess, establish a little general glossary. So, I've got like 10 words here that I'll. So, one by one, we'll go through each word, and if you can give a concise kind of explanation and/or definition, then I think that'll help everyone who's listening to us throughout the whole podcast. So, without further ado, when I say convection. So, I'm going to keep the definitions simple and how they apply to roasting. Yep. So, convection is going to be heat transfer via the gaseous medium that is the hot air in the roaster. So, I think you have the hot air. Conduction. So, conduction is going to be heat transfer by direct contact. So, where the bean touches the hot metal of the drum, conduction is happening. Malia ad reaction. The Mayar ad reaction? Myar ad reaction. Yep. Is reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars? These reactions create compounds called melanoidans. This is more or less what gives coffee its brownness, or part of what gives coffee its brownness. It's a little bit like when you brown toast that is caused by primarily by myard reactions. The Mayar ad reactions require the moisture content to be below a certain threshold, which is why they don't really happen until about halfway through a roast. Yeah, I'll stop there with myard. Density. Density is just how much something weighs versus how much volume it takes up. That's all there is to it. Yep. So, I think paybearys versus how much I'm married to HIPAA here? Not necessarily, because the peabury or the margogi beer might be the more dense, the denser bean. So, it depends on how much they weigh versus how big they are. So, usually higher grown coffees are denser than lower grown coffees. That couture we had with the edges that we just made of yours, Ben Ben. Yep. That was grown at 2,000 meters and it's quite a dense coffee. Yeah. First crack. So, about three quarters of the way through the roasting process, during roasting, beans are heating up because of steam inside the beans. Pressure is building up inside the beans. The pressure is being held in to degree by the cellulose structure of the beans. And what's happening is as the beans cook, the cellulose structure is getting weaker and the pressure is getting higher. And eventually, you reach a tipping point where the cell structure can't hold the pressure in anymore. And the beans literally fissure open and a little puff of moisture comes out of them and we hear the crack sound when the beans fissure open. So, a little bit like a volcano. Yeah, honestly. Yeah. Very audible. Yeah, you notice it. So, first crack. And let's go to development time slash percentage. So, traditionally, from the moment first crack begins until you end a roast, we call that the development phase. And the development time is just, well, how much time was there from the beginning of first crack to the end? Could be, you know, one minute, two minute. And then development time ratio is the percentage of the roast time that was during that phase. So, it could be, you know, 10, 15, 20, 25 percent. Development. So, development's a bit of a hazy word. I would say development is the average amount that the coffee was roasted and I would usually look at it through what is the color of the ground coffee. That would be the single best indicator of the average development through the coffee bean. Right of raws. So, that is, at any given moment in the roast, how fast is the bean temperature rising? So, nothing more, nothing less. Profile. Another bit of a vague term. What most people mean by the profile is what is the shape of the bean curve, the bean temperature curve? So, it might be, say, going faster in the beginning and slower at the end. And that particular curve is the profile for that coffee. Air flow. So, just simply how much air per unit of time is moving through the roasting chamber? Excellent. Oh, so now let's get into the questions. And the first one will start with getting sort of a cater to the beginners that are listening here as well. So, if whatever reason you had to learn to roast the end, let's imagine this now, take your kind of, like, or thinking now, if you had to learn to roast the game, what would you do when we were just out? Okay. So, it depends on whether I want to learn everything I can about roasting, or if I want to start putting out good quality coffee tomorrow. Because those are two different things. You could get a machine like you use the link, like the link, or the roost sample roaster, or a machine like the P3000. They're so automated and they're so easy, you could easily be producing good coffee an hour after you start. Whereas if you buy a ProBudder a Geesson or D-Direct, there's a lot more to learn to get good at the process. So if you want to learn everything you could, about the dynamics of roasting, you might want to buy a drum roaster with everything, you know, variable speed fan, variable speed drum, variable gas. But if you want to just put out good coffee easily by something somewhat automated, like one of those machines. And they're really effective, too. Like, I mean, and to give it a context here, I had one of my stuff members competed in the Australian brewers cup and we had two kilos of green coffee to work with. So I decided to roast it myself on a nucleus link. And what an amazing tool. Like it's like really democratized being able to roast coffee across the world really for farmers. And if you wanted to do cuppings, roasting for filter, I'd probably say it's better for filter and sample roasting. And it is for a spress out milk. That's just my opinion. But yeah, really effective tool for what it isn't gives a lot of value. Quite easy to use really. Yeah, very, very easy. And so what are the differences between drum and air roasting? So typically drum roasters have a heating source, could be a flame, could be electric, could be infrared outside the drum. And the heat source is heating both the drum and the air that's getting pulled into the roasting chamber. So in those machines, you have a mix of convection and conduction convection from the hot air conduction from the hot surface. So in an air roaster, typically if it's designed well, you just have convection. You just have hot air. Yes, the the walls of the roasting chamber are they're hot, they're not cold, but they're not hot enough to further the roasting process or to cause flavor damage. So that's that's the main difference. Now, if you have conduction, you're going to have two things happen. You're probably going to get a bit more body from the coffee, but anytime you get more body through roasting, through brewing, whatever, you will lose a little flavor clarity along the way. So you mentioned just now you might not think the link is optimal for say espresso and milk, but it's great for filter coffee. It's an air roaster. So if you want the espresso to really come through strongly through a latte, you might want to use a conduction machine that gives you a little bit more body and you might sacrifice a little flavor clarity because let's face it, there's going to be 200 mils of milk in there anyway, you're not going to taste much nuance, right? So somebody could conceivably say air roasting is maybe better for nuance and light roasts and maybe maybe drum roasting is a little better for dark roasts or heaviness or espresso and milk. I've been really interested in some of the air roasters lately, the typhoon, for example, it looks like a really interesting machine. It's such a big machine, but so little of it is like a roasting chamber, but it's like I'm not as a size of a car, but like one-fifth of it is actually for the roaster. So I imagine there's probably intense mechanics in there that have to create all that heat. Yeah, I mean, it's air roasting generally happens at quite high temperatures. And like the typhoon, there's really two typhoon designs. There's the smaller one that I think goes two and a half kilo and five kilo. It's kind of a small box about maybe the size a little bit bigger than your laptop and the beans are, the hot air is coming up from the bottom, pushing the beans up so the beans are kind of jumping up and down. And then there's the larger machines, the 10 kilo up where there's a larger round tray, there's a stirring arm to push the beans around a little bit, but still the air is coming up from the bottom and lofting the beans. Yeah, I know of two people using it, so Ben Morr. He's got a new roast right now, the legendary everyday. I'm not sure if he's using the typhoon for that, but he was using it in Manhattan. And then Mason Salasbury from Luminous Coffee, the US, I think he roasts exclusively on them now as well. So interesting machines, I really like them and I like the coffee that comes off them as well. Do you think to that end, do you think that the world should be like the coffee industry should be transitioning to exclusively air roasting one day? I mean, global warming and climate change being what it is, and gas race horses being fine, although we probably won't run out anytime soon. But do you think there'll be a movement eventually to push everyone towards the electric roasting? Okay, so no. This is a nuanced answer. The internet doesn't like nuanced, let me break this down. So a few things matter here. Number one is that if you are going to buy a machine and let's say 15 kilos or smaller, it's pretty easy to buy an electric machine. It's pretty easy to have the electrical power necessary for that. If you were say, I mean, let's face it, the vast majority of the world's coffee gets roasted in machines much larger than what you and I use. And let's say a machine is going to be 240 kilos or 500 kilos, that's a lot of electricity. And almost no facility is going to have that much electricity and you're going to spend so much money to upgrade your electrical if it's even available that that can be a make a break type decision right there just because of that. Now, what is the source of your electricity? Now, people online will will argue about this and I'm not I'm not making a firm statement here, but I'll just give you an example. Let's say your electricity comes from a coal-fired power plant, not definitely, but probably it's it's better to use natural gas than than a coal source electricity, right? But let's say your electricity comes from solar or hydro or something. Maybe it's cleaner and better to be using electric. So I don't I don't think it's a one size fits all. And certainly there aren't many electric machines that are larger than 15 kilos because of this problem of the amount of amps that you know, you'll need 380 volts, you'll need hundreds of amps just for one machine. It becomes a little of a practical issue. Thank you. You're answer here. I was speaking to someone about a big roast here in Australia whose quality I feel like has declined. And they they explain to me that they're using like a you know, one of those like house-sized electrical roasters from I think it's brand body. Okay. They're able to recycle the air within the roaster and that is that your shirt from body makes a large electric machine. I've never seen it, but it has to be 120 kilos. Okay. So there are a lot of machines that recycle hot air. So lowering IMF, there are others that basically what happens is the instead of having a burner for the roaster and an after burner to clean the air, there's one burner that's effectively like an after burner. It's running usually at about 600 degrees Celsius. And that is both generating the heat for the roasting process and also cleaning the air in the exhaust of the roasting. And then it'll it'll recirculate a lot of the heat back into the roasting chamber. It's probably about one third more efficient than having a burner plus an after burner because of this recirculating of heat. I've never seen I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I've never seen a roaster that large, that's electric. I can't imagine how many amps that requires. Yeah. And by the way, that's not me saying that if you roast on a brand body, your coffee's bad. It's just like, no, no, no, how you use a roast that matters to for the coffee coffee. No, for a body to make great coffee. Yeah. They're truly truly excellent. So I want to start with, what do you think of some of the, we'll start with a negative and finish on a positive one for this particular question. So what do you think is like the least important aspects for roasting coffee as you know, pretend to get in flavor out of the coffee? The least important. Yeah. What is the least important aspect of coffee roasting? Okay. So the inter might depend a little bit on what type of machine you're using. But one thing that might surprise people is that in air roasting in particular, time is not very important. So I would posit that I could roast on my IMF, which is an air roaster. I could roast you a batch that's six minutes and other batch that's 12 minutes, same coffee and results, same color. We could cup them blindly and neither one of us would be confident, which cup was which? Why? Because short answer is that when you roast faster, you're having almost identical chemical reactions. They're just happening faster. Okay. Right. And really what matters is did you get to your color? Right. So if you roast extremely fast, that can make inter being development a little tricky. If you roast extremely slow, let's say like 16 to 18 minutes, inner development is slightly easier. But in the time range that most of us live in, the difference is immaterial. So time as I've realized air roasting is probably not as important as people really think. Right. Now the reason people feel time is important is that most people used to drum rosters. And in drum roasting, time does matter. Now time does not contrary to what the internet thinks. Time does not matter because of roasting chemistry. Time matters because fast roasts in drum rosters have hotter drum surfaces. If you roast twice as fast, you're making the drum hotter. That hotter drum contributes more conduction to the process. So in an air roaster, the beans don't care about the time because the same reactions are happening just faster. In a drum roaster, your conduction contribution is higher relative to convection compared to a slow roast. So if I'm to simplify that, like, if you're going faster, making it hotter, you're making the drum faster, which in turn would, you know, if the drums hotter and you're getting that conduction, you're getting like probably like burnt around the edges of the coffee, something. So at the extreme, we've probably all tasted fast drum roasts that were like a little burnt and a little underdeveloped simultaneously. Now neither one of those things has to happen. But in a fast roast, generally, you're at higher risk of each. So I would say you're at a great risk of slightly roasty flavors, even at light roasts. And depending on how you do it, you're at a slight risk that you will not develop the inside of the bean well enough. Is there anything else that you think people put a lot of effort into that probably like you, if they allocated their time elsewhere for roasting, they'd get better results like? Not quite. I mean, almost everything matters somewhat. Some things like airflow, depending on the machine, there can be quite a range of choices that can succeed. And I will say this, that I don't want anyone to misunderstand anything we're going to talk about today. There are many ways to succeed in roasting. Most of what I tried to promote and tried to tell people to do is based on the idea that these ideas should give you the highest chance of success. That's not to say you couldn't succeed another way. Right? That's saying, hey, if you shoot your free throws with this form and you master that, your odds of getting them in 90% of the time go up a lot. That's not to say you can't succeed with some other form. It's just that this is kind of the proven way to do it that gives you the highest chance of success. Yeah, extra points there on that answer for the free throw reverence. I love the basketball goals, as I've realized, coffee. Love it. So what do you think of the most important aspects of coffee roasting to get flavor? So the two most important aspects to me and the two things that I think are almost all that matter is hit your roast color, whatever that might be, and avoid excessive conduction. So if you have a light filter roast and you get a bit of conduction from getting the drum too hot, you will taste that. If you don't have much or any noticeable conduction, it's almost impossible to tell how fast was the roast, what kind of machine roasted it, whatever, as long as you've hit your color and you develop the inside pretty well, like you're good. So for our beginning roast, has color measured? So most color meters, there's a few different technologies, but they all look about the same. There's a lens or multiple lenses in this little dark chamber. You take a small round tray. The tray might be the size of a coin. It might be maybe 10, 12 centimeters diameter up to there. And you put ground coffee in it. You smooth the surface. You put the color meter on top of it. You push a button and it says color like 90 or something like this. And there's a spectrum called the Agtron, I don't know what to call it, like the Agtron color range higher numbers are actually lighter, which is backwards for everybody. Oh, like pH. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little confusing. And what number you get is very dependent on your grind setting. So it's very difficult to talk about ground color numbers because if you're using an EK and you're on number four and I'm using a Dating and I'm on number six, like your number is going to be higher than mine. And we might have the same color, but we might have a 10 point or 15 point different reading. So that can be a little bit tricky. But like many things in coffee, just like the ending temperature in your roasting and other things, what really matters is internal consistency and knowing internal eternally, you know, what, how your number relates to yesterday's number and that kind of thing. Can I, can this is what, this is my approach to how I roasted Alex coffee and without any knowledge of coffee at all. And you know, I lent someone my copy of the coffee roaster's companions a damn it. It didn't have that to help me, which is one of Scott's book. It wouldn't have helped you very much with the link, but that's okay. But anyway, so what I was doing was roasting and then brewing to how I usually would and checking the solubility by measuring with the refractometer. And so obviously if it was too low, I knew, you know, this is probably a little bit underdeveloped. I need to, I didn't really realize I could play with airflow on that roaster and then worked out how to do it. And once I did, improved everything. So a couple of things here, the only variable that matters on that machine really is airflow. Yeah. Because the airflow is what makes the beans spin around. And if your airflow is too low at some parts of the roast, the beans will move slowly and you might get some conduction if the metal is quite hot and the beans are moving too slowly. So one of the tricks in those machines is how much airflow? More. More as long as it's not causing the beans to fly out of the roast and chamber. Because that'll protect you from conduction to a degree. The other thing is that if you're going to QC roasts, I strongly recommend cupping, not brewing. If you want to brew later, cool, right? Capping is critical because it takes away the variability that exists in pour overs or espresso. And this is important because for example, you could easily do a pour over and get some astringency due to channeling. And that astringency is going to potentially make the flavor seem less desirable. It might change your perception of mouthfeel and it might just overall make you not like the coffee as much. And if you cup, you just don't have this variable. You just don't worry about channels. You don't worry about, if there's astringency and cupping, it's coming from quakers. It's not coming from brewing. So it's simpler. It's easier to repeat. It's actually about easier to do a lot of bowls at one time. So it's convenient and efficient. So when it comes to solubility and roasting, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding there. You won't see much change in solubility unless you are genuinely underdeveloping a coffee. And the TDS will go down a bit in brewing. Assuming you're in a range of light medium up to say, medium medium, let's say the solubility is going to be about the same. And actually dark roasts aren't necessarily more soluble despite the kind of rumor that they are. And what's happening with dark roasts is let's say you make an espresso shot out of a dark roast. You might get a little bit more extraction, but that's mostly because the cells are more porous. It's a little bit easier for stuff to get in and out. So it's a little easier for things to happen quickly. But in a copying or in a V60, you won't necessarily see a higher TDS in a dark roast. And actually if you go too dark, your solubility, so to speak, goes down because you're actually burning off some of the soluble material. So the percentage of that 20 gram dose that's in your V60 actually has a higher percentage of solubilose, solubilose is not really soluble in water into normal circumstances. You have a higher percentage of solubilose and lower percentage of soluble material that you could get out of the grounds. So solubility is pretty tricky to use to evaluate roasts unless you're at the extremes. Gosh, we're 25 minutes in and I'm learning so much here that I can carry on to next year. So if you have a friend that's learning how to roast and you don't tell him about this podcast, you're a bad friend. So how do you go about, I guess, approaching roasts for different processes and different varietals of coffee and those sorts of things? So there's three things that matter a lot when it comes to how you approach how to roast it. And there's something that everyone thinks matters that doesn't matter. So the size of the beans matters a lot. Larger beans require more energy to roast than smaller beans do. The simplest way to think of this is put a large loaf of bread and a small dinner roll in the oven at the same time. The roll is going to cook really quickly relative to that loaf of bread. There's a greater distance from the outside to the inside. So it's going to take longer to penetrate. So we're talking like mockers, is America a pay or something? Yeah. So like a mocha could fly through roasts in five minutes whereas a margogi pe with all the same settings could take eight minutes. I don't know. You know, some very different amount of time. But if a mocha is more dense, is it? I think you're assuming that small beans are denser. Now, like the cattura we had earlier was grown at 2,000 meters. That same cattura grown at 1200 meters probably would have a slightly larger bean and slightly less dense bean. But mochas are not necessarily denser than margogi pe. Okay. Yeah. If that mocha was grown at 300 meters altitude and the margogi pe was grown at 2000 meters altitude, the margogi pe would probably be more dense. Yeah, because I had a mochaita. So it's some hybrid. It's pretty much just mocha, I guess you'd say, from Panama. My approach to that was to increase the temperature because when I measured the density, it was more dense. Okay. So density is going to be that thing that I mentioned doesn't matter. Okay. So we'll get there. Here we go. So the three things that matter, and let me before people freak out or say I'm an idiot online, let me explain the whole thing. Bean size matters because greater distance from the outside inside means you need slightly more energy. Okay. Easy peasy. Moisture content matters a lot. Higher moisture coffees need more energy to roast than lower moisture coffees. The reason for this is that all but about two percentage points of the moisture are going to come out of the coffee. Also some moisture gets developed during roasting and that comes out too. And the moisture that comes out is a little cooler than the bean services. And that vapor that comes out, the energy that's approaching the beans, some of that gets used up burning off that water vapor to get to the bean's surface. So there's a little force field of cooler moisture during most of the roasting process that's coming out that buffers against the heat getting in. Okay. So just as a side note to go really wonky on you for a moment, Christopher Faran. If you don't follow him, he's an expert in processing and fermentation and whatnot. He knows a lot about green coffee worth following. He has this thing he calls the green rehydration protocol. The idea is that if you have older green that's starting to taste baggy, you can add some water to the green and then roast it and it actually tastes a little fresher. It's just really interesting. So I've done this maybe 30, 40 times where I took 95 grams of green coffee, older green, put five grams of water in it, put it in a little Tupperware container, covered it, shook it up, came back and roasted it about 14 to 18 hours later. Now the amount of energy I've got is just a little bit more than that. I needed to apply to get to my usual ending color. Was during the first third of the roast, it was like 70% more energy. And then in the middle third of the roast, it was like 30% more. And then the last third of the roast, it was like the normal amount of energy because all that extra free moisture has left now. So I needed a tremendous amount more energy to roast this coffee than normal to get to the normal color. Okay, so that's number two, moisture. And then number three is processing. So as you've probably seen, washed coffees tend to require a bit more energy to roast than, let's say, naturals. And this has to do with the strength of the cell structure and it takes a little more energy to crack open that cell structure of the washed coffees. Now, there's 1,000 different processes now. So I don't know what's going on with that. I can't, I can't, if you say, I have this thermoshock, wash, blah, blah, I have no idea. It's too much. I'm too old. It's like learning a new language. I'm like, no, I don't know, just figured out. So the reason why density doesn't matter that much, it's not that density doesn't matter. It's that density doesn't vary that much amongst high-grown specialty coffees. So what I mean by this is that your muguguipe might be easily 500% larger than your mocha bean. Might be 300% larger than your average Ethiopian bean, your heirloom Ethiopian, right? That's a very big range, increasing something by 300% big range. All right, if I took all the coffees I have right now at Prodigal, their density probably varies by 20%. So it's not that density doesn't matter. It doesn't vary that much, right? Your moisture content might go from 8 to 12. So that's an increase of 50%. So that's pretty significant. And the moisture is apples to apples, like a little bit more important than density anyway as far as how much energy you need. So the density just isn't much of a player mathematically here. OK, so would there be like a difference in approach, say for example, if you've got a natural, a washed and a honey, it's all the same for aughty, then need different rice plans? Depends on what kind of machine you're using. So in an air roaster, I'm not saying nothing matters. I'm saying almost nothing matters. OK, so in an air roaster, you can get away with a lot because really all you have to do is get to your color. You could get there in six minutes or 12 minutes. You could get there with kind of a weird looking curve. I would advise against very, very large flicks or increases in the R-Wart at the end. Because sometimes when you do that, you're getting a acceleration of cooking in the outside of the bean that doesn't necessarily transfer to the inside. But other than that, you have a lot of flexibility with air roasting. OK, in drum roasters, you have this problem where because you potentially have conduction with naturals and certain other processes, the beans are more delicate. Anybody who's roasted a natural knows that it is more likely to tip or scorch than a wash coffee. And part of that is the beans a bit softer and a little more delicate. So that doesn't mean you have to approach it differently than your wash coffees. But it does mean that if you use one standard approach, that it has to be a slow enough roast with a cool enough drum that is not going to damage the naturals. The interesting part of that is that natural is often come out looking lighter visually than wash beans, too. So yes, and a lot of that is probably due to quakers. So quakers are basically immature seeds. So-- or I could say seeds from immature fruit. So when you pick coffee cherries, if you pick underripe cherry, they will generally have beans inside that are what we call quakers. These seeds and the cherry didn't get as much nutrition while they were on the tree as the riper once did. And because of this, they won't be as fruity. They'll often be very nutty and possibly astringent. And at the extreme, they can be very accurate or vegetal. So naturals tend to have a lot more quakers than wash coffees. In part, because naturals don't usually have this flotation step where they float the cherry in water and then scoop out the floaters, which are almost certainly have quakers inside them. And so the naturals-- if you consider quakers not just the yellow ones, but the brown ones that are just not-- that they're nutty, they're not fruity. Could do anything. Sorry, go on. That's OK. So the average natural has 50% ish quakers of some kind, somewhere on the quaker spectrum. OK. Any average washed coffee, let's just say on a similar basis, has maybe 15%, 20%. So the quakers just won't have as much pigment as the mature seeds do. So the naturals have a lot of quakers. So they tend to look a little lighter to our eye because we're seeing a lot of quakers inside the mix. What are the reasons for the prevalence of quakers in coffee that you buy, for example, be like, the farmer doesn't want to reduce their yield so they're putting-- Oh, is it like-- No, I mean, nobody wants quakers. They're very difficult to avoid. Some of them are inevitable. Just like if you have a blueberry tree in your backyard, the blueberries are not going to all ripen at the same rate at the same time. And when you go to pick the blueberries, you may not pick only the perfect ripe ones. Human error is difficult. It's really difficult sometimes. And each variety of coffee has a slightly different color of red or orange or pink that is the right-past one. So when you go to pick cherries like you might paint your hand or your paint your nail or wear bracelet or something, and you're constantly looking at, what does the pink barbon, what is this supposed to look like? And then you're using judgment. So it's difficult. But if there is, let's say, not enough rainfall. And then on a rainfall, you can't fertilize as much. If you don't fertilize as much, you may not be putting enough nutrients back in the soil. Seeds aren't going to get as much nutrition. You have more quakers. Likewise, if it rains too much, that might actually dilute and wash away some of the fertilizer that you put in there. You get more quakers. So there's other factors as well. So basically, they're impossible to avoid. They are possible to minimize. And then there's a lot of steps that you may not do like floating beans and using density tables to remove the quakers. Now, of course, also remember that removing quakers cost money. It's your losing product. At Prodigal, we use an optical sorter to take quakers out. We probably take an average of 20 something percent of our material out as quakers, even though we're buying very, very expensive coffee, because we're trying to get rid of all of them so that we have better aftertaste, like less estrangeancy, less nuttingness, all the stuff. But the tradeoff is, that's really expensive. And so whether you're at the farm level, whether you're an exporter, whether you're a roaster, it's like removing quakers cost money. So there's always a tradeoff. And then you have to decide, is this tradeoff worth it? Is it worth that money to do this? Is am I going to get more money for my coffee by removing the quakers? Is that going to make up for the loss of money? And the answer to your varies? I was writing one of your blogs, yes, last not about the optical sorter. So could you tell us what the optical sorter is and how it works and what it does? Yeah, so it's a machine that you load the beans on the top, the beans fall like a curtain or like a wall, past a front and back camera. You tell the machine what short version is, you tell the machine what colors are acceptable. And you also tell what percentage of the bean's surface can pass and fail in order to, you know, whether to reject the beans or not. And so somehow while the beans are falling rapidly in front of these sensors, the machine decides this bean has 75% of its surface outside of the target color range and it spits a little puff of air, compressed air. And it knocks that bean out of the curtain into a reject bucket. And it does this rapidly. It's really fast. It's like a video game watching this thing. We're like, you're trying to shoot the bad guys as they run by the screen. And so we'll run the coffee through it usually two or three times because the optical sorter, let's just say, you end up being between, say, 80% and 90% accurate in hitting its target. And so we'll run maybe the rejects through again. Maybe we'll run the non-rejects. But we'll try to clean it up so that it's getting well into the '90s in terms of accuracy. Yeah, it's such a fast and easy technology. Now, I think the other interesting angle as well, is you've kind of had to program at different coffees as well. Can be difficult to program. Some of them are easier to program than others. Yeah, it's tricky. But you just have to spend a few weeks or months getting used to your machine and mastering it. And then usually you'll end up having a few programs that work for all your coffees. But the beginning is hard. The beginning is very hard. It's interesting you bring this up, because I think one of the missions of this podcast and missions of my life is to explain to the common person. I guess the coffee muggle, if you will, the effort we go to to make good coffee, I think everyone in the supply chain, whether or not they're amazing at their job on art, pretty much everyone puts in effort, mostly, generally speaking. And this is some of the effort that some of the upper echelons of roasts go to just to give tasty coffee, because the roasting-- the coffee supply chain is so complex compared to-- Let's compare to one. It's processed at the vineyard, bottled there, and the transport, freight, preservation, and serving of it is so much easier than coffee, where it, once it's picked, processed, and then shipped, roasted, everyone rose differently. It says, "Merry, I don't know, on some complexity there." Then same thing for brewing. And it's just so hard to get good quality coffee. Absolutely. I mean, once the coffee's been processed, and let's say shortly after processing it at its peak potential, there's so many ways to ruin it. Between then and the consumer's cup, could get ruined in transport, which often happens, could get ruined in roasting, could get ruined in brewing, could just storage, right? And it's just-- it's like a minefield, where to get an awesome cup of coffee that coffee had to make its way through a minefield of possibilities, and it's kind of amazing that it ever works. While we're on this topic, I'm going to ask you now, what is kind of the optimal way of storing coffee, say for example, from farm to roastery? And then if you wanted to preserve it for a long time, because I've heard, I've got, I see a hear a bit of conjecture in the roasting community about this actually, because some farmers will vacuum seal bricks of green and some people say that's not good, I've extended periods of time. So what's your take? So the two things that matter are, well, there's a few things that matter, effectively, temperature is number one. So in any step, whether it's green or roasted, the colder you hold it, the slower it ages. So in the green state, every 10 degrees Celsius, if you increase the temperature, 10 degrees Celsius, it's going to age twice as fast. Okay, so if you decrease it 10 degrees, you're going to age half as fast. Right? So and if you freeze it, it's going to be aging very, very slowly. Like it almost, almost doesn't seem like it's aging because you could take green coffee out five, 10 years later and it still tastes great. In the roasted state, same thing. Cooler makes it age a little slower and freezing can hold coffee almost indefinitely, like many, many years. Vacuum sealing definitely helps. So I'm not really sure. Well, this is, I think the reference is vacuum sealing, but not in a freezer or fridge. So I can like get some in there. So I would say that in my experience, if let's say you're holding, for our argument, sake, everyone held their coffee at 20 degrees Celsius, 68 Fahrenheit for the Americans. Right? So vacuum sealed will age slower than held in a grain pro bag. That's just a, hermetically sealed bag, but not vacuum sealed, which will tend to age slower than coffee exposed to air. The air doesn't have to be damaging to the coffee, but if there's fluctuations in moisture content and things like that, it can age the coffee faster. So is there value? Say for example, we established the value of using the optical solder and what that does and how much that improves your product. Would you put in, would you say there's similar levels of value, say for example, of keeping your green in a 20 degree environment and if you're in a hot country, maybe investing in like, you know, climate controlled storage? Yep. So the calculus is going to be a little different for everyone. Obviously, let's say you bought a, you know, 50 US dollar a kilo, a Gacha, right? The value of slow in the aging of that coffee is much greater than the value of you buy a six US dollar a kilo green, right? You're, you're, you know, you ensure your diamond ring. You don't ensure your t-shirt, right? Like, okay. So it's not that expensive to keep the green cooler. Like, for instance, we built a room about the size of the room, and it holds about six palettes. So think of it as like a three car garage or something like that. And we hold it at seven degrees with a kind of a nice air conditioning unit and it's got insulated walls, insulated ceiling. We built it for $5,000 US dollars. We can easily keep 8,000 pounds, 4,000 kilos of green in that room. And it ages less than half as fast as it would at 20. So that helps, right? We have some freezers, et cetera. So, but everyone, everyone's going to have a different experience if you're, depends on where you are as well. Like, I once worked with someone in Queensland and they had a really nice coffee. I got there. I tasted it. It was delicious. I happened to be passing by their place a month later. And I stopped in for coffee. They brewed that same coffee and it tasted like it had aged a year. And the thing was it was being stored high up on a rack where it was 35 degrees. 24/7. It was just hot. And that coffee just died in that one month. So. That's a very interesting observation because it does get quite hot in Australia, especially in the north where Queensland is, one of the great states of Australia. And it's interesting to mention about Christopher Rohn's re-hoderation strategy. We had a guy who competed in the brewers cup not too long ago. His name's David Flood and he used a Ugandan coffee that he'd had a lot of success within the regionals. But then he actually re-hydrated it. And it was a very interesting strategy. And just on Christopher Rohn, one of the treasures we have in the coffee industry, that guy is and I read his blogs on occasion. And such a brilliant mind, which, which, I think, I've got to get him on the podcast like Chris, if you're listening. I'm sure he'd be happy to do it. He's a wealth of knowledge. Yeah, just an exceptional writer. And I like his concept of roasting where I think he releases one coffee per month. So just nails the roasting for that and the sourcing. And, you know, I really appreciate that. So let's get back to, you know, the mechanics of roasting, if you will. So how does one optimize airflow for a drum roast up? Okay, so this is something that I think is, I would say less fewer than 1% of professional roasters understand this concept. So I'm going to start by saying this. Do you know how the UG ProBots, the older ones, have a little bit of a mythical status like, I love the coffee from those machines, right? The modern ProBots, no one has that same feeling about it that they had. Like the UG and maybe it's just that they're cool looking machines and all the stuff. But here's what's interesting. The newer P-Series machines, the lowest allowable airflow level in those machines is higher than the standard non-adjustable airflow level of the old UG machines from let's say the 1950s. So you, so by, so the lowest today's lowest setting is still higher than the only setting on the 1950s UG. Okay, it seems problematic. Yes. So here's what's going on. The drum is the same. They have not changed the drum. The burners have changed, but it's still just heat a certain distance from the drum, and it's not not an issue really. Okay, power is about the same, all right? All that's really changed is the airflow. And what happens is they set the airflow too high. Now there's there's a bias in coffee, there's a bias in life, right? If you can witness something with your own eyes, it seems more important than if it's invisible, right? So if your airflow is too low, it's obvious because you see smoke and/or chaff. When you open the door, it's like smoke everywhere, chaff everywhere, like, oh, my airflow is too low. Easy. Increase my airflow. When the airflow is too high, you don't know it. There's no obvious indicator. So we're biased. We tend to avoid airflow this too low, but we tend to not know when it's too high. There's an asymmetry there. So what's going on with this is that when your airflow is too high, you are pulling heat out of the drum faster. Now I need to establish that higher airflow in a pro-bottied type machine does not increase convection. The reason it does not increase convection is that the burner works at a certain rate. Let's say you have your gas at 80% of maximum, all right? And let's say that at a certain airflow that produces air that's 500 degrees Celsius, just making that up, right? Now you increase your airflow by quite a bit. Now the air is 300 degrees Celsius, but it's just moving through twice as fast or something like that, all right? So you're not getting more convection because you're getting cooler air just going through faster, okay? But what happens is you're pulling heat out of the system so fast that you have to replace it by using a little bigger flame. That flame is in contact with the drum. That flame is making the drum surface hotter. So when you use very high airflow, if you if you decided, if you said, "Scott, I'm going to roast in 12 minutes and I'm going to hit color 95 on my system." If you use higher airflow, you end up using a higher flame to still hit that 12 minutes color 95. And that bigger flame is making the drum hotter. So paradoxically, when you use too much airflow in a drum roaster, you're actually getting more conduction, not more convection, all right? So short story. My business partner used to have this 500 gram drum roaster that I was never crazy about the coffee coming out of it. And one day I was like, "Let me just play with this machine for a bit." And I started roasting it. I was like, "Oh, airflow's really high." So I cranked down the airflow a lot, did the cigarette lighter test where you can see the flame get pulled into the triahole, adjusted the airflow down, down, down. Eventually got to the point where I was where I thought it should be. And without making the outside of the beans darker, I ended up getting more than 1% increased weight loss on my roasts. So that means is I was cooking the inside of the bean a lot more because I decreased conduction. Conduction isn't great at penetrating the beans. It's not as good at it as convection is. So long story short, if you use the lowest amount of airflow that doesn't give you smokey coffee, you're going to end up using a little bit less flame and you're going to get a little less conduction. And that's going to be good for development and flavor. Yeah, this is really interesting. And it kind of, your explanation of like how the new roaster's is on is really interesting because it seems like it's quite practical to make modifications to an older roaster and get excellent results out of it. They have quite a long shelf life. Is that correct? Oh, yeah, they'll outlive us for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So because you've got old roasters that you used to use, right? Not anymore, but I mean, I've owned machines that were built in the 50s and such. Yeah. And you can still get very effective. So how does one go about? Like, you know, so every example, it's built to the specs that it was in the 50s, but you want to roast in 2026. Yeah. How do you modify it? So it depends on the machine. The things that used to be missing back then, adjustable airflow wasn't really a thing. Adjustable drum speed, sometimes a thing. Usually the gas was very adjustable, but maybe you just didn't have any feedback to tell you precisely how much gas you're using, right? So probably, you know, to have those levers on the side of the machine. Well, you can get a good roast, but you can't replicate it with a lever. So you end up putting a digital phenomenon on it, and that phenomenon says, "Oh, your pressure between the valve and burner is, you know, whatever, two millibar, whatever." Now, you have precise readings that you can replicate, right? So usually just making the fan speed, if the drum RPM is good, leave it alone fine. If you need it, you add a adjustable fan, and then you just get a more precise reading on your gas, and then you're pretty good to go. And you can put thermocouples or probes within to measure data quite accurately as well. It's amazing what you can do. I love all this backholfery roasting, because it's like a someone that doesn't really do it. I'm not a roaster, like a can't call myself a roaster, but it seems more daunting than it really is. And probably the most important thing is to get started and make a few mistakes and learn from them. Is that? Yeah. So I would say that the two things to consider, one is that machine design is often the hindrance that's making your work harder. Like a perfectly designed machine is so easy to use that anybody could roast good coffee today. Most, you know, you have an old drum roaster, you actually have to kind of hack the system to get great good coffee, you know? And the other thing is that in machines like that, you need a good, what's called between batch protocol. So what you do between batches matters a lot. You can't just drop a batch, wait till the temperature rises to 200 and be probe and charge. You can, but that's not going to give you perfectly consistent roasts. So you need a system to kind of hack it so that you reset the middle of the drum. It's not hard to do. Once you've done that, everything gets 10 times easier. If you haven't done that, you'll never be consistent. You'll never have predictable roasts. What is the optimal between batch protocol? So it does depend on the machine, but basically it's going to be a system that's going to reset the drum temperature. It's going to both cool the drum and also bring it back to the same exact thermal energy level before every charge. So in most drum roasters, that means something like this. You turn off the gas at some point before you drop a batch. You drop the batch, you close the door, you see what temperature you reach at about four minutes with the gas off. And you do this 10 times, let's say, and let's say you say, okay, I'm averaging about 160 after four minutes. And then you say, 160 is what I'm going to call my bottoming temperature. Every time I reach 160, I'm going to turn the gas on, maybe to 10%, maybe to 20%. And then I'm going to rise in about one minute to a charge of, let's just say 190. So you create the system. And since we can't directly measure the surface temperature of the drum, we're using the bean probe reading as a hack. It's a guide. It is not the drum temperature. It's also not the goal. It's just the guide that we're using to hack this system. And in almost every drum roaster, no matter how big, you can reset the metal in about four to five minutes, except like extremely large machines, like they become a bit of a problem. But basically, you can do it by the same, like four minutes down, one minute up, but using certain temperature guidelines in almost any machine in a roasters. Usually it's a lot simpler. It does again depend on the design, but usually you can just charge as soon as you get back to a certain bean temperature reading, assuming that bean probe is in certain locations. But the bottom line is that in a roasting, you still need the chamber walls to be reset, but it's much easier to do than with a big massive drum. So I'm lettuce. I've actually, remember Alan from the hangover when he's counting cars and there's the, you know, the other column. Yeah, this is a lot. I interviewed you. Oh, it was probably, I can't remember what was here last year, at some time. And yeah, we were a lot more biographical in that one. So this is a good dichotomy. What percentage of like roasters out there do you think in specialty coffee? So in our little niche, what percentage of roasters out there do you think are like truly elite? Because then I'll start with my own kind of anecdote here. And that is that like, I've come to realize that there's very few. And that roast, like just lips, mackingly, send me to pergatory, you know, in a trance. I've got a third eye on my forehead. Good, you know? The very few. I have no idea. That's hard to know. And let's face it, you know, there's many, many roasting companies that their job is to make money. Maybe they're roasting kind of dark, maybe they're using relatively cheap coffee. And there's nothing bad about that, right? It's like, there's got to be coffee at all different price points. There's going to be all different roast levels. There's all different tastes out there, right? You're probably not going to convince your grandfather to get into Uber light third wave coffee, right? This probably, you know, maybe hundreds, something roasters have come across where not every time, but at some point they have that amazing experience. But let's face it, you know, I say this as someone who I feel like my competence careful roaster, but like it's the green. It's not us. And we're just getting out of the way of the green, right? Like if you brew an amazing V60, you don't think like, wow, I just took a mediocre coffee and turned it into a 10 out of 10. It's like, you know, you were working with great beans. And you know, you got out of the way and just didn't screw them up, right? Now that's roasting really is don't get in a way of the great coffee, right? Whatever that means to you, you know, means little conduction means roasting light or whatever, but you know, it's 70 something percent the coffee itself, the green. What, while we're on this sort of line of thinking, what's like? I've got this this concept to call the importance pie, right? Yes. So when it, so let's just say, I've got like a really amazing wash gauge that I'm drinking, right? What percentage of it is attributable to good growing, slash sourcing? What percentage is attributed to roasting and what percentage for brewing? What's got rouse opinion on that? Off the top of my head, I would say 70, 2010. I mean, but I want to do 70 for 70 go for for for for growing processing the green, the green, 20 for the roasting, maybe 10 for the brewing. Okay. Now, but I want to put a little asterisk here and say any one of those things could destroy a coffee, right? So if you decide you're going to roast it to charcoal, well, the roasting shares is 20 percent of a of a great cup, but it just became 100 percent of what matters in a in this particular case, right? So in in the bounds of what you and I would think of as reasonable attempt at, you know, something skillful, I would say 70, 2010, but any one of those three things, I mean, if you decide you're going to then brew that Esmeralda with brackish water, that 70 and 20 don't matter anymore, but you just you just turned it into nothing, you know? So yeah, but under normal circumstances, 70, 2010. Coffee brewing and in having good coffees kind of like a 30-year mortgage that heavily favours the lender, you know? Yeah. It's just like they can pull out at any time up the interest rate. If you miss one payment, you're out in the street. Oh man. Yeah. It really be like that. And that's, you know, that comparison of one we were talking about earlier. Heavenly favours the Roastar. All right. But it is getting easier. I want to know a scot-row roasting horror story. Have you got one for me? Just like what's that? What's a horror story? Which kind of horror story? Just like what's the most bizarre thing you've witnessed for a client or just in your life? Okay. I'll tell you two simple stories. One was that it was 1990s. I had my first cafe. I had one other person who roasted for me this particular time and he calls me. He's like, wait a fire. I was like, oh no. And by the way, the Roaster was in the cafe. Right? So he had a huge fire and he knew there was a fire and for some reason he'd lost his mind and he opened the door. The Roaster, the beans inside the drum do not open, do don't open the door because when you open it, you give them oxygen and the fire gets much larger. So the beans spill out into cooling tray. He said the flames were like three meters high. And the entire cooling tray got warped. Here's this like three quarter centimeter thick steel that got completely warped. So I go there. I'm like, oh shit. And I stayed overnight literally hammering the cooling tray smooth so that it was useful again because it looked like this. It looked like waves because of the fire and scraping all the soot and creasote off of all the inside parts of the Roaster putting everything back together. And then finishing the roast the next day. So that was awful. You must have been kind of like hitting like a blacksmith, you know, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, like we were holding a scalaba. That's exactly what it felt like. And I was like, oh man, this is yeah, that was awful. One funny thing, no names will be named was I was doing a job. I was working with someone who you know, okay, coffee, but need to work. But I couldn't convince him a need to work. It was it was a little bit weird. Everyone's someone who hires me who doesn't actually want to get better. They just they just want me to tell them their coffee is great. It's like a weird like you're paying for validation, which I find very odd, but it is a thing. It does exist. And it was very frustrating because I felt like there were some easy ways to make the coffee better, but didn't really want to hear it because it was pretty happy with the coffee. So they too, I walk into the cafe, walked into the back. I'm terrible, I'm a terrible person. I took one of his cups and I had gone to Dunkin Donuts and I'd gone to get a cup of coffee. And I poured the coffee into one of his cups and I handed it to him and I was like, here, taste this. He tasted, he's like, "Oh, that's good." He's like, "Is that the Colombian we roasted yesterday?" And I was like, "No." He's like, "Wow, what is it?" It's awesome. And I'm like, "Dunkin." He's like, "What are you talking about?" I'm like, "I bought it at Dunkin." I put it in your cups because I wanted to convince him that there was work to be done. And he was dumbfounded for like five minutes. And then five minutes later, he was like telling me again how he had the best coffee in town. And I was like, "I've lost that one. I couldn't win now." - There was just no, there was no. - The immovable wall. - Totally, totally. - I mean, if they got the money and to pay you and you know, I hit him on. - There was no point, but it was, anyway, it was kind of funny. - It's, yeah, it's interesting. (laughing) - I mean, I really thought I was, I didn't do it to be mean. I didn't hoping that that would actually get through because my words weren't getting through. And I was like, "Oh, maybe blindly tasting something from somewhere else that he knows he should be better than would get through." But it didn't get through. - Your story about the roaster catching fire inside the cafe reminded me I worked at a place here in Melbourne and the chef left, you know, the blow torches that they used to make like creme brulee or whatever. He left, he, this is the stupidest thing ever. He put it inside one of those like industrial toasters. And so, why? - Well, great question. (laughing) - Okay. - The, about 10 minutes later, it exploded. And customer, it fired, like, think of like, a drug on breathing fire. It fired like a beam of fire at a customer who had to duck to avoid getting burnt. And it was like this continuous flame for like five seconds. The chefs all ran. This is in the middle of busy service. And everyone was just like, "What the hell just happened?" And this guy was, the chef was so incompetent. And we're like, it almost like defaced someone. - Yeah. - Just in the middle of the service. And everyone was just carried on. I think they sorted that, that table out, that bill was like, "Yeah, you don't have to fight today "because we almost killed you." But yeah, that was, that was, that was interesting. - I'll stop sitting next to the open kitchen from now on. - I'll tell you the restaurant after this. Maybe I don't go there. - Okay. - Little public service announcement. Almost so every roaster should have water tapped into the roasting machine. Okay. And almost no roaster does. Very large machines, that's just automatic. All the large machines they're manufactured with water, basically a suppression system. Tap it in. Only cost a couple hundred dollars. Tap, tap the drum and tap the chaff cyclone and put a little valve on the outside and with a spray head on the inside. And before every roasting session, just open the valve for a second, just a pergeny chaff or crap that gets stuck in there. And have it there because if you ever have a fire in the roasting drum, you just go for two or three seconds and that'll put out the fire and you won't ruin the drum or anything like that. It's much better than trying to stick water through the trier or whatever, some awkward thing like just tap it. And it's, it's one of those, that has saved me in the past so many thousands of dollars and so much headache. And especially, you know, if you have a lot of different people doing the roasting, if you're using a drum roaster, you know, like, it's gonna happen, you're gonna have a fire one day. - Yeah, listen to this podcast, you know, we'll never be like, you know, never imagine being encouraged to tap that. You need to tap that, you know? (laughing) Tap that all the way, tap that. - Tap that, you know? - Don't clap. Just tap. - Only there once, you know? - Yeah, you gotta tap that. So yeah, insert a tap into your roasting is the message here. I've had a few problems with suppliers lately of green where they've done a pretty bad job of sample roasting. How should sample roasting be done? 'Cause like this is, 'cause like if I get the green and roast it myself, I'm like, yeah, this is great. I wanna buy that coffee, but like, I've had a few issues with sample roasting lately. - I've had this conversation with some importers, some producers where I basically said, you know, it behooves you to sample roast really well because it's gonna help you sell coffee. And it's just not really done. Like there's a lot of variability and usually I'll exaggerate and I'll just say, you know, the low man on the totem pole is the one who's stuck on the sample roaster at the importers office. You know, the young kid who just started working there, I'll go roast these and most of them have old style drum roasters with no technology whatsoever. So they're kinda doing everything by eye, right? It's fine, it's not that you can't get good coffee that way, it's just harder, right? But sample roasting, like we measure color and weight loss religiously in our sample roasts. At the very least, you should measure the green moisture and the weight loss because the relationship between the green moisture and the weight loss is a pretty good proxy for color. Now, I think you should measure the color, but let's say somebody only gives you 50 grams of sample, well, you may not want to waste 10 grams of that coffee taking color rating 'cause you need to cup it all, right? Fine, but if you can, take a color rating. If you can't, at least measure the weight loss, always measure the green moisture. Now, there are exceptions, but if your green moisture is say 10%, now for us, if our green moisture is 10, our weight loss is usually about 10 and a half to 11, or usually about a half point to a full point weight loss above moisture. And that is about our color 99. That doesn't mean anybody else's 99, just ours 'cause we're grind setting, right? That's a pretty good proxy. Now, we have like some Ecuador's recently that were processed in a funny way, and the moisture was, the weight loss was below the moisture, that almost never happens. But the point is measure, measure stuff. Make sure you're in a certain range. Now, when you're on the link, this is what I would tell you to do. As soon as you hear first crack, start your development time timer, right? Cropster and artisan do this automatically. You can do it with a handheld timer if you want. And if you are doing, I know you like light roasts, right? So if you're doing a wash coffee, let's try 40 seconds development time for your wash and maybe 30 for your naturals on your first try with a coffee. And then you measure, you've already measured the green moisture, you've measured the weight loss, maybe you've measured the color, and you say, ah, this was too light. Okay, then add a certain amount of development time. Now, effectively, on average, this is just on average, two and a half seconds of development time is going to equal 0.1% weight loss. It's also going to equal one color point. So if you say, ah, I'm four color points too light. Okay, go 10 seconds more development time next time because that's going to get you four color points darker. So it can become very formulaic. Most people don't know this, but you know, that's all you need for sample roasting, really. Yeah, and this is the difference between mate buying, you know, lots of colors from the man. Not, it's like, just, I've had, yeah, one kind of roast, oh, import of them in buying from light. There's like the sample roasting has just been really, you know, always better to do your own sample roasts when you can. And if you're going to get sample roasts from a supplier, I would have that conversation like, how do you measure your roast? How do you, how do you do it? And if you have the knowledge, maybe you can say to them, oh, you know, can you, can you roast? You know, I like it when my weight loss is about one point above the moisture. Can you do that for me? Like, and put the onus on them to kind of hit your targets. That conversation can go somewhere. Yeah, like they're really good to deal with that. Yeah, just that if you love, yeah, last five or two days and below, below average. I think it's having, have valuable is having fresh coffee to roast. Like, you know, I think I noticed you air frite a lot of your coffee so that it can be as fresh as it can be. And so what's the value in that? So I would say it's going to vary by coffee. And of course, it's going to vary by storage conditions. But let's say under normal storage conditions, the first six months after processing coffee tastes pretty good. Some point between six and nine months, I can usually taste a bit of age. Some point between nine and 12 months, it's like definitely aged. Like, it's a little baggy. So, fresher is much safer in terms of, you know, labor quality. Like, if we get a nice gaysia, we're probably going to air frite the gaysia again, because, you know, you ensure your expensive stuff. You don't ensure your cheap stuff, right? That gaysia, if it goes on a boat, if it sits at a hot port for a month, and then it goes on a boat, which may even have to be hot, and then it sits at another hot port for a few weeks, and then it clears customs, and then it gets on a truck, and it gets to you almost always has lost a half point in quality just due to temperature, sometimes even more, right? If it gets air-frated efficiently, usually, there's no loss of quality whatsoever. So, it's a cost-benefit calculation, especially useful for very expensive coffees. Obviously, in Australia, it's very challenging to have fresh green, because other than Indonesia, you're not very close geographically to many producing countries and costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time to get coffee here. But I feel like in almost all cases, right? The customer, like the end customer being like the retail buyer, would almost always prefer paying a little bit more or more and getting, you know, much better quality products. So, if they're in the market for a gaysia or a product coffee. So, if you look at, let's call it like the customer pyramid, right? Our customers are people who are generally pretty nerdy, pretty serious about coffee, right? The average is lot to drink or maybe not. Maybe they're just like pretty happy with anything that tastes pleasant, right? So, I think you have to know your customer, you have to know what your customer values. Like, I had about 20 coffees in the last three days. I didn't drink them all. I just drank a calf because it was touring around cafes. And I would say 10 of them showed age in the green. Now, I'm not sure that anyone working in the cafes or anyone else at the cafes noticed that, right? It's something that you may not notice. It's sort of like Quakers. Like I'm very tune into Quakers because we remove them. Once you get used to doing that, like then you get more sensitive to tasting it. But if you've always tasted it in every cup of coffee you've ever had in your life, it's just always there. You don't really notice it. Right? So I always think of this as, if you have your very first cup of coffee in your entire life, and I say, what do you taste? You'll probably say it's bitter, right? No matter what it is, even if it's like a light rose beautiful coffee. But how often do you write bitter in your cupping notes when you cup coffee? Like almost never, right? Because it's always there, so it's in the background, so you stop noticing it. Right? Your brain is trained to not notice something that's always there because there's no value in noticing something that's always there. There's a lot more survival value in noticing something new or something moving, right? And so I think that the aged stuff is hard for most people to detect because it's usually there. Yeah, that's a very good answer. And I think like, it makes me wonder, like, is America kind of in a much better position to get like fresh coffee, far more regularly because you've proximity to Central and South America? Yeah, Central and South Americans get to America pretty quick. Africans obviously take a long time. And especially, no matter where you are, things like Burundi or Wanda are very difficult to move coffee out of those countries anywhere, to anywhere else. Like it's just challenging. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, Columbia especially to the US is just light-day fast. Yeah. Man, it's great. I've got to be in that situation. Yeah, I mean, I've often thought about, you know, I've often thought about living in Australia and one of the things that gives me pause, I'm like, off, I would've roasted Australia, like it's just going to be that much more challenging to get the kind of grip. So used to, I'm spoiled by fresh, you know, very quick transport. Oh man, I love it too. I love it. Give me kind of, talking about this, got it. But anyway, last time I spoke to you, you said that you feel like it's going to be quite quick for roasting to be automated and a lot of kind of, you know, jobs made obsolete in coffee roasting. You know, that was probably a year ago. We have, we have much progress on that or like-- I don't necessarily know that jobs are going to be obsolete in the sense that roasting is already pretty automated. There's already a lot of opportunities to automate it. You still need humans for parts of the process, right? Now, if you're in a small roastery, you're always going to do humans to lift the beans and scoop the beans and all that. And a bigger roastery, usually one human can manage a lot of machines that are moving a lot of kilos of coffee, right? But you know, something like the IMF, the Roost, like, a lowering has its own form of automation. Like, you can pretty much just push a button walk away and the machine can do everything else and you can get a very good result consistently. At the extreme, Roost with their P3000 machine is coming out with a loader or you can put 100 kilos of green into loader and tell it roast this coffee 33 times three kilos per batch. And the machine is going to weigh that out to the gram. It's going to drop it in the machine. It's going to run a between batch protocol first. It's going to roast the coffee on your profile. It's going to drop it out based on time or temperature, development time, or whatever you tell it. And then it's going to run the BBP and then it's going to load and weigh in. And it's just going to do that endlessly until you stop it. So you could literally press start walk away for five hours and come back and have a hundred kilos. It's interesting to say this, because I've been to like a few specialty coffee roasteries that might roast like 10 tons a week, right? And they've got, you know, 10 staff in that roastery. And then last year I got to do a coffee roastery that's roasting 100 tons a week for a lot of commercial clients here. It's got three staff. You know, like 100 tons a week and it's got three staff. The first time you see it, it's almost creepy. Yeah. Because I was in one once where there were two people working. There was thousands of kilos a day happening. And you actually couldn't see the coffee. Yeah, no, no, no, no. You never saw the great, the coffee was in tubes. It was in roasters. It was in machines and then it got packed. But you never actually saw the roasted or green coffee. And this is what I fancy a fascinating, because they literally do, like, you know, when it's in the silos, it gets transported through the organs into the roaster. And then you don't even say it again. And it comes out as packaged coffee. Yes. And this is like, it's amazing how much they can scale these things now. And the mathematics behind that as well. So that's very, very impressive. I can't actually talk about it too much more because I'm under an NDA. So-- OK. But it's very impressive. And the scalability of it, like, you know, in a way, it kind of makes-- sometimes I think of the coffee business and cafe businesses as unfair, right? Because there's someone a small-- like a smaller business that's started by someone that's really-- yeah, got a lot of respect in the industry. They've worked out a long time. They may not be resource. So eventually they open their cafe. But they're coming up against a group-- like a group that has 20 cafes who can get their milk cheaper. They can get their-- all their supplies cheaper. They can get access to stuff and all this stuff. So, you know, it makes sense because, you know, as businesses grow, they buy larger amounts, get a bigger volume, just can't-- yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, it's also kind of like this weird thing. That's all business. I mean-- but you and I have one advantage, right? Like the human connection, right? You're at your cafe, you're meeting people. People get personally connected to what you're doing. And maybe they feel some personal connection to Starbucks or Duncan or one of these companies, but it's not the same. And, you know, you've got that. And you also can do things with some finesse that are very-- it's very difficult-- not impossible, but difficult to do those things at scale. And, you know, you and I are not spending all our time going to the chains because they happen to figure out how to get their cost 15% lower, right? We're going to the individual shops where there's somebody who's tweaking the quality, you know, a little more carefully than the chains ever could. So, yeah. The-- and what about AI as it relates to coffee or ice and do you see any? Because it kind of doesn't seem worthy investment run app. Because like, you know, all the AI people are going to make in 'cause they're going to dollars, you know, and say, look, and valley. Right. So, I'm not a little light. Not a little light. I'm not anti-AI or I don't-- you know, I don't. I know. But I also think predicting the future is the easiest way to look foolish, right? Yeah. I don't see yet a lot of use for AI and roasting in a sense that my IMF-- I can create a profile. I can put virtually any coffee in that profile. I can push a button. I can predict to the second when that roast is going to end. I can tell you ahead of time before I even roast the first time in my IMF. Based on my sample roast, I can tell you, this coffee is going to take seven minutes and 37 seconds in my IMF to get to color 99. And I can press go and the machine can do it. I don't know how AI is going to make that better. I'm not saying it can't. I'm just saying, I don't see it yet. So there's a lot of effort being put into AI. Everyone I've ever talked to who's trying to do that has been very dismissive of roasting knowledge. I've been like, hey, do you want to talk about that? I'm like, no, no, no. I'm like, yeah, but the data you're working with is garbage data. Like garbage and garbage out it may not be good to be using it. Like, no, no, I know what I'm doing. I'm a software engineer, whatever. And I'm like, okay, like, you know, and we talked about this a little bit with like the the Bogey and Tech guy earlier. It's like, you know, there's a little bit of arrogance. I've heard the whole like, I'm an engineer a million times that as if that's a substitute for coffee knowledge, rather than embracing both, right? I'm an engineer. And now like when I, when I signed up with decent espresso, John is a literal genius. John is incredibly smart. He had an incredible idea. And he said, yeah, but I don't know that much about coffee. I need your help so that I understand what the coffee needs so that we make this machine as good as possible. And very few people who are that smart have the humility to say, I see my weakness. Now I want to go get help to shore up that weakness. So that's yeah. - And just to add a bit of context with the tech reference he made there that I had. So I was looking at buying a $60,000 piece of equipment. And I went, I traveled into state to go test it. And the, I guess tech or assistant engineer, whatever, that was kind of assisting me there. Just got in my way the whole time. Like, you know, I need to go somewhere else to now test that same machine just so I don't have to deal with them. And it's like this guy's just, you know, kind of. - He didn't want to give you the freedom to experiment because he knew better. And it's like, well, that I'm the customer and this is what I want to do. - Yeah, just like sometimes when you're testing those things, like, you know, who you've got assistant you and showing you is like, you know, a big difference. So, you know, and this guy just, yeah, very frustrating, very annoying. And anyway, I won't go too much further into that. We've just about reached the end, Scott. I mean, like we've been, what a podcast if you wanted to learn about coffee roasting. I might, my brain's just full of information. This is like neuroplasticity on steroids, you know? So is there anything else for coffee roasting before we wrap up that you want to sort of let everyone know about or do you reckon we've covered it off pretty well? - I think we did pretty well with it. - I think we did as well. I've had so much fun and learned so much here and there. So I guess the final question is, what would you like to ask me? - Well, Kirk. So at Project Zero, you serve a lot of co-formats. Where do you see that going in the future? 'Cause I have some thoughts about that, but as someone who, you know, uses it every day, I want to hear like, where's this going? Is it gonna take over? Is it gonna fade? Is it gonna morph into something more subtle? Like what's gonna happen with co-formats? I think it's going to get an increasing prevalence because there's kind of like, for a number of reasons, like, and let me talk about the customer side first. And that is kind of like I explained before. The language of it is just so much easier. Like they walk up, they say, "Strawberry cheesecake on a box." No more questions need to be asked. Here's your money. - And probably no one's ever asked what it's a taste like. - Yeah. And someone actually came in this morning and said, "Look, I could get, you know, Similar flavor from an L diviso on Ligon, that would cost me $20, but I can pay $7 for this and it's, you know, you know, it's it's very very much the same level quality to most people and not to everyone but to most. Yeah, and so it's kind of like having this 90 point experience without the 90 point price tag. It's scalable. The language is easily understood by customers and the taste is like, you know, something's wrong if it doesn't taste like strawberries, you know, you've done something really bad. So I actually think it's kind of, and my dude, that's not all of what we do. We serve a wider range of coffees. No, I wanted to grow this spectrum further, but like it's never been easier for me as someone that's, you know, had the sub-zero coffees previously and done the competitions and serve gashers. It's never been easier to connect with the common man over coffee than it is right now. And co-fiments has been probably the biggest lever for that. So I'll say a couple things about it. One is that I don't, not saying it can happen at all, but I don't think co-fiments really would qualify ever as like 90 in the sense that I find almost all co-fiments, the acidity is not that prevalent. It's almost like it's being outcompeted by the new flavor that's added. And balance is usually a little out of whack, you know, you might get hit in the face with strawberry cheesecake, but it's not like balance or nuance, you know. Not to say it's not delicious. It's just, you know, so I had an experience once where this is about a year ago. I had this gaysia from Columbia, of course it's always Columbia, right? And it was amazing. I mean, I think it was 89 points and you know, I think I don't, I don't score 89 more than like two or three times a year, you know, including Panama's and all that stuff, right? And I called the guy who sold it to us. I was like, this co-ferment, what's going on here? He's like, no, I called him a year a week later. I'm like, he sure? He says no. Call him a week later. I'm like, because we know each other really well. We'll just mess with each other. I'm like, are you sure? He's like, well, I talked to the producer. I was like, yeah. And he said, well, turns out that the barrels that was fermented and had been used for a co-ferment and there might have been reds of due. In that barrel from the co-ferment. And I was like, this is fascinating because this coffee was to me 89 points. It was delicious with just this tiny hint of pineapple that was detectable but not strong, but just enough to get you a little excited. Like, where did that come from? Right? And I realized, oh, maybe this co-ferment thing. I mean, I get it. If you're a farmer and you have a Castillo that tends to be quite vegetable or bitter and you can get a lot more money by processing it as a co-ferment. Go for it. Right? But in this case, here was a gaysia that usually without any residue is like 87-88 points. And this tiny hint of pineapple took it over to this other place. And I thought, you know, this is interesting because maybe this infused and co-ferment thing could be used at a very subtle level to enhance coffee. Let's say we have an off year. There's not enough rainfall. You got a lot of quakers, whatever. You know, you might be able to tweak flavor like this in a way that almost anybody would enjoy more and wouldn't find overwhelming. Right? And so I'm optimistic that it has a place in the future, especially if climate change makes the flavors where you used to like much less frequent or much more difficult to achieve. And I suspect it's probably done a lot more than we realize. And you'll scot route. And if you can say that you enjoyed a coffee that had just a tint, a tinge. Yeah. And you know, I think it's probably it's not declared as much as we probably would like it to be. Yeah. And you know, if I go back to the Panama scandal where coffee was disqualified for having foreign attitudes or whatever the term was. And I spoke to a lot of the producers there and they're like, look, we're not against this conceptually people doing it. We just don't want it up against our gayshow. We want to preserve, you know, they're really, they're really, I guess, protective over their brand as Panama. And that's as a collective. Like they're all they all fight amongst each other. And they'll even tell you that. But you know, they they they united in wanting to protect like, you know, the quality of their product. And and so yeah, I think even like it. So where I'm going with this is even producers like that. It's like, yeah, we're encouraging of producers in other countries to do this. Yeah, sure. But just don't put it up in, you know, a wash competition or a natural competition, which is totally fair. And I like the rule change now. The world brist championship of the world brills. They allow for the use of it now because the particular in Australia, there's a quite ugly trend of, you know, if someone loses everyone else who didn't win accused the winner of using a, a doctor coffee. So it's like, you know, I kind of like that now because you've taken away the controversy. Yeah, just go and if you need to split it. It would sort of like be like, okay, allow steroids in sports. And now it's like, now it's just like, you know, free fall, you know, but level playing field for better for worse. Interestingly though, that you touched upon something, there are a lot of producers who do co-ferment and infuse and don't say it. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, I actually had some today where it wasn't claimed, but I told my friend I was like, this is going to be a co-ferment. And you could smell it before you drink it. And that's a little bit of a problem. Like, I don't really know why people are doing that. Like, there was one case I heard of where someone who was allergic to coconut had a co-ferment that wasn't declared a co-ferment. And they had a reaction to it and they survived. But so there is this small percentage chance that somebody's health could be harmed by, you know, having whatever pineapple or coconut or something in their coffee and they, you know, didn't, wasn't, weren't told it was there. And look, do I be afraid to enjoy it either? Like, if you, you know, you just gave that anecdote. And it's like, yeah, like just, we didn't need to just be like, conceptually, no, what's Andrew coconut? You know, there's this funny old saying and I apologize if it's offensive because it's not meant to be. It's just more like a joke of sorts. But like, someone once said, like, the difference between a religion and a cult is that the religion has been around longer. Right. But that's not the point. It's not that religions are good or bad. It's just more like, new ideas often seem like, cultish or bad. And then if they're around long enough, people are, ah, it's cool. Right. So, maybe this co-ferment thing, it's too new. A lot of people are hating on it because it's unnatural and isn't that. And then maybe once it's around long enough, people are like, yeah, it's cool. Right. Because there's so many things that have been like that in life where we're just a little biased against new stuff or a little scared of it or we see the dangers in it. But then once you get used to it, it's insane to danger is anymore because no one died and, you know, everything life just went on and you just get used to it. And look, some people roast me and don't come to my cafe that are in the industry because I use co-fermates and it's like, I couldn't give a shit because my, like, it serves me well if you don't get into it because I'll just sell more. And, yeah, because the customers love it. And I think that's part of another thing we, I think we're getting better at ironing out and coffee is kind of like, you know, arrogance and, you know, snobbery. You know, people that drink their espresso like this. So, but I think, yeah, it's overwhelmed only good, in my opinion. So, overwhelmingly being good. But that's not to say, like, yeah, it should be transparent, you know, but like, buyers of coffee deserve to know what they're buying. And, you know, even for the safety reasons that you outlined. So, yeah, like, there's so long as those conditions are met, I'm all for it. I'm all for it. But I'm going to let the world know about some sponsors that they're my sponsors. So, you know, time or big time supporter of this podcast and they've got some of the most affordable and effective brew gear around. So, great granders, really good. Yeah. Great granders, great scales. It's, they've really democratized, you know, brewing. So, you can do it cheaply. I'd recommend you hit up time or calm right now or go to a distributor near you. You would have heard a few early ads by now and Scott, you'll be able to check out my new cafe that's opening in when I'm back in February. I will come back. So, it's going to be a lightning quick espresso bar. And I'm partnering with barista group who use Machiba, Izaga, grubberwake granders and they're going to be supplying the Uber Milk Plus. As well, have you seen the Uber Milk Plus? I don't know. I mean, I saw Uber Milk get better in Sydney. I don't know if it's the plus or the three-handed iPad monster. Yeah. So, it was very cool. Yeah. Very, very cool. So, he's got one of the first ones in Australia. So, the distributor, the importer actually is based in Sydney, which is why I can't get one. So, we're going to be the first in Melbourne that are using it. So, barista group helping me out with that. So, they've been supporting the show. So, if you want to modernize your coffee bar, which I heart at least suggest you do, hit up Joe from barista group. Just don't waste your time. Just go, just go, just go talk to Joe. He'll save you a boat light of cash, make your bar more efficient. And I'm so excited for this new concept as well because what we're going to be doing, and I posted some reels about this, and I did a podcast with Matt and Jeremy from barista hustle about pre-making espresso. So, all the espresso for milk coffee, so your flatwires, lattes, capchains, whatever you want to call it, we're going to be making at our current store and shipping to our new store and dispensing from taps. So, instead of, you know, hypothetically speaking, if a customer wants to come in and have a flatwit, usually I would have to brew on a espresso. And that would take 30 seconds. So, from start to finish, it's about a minute to make a latte, right? Now, it's going to be like less than 10 seconds. Because I put the cup under a tap and it's actually much more precisely made espresso. And I'll have the ubermilk plus making my milk. And then I pour it in a cup and it's ready. So, like, it's going to be, I mean, my hypothesis is it's going to be light and quick. So, I'm really excited and I, you know, I really hope that you come. In fact, you have to come. If you're not calm, I'm gonna put a hex on it. You know that beta and Sydney's doing something similar. - They are. - And I tasted it and it was very good. - Yeah. - You know what, this Uber middle espresso thing solved one kind of small annoying problem as a cafe owner, which is that, let's say you split shots, you've got a single shot, you've got a double shot, but maybe you have an eight ounce cup and a 12 ounce cup, right? So maybe you put two shots in the 12, but then the latte is stronger than eight ounce latte with one shot, or there's no way to make them identical in strength. But he had the Uber milk set so that he could push the button for effectively like one dose for like the eight ounce and one dose for the 12 ounce and so they were proportional. So both were exactly the same strength. - Check. - Trivial thing, but I love that. - Well, this is the thing. We could have in the future, like, if we really want to, we can have up to like, seven or eight different sizes for our customers. - Yeah. - Because you don't actually have to re-extract the coffee or extract it differently. You just fill up the volume. So in so many ways, this could be like, I know people will think, you're making money out of this if it goes well or correct, but it could be the savior for the coffee industry. Like it's produced more exactly, I guess you could say, and it can be done to a very high standard. And then the operating cost for a cafe because it's so much quicker lower, you're using less staff. And in Australia, there's more brist of jobs than there are brist to fill them, so it's a need. And then like the tailoring to your customer as well, like we could, you could have a piccolo and fill up to a certain volume up to like a venti, and you'd be fine. - So I'm gonna make a plug for innovation like this, right? Which is that everyone wants wages to be higher. Great. Everyone wants producers to get paid more. Great. No one really wants their latte to cost more, right? But in order for wages to go up, in order to be able to pay more for coffee, and then there's like, something has to give or we need some sort of innovation, right? And we can't, I mean, as much as you'd like to be like, I'm just gonna pay all my bristas $50 an hour, like lovely, but maybe you can't make any money now the business fails, right? So I'm not saying that this is the solution, but like innovation like this is needed to figure out what can work because it's pretty hard as a small cafe owner in Australia to make money, because there's too many damn cafes quite honestly. Like you've got like one cafe per thousand people? - Well, like, yes. - Something same number that's inconceivable. Years ago it used to be like one per 5,000 people. - Yeah, the capital base. - Yeah, it's just stupid. - Right, so now you've got intense competition. Prices have not risen anywhere near what inflation and costs have risen. You need an escape valve. You need something to make this equation make sense. And, you know, anyway, I hope you succeed with it. I hope that works out, you know. - Yeah, people are so easy. So you get a throw at rocks on the internet and sell a lot, not a million. But like a lot of people are really interested in this. And people who genuinely smought in the coffee industry are quite curious about it. And I think, and the flavor, I should mention so I thought the flavor is excellent. - Yeah. - I'm not degrading quality at all. Like the flavor is fantastic. - All of our lives we were told whether it was roasted or whether it was brewed, we were told that freshers better. Now sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's not. But you know, when you break that, when the first time I said to people, please wait one or two months before you use our coffee, people were accusing me of trying to sell them old coffee. Oh, you just got old coffee to sell. That's why you're saying that. I'm like, no, I want you to the best experience possible. There's always the skepticism, there's always the hate. But at the end of the day, if you blindly taste it and you're like, you know what, that's damn good. Then just go for it. - Well, it's incredible what we did with the barista household cause, you know, we did it blind. And, you know, Jeremy, all of us, I believe, preferred on average the pre-predact to espresso. - I believe it. And cause it's actually far more balanced because without the crema, it's far more consistent flavor experience whilst for the customer. So there's myriad reasons why it's fantastic. And I'm going all in, baby. So, you know, enjoy yours. Enjoy. But thanks so much Scott. This has been, yeah, this has been a fantastic podcast. - Thanks for having me. - Thanks for listening to this. You, if you've listened all the way up to them now, you've learned to an absolute shitload of stuff. So awesome. Thanks so much, Scott. We're so lucky to have people like yourself in the industry and, you know, taking the time to come and see me and give people the knowledge. I just, yeah, I really appreciate that. And to that end, please tell two friends, like, subscribe, comment on all that stuff helps me. I want to keep doing this. So help me grow it. Help me grow out people. So like, subscribe, all that stuff. Scott, I'll let you go. Let's Friday afternoon here in Australia. So, yeah, have a cocktail or something tonight. Enjoy. Go to the beautiful Yarra River. What have you got planned for tonight? Oh, just gonna go to the gym. Go to the gym. What are you training? Oh, just, you know, little cardio today. Yeah, you're looking, you're looking pretty fierce. Yeah, I'm trying to fight aging. Yeah, you know, how old are you now? 53. You're looking good. Thanks. You're looking very good. I'm like, I'm 31, but I look, you know, 40. No, I feel like 31. We'll wrap it up there folks. We're gonna go enjoy. Thank you, Huru. See you next time. Bye-bye. You can either listen to the third, or be out of the day about how you can go to othew.com and find recipes for the amazing drinks. Or read the future of Taser Fort. It's from the future. Or learn about the sustainability work. Or you can press the 15 sec Ford button on your Punt Blank device. It's totally up to you.