Where Tech Meets Coffee
One of the coolest aspects of being a developer is not needing to use the phrase, “well, that’s just how it is”. If you see an opportunity to improve a process, you can literally write code and see the results. I’ve only been roasting for a couple months now and keeping a detailed roast log is critical to understanding what produces the best coffee flavors. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough integrated software to manage all this data. And so, as a developer, I’ve decided to begin creating my own solutions.
For the past month, I’ve been working on a platform to aid in my coffee roasting and it’s nearing a point where I can release publicly for other coffee roasters to use. I’ll be publishing more details, but here’s a sneak peak of the platform.
As shown in the video, my platform will be able to track inventory, perform roasts, save historic roasts, define profiles and apply them, save cupping information and associate incoming orders to the process. There are more videos on the YouTube channel if you want to see how the application has progressed over the past few weeks.
For Hottop owners like myself, if you want to start building your own web application or command line tool, I’ve released a Python library (pyHottop) with full documentation that can be used to interact with the roaster. Keep in eye on our Github account for future code releases including the platform demoed above.
When I originally started Split Key Coffee, I didn’t realize how well my technology background could blend with the roasting process. Being able to create new solutions that others can use ultimately makes roasting more accessible to other home users who may not have the ability to write their own platforms. I see this as a really exciting time for the company and it will go nicely with our 2018 web store offerings!
A special thanks to Marko Luther, creator of Artisan Roaster Scope, for being an indirect source of inspiration for this project. Artisan has been amazing for keeping track of my roasts and it’s original design was what inspired me to port the concept to a web application. Marko’s original code helped speed the process up significantly.
