How is the baker's day and night bean baking machine made?

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In 1995, my coffee business encountered a bottleneck. I opened several stores and put them away one after another. The originally insufficient funds immediately faced the scheduling problem, and then my life struggled to borrow and repay the money. I once planned to give up coffee to escape from the mountains and live in seclusion (Big Brother lived in Alishan at that time)! Finally, with the strong support of his wife and the grace of relatives and friends, he has survived to this day.

In the most painful days, I keep asking myself what I really want. Perhaps it is a professional habit. The word "coffee" has never disappeared. However, at that time, I wanted to get out of the coffee industry. During this period, I worked as a direct seller for a year and sold noodles for two months. I also traveled all over Taipei to sell glassware in morning and evening markets for several months. Life is not a nightmare, but it is also frustrating!

I don't think I can get used to the days of wind and rain and public appearance. "Coffee, Coffee" keeps shouting in the depths of my heart! At that time, I was already 33 years old, and there was a store whose income was not enough to pay off the debt. I looked forward to the future. It was really difficult. But my heart is back on the coffee!

Although I have opened a coffee shop for several years, the failure made me find that I didn't know anything about coffee!

"I don't know coffee"; I can't tell the origin of coffee from appearance. I don't know the characteristics of coffee from one place to another. I don't understand the difference in roasting depth of the same kind of coffee. Even how to make a cup of coffee will bewilder me. This is really a big joke, but this is the case. It turns out that most of my information is based on ready-made information. I think it is what the supplier says. This discovery is like a slap in the face! Even I am like this, so how does my client get the right information? I solemnly asked myself where would I start if I made coffee from scratch?

Coffee has spread for thousands of years and has lasted for a long time, of course, because of the characteristics of coffee itself. I hope to have the experience of growing and harvesting coffee. However, it is not easy to have such an environment in a coffee garden in Taiwan. The economic situation also does not allow me to go abroad for internship. Second, if you want to fully master coffee, "baking" is the second way. At the same time, it also meets my needs at this stage, so I decided to start with "baking"!

It seems easy to make such a decision, but it is quite difficult! First, who is going to teach you how to bake coffee? Roasting coffee is a special skill, to be clear, it is the guy who eats, who is willing to teach an enemy to fight for a job with himself! Second, coffee roasters in Taiwan are ridiculously expensive. A five-kilogram Zhonggu machine that has been in use for 15 years costs NT $300000, and a brand new one costs at least NT $500000. At this price, you can buy brand-new machines with high-level or even high-level specifications abroad. Besides, I'm penniless now!

As the saying goes, "the mountain does not turn the road." what if the road does not turn? You have to turn it on your own! No one can grope for it by himself, but what if there is no machine? Take out some data and pictures of the roaster collected before. Thinking carefully about the roaster I came into contact with in my memory, I thought to myself, "if you can't afford it, you can always make one, right?" The roaster is nothing more than a drum, a device for getting in and out of beans, heated with gas below, and a smoke pipe pulled on top.

It is very simple to think about, but it took half a year to build all the products from conception to finished product by hand. It took another year from trial drive, continuous improvement to baking satisfactory beans, which is really time in exchange for money!

First of all, considering the initial production and the demand in the store, I decided to make a small roaster of about 3 kilograms. Calculate the drum volume and dimensions of each part, draw a design drawing (just a sketch), run to Ta tie Street-Xingcheng Street, cut several steel plates according to the chart in a factory that cuts iron with gas, buy some steel bars as supports from a nearby steel bar shop, then cut a section of steel pipe to the steel pipe factory under the bridge in Sanchong City, and send it to the lathe to make a flat drum. In the next few days, I bought thermometers, heat-resistant window glass, drum bearings, transmission gear sets, slow motors and control switches, pipe fittings and hoses for smoke exhaust, funnels, and then asked for a set of electric welding machines that had been discarded from friends, and so on, some of which had to be customized, so it will be a month before we put together these parts!

The assembly work began as soon as all the parts were ready; the first time I took the welding torch, I was really cautious and scared, and the welding marks were terrible. I saw sparks everywhere, and the melted welding iron simply did not converge for a while. I simply picked up two steel plates and spent an hour or two practicing welding before I figured out some tricks. Disassemble and assemble in this way, break down and redo it, and after it is done, it will take three or four months to disassemble and redo, and it will take more than a month, because I am exhausted and in a daze. I'm going to give up! It's sad to have no money!

For the first time, the drum corrected that the beans did not leak out during the rotation. I was so excited that I was almost crying. Looking at the rising smoke during the baking, the depression that had been in custody for a long time finally disappeared like a relief. "it's finally ready to bake!"

The smoke baked for the first time immediately caused a protest from the neighbors. Only 3 kilograms of beans filled the room with the stench of smoke, and the neighbors thought it was on fire. After apologizing, it took another two weeks to build a simple smoke filter, which slightly solved the smoke problem.

Anyway, I finally have a working roaster, which costs 195 days plus NT $30,000 plus countless blank days!