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The Javabot Combines Engineering and Coffee
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:11 PM
from the there-is-nothing-wrong-here dept.
from the there-is-nothing-wrong-here dept.
WormholeFiend writes "The Javabot is the coffee machine of the future — completely next generation. It is the fully-automated system that runs the Roasting Plant Coffee Company in New York and its design is illustrative of what can be achieved using new thinking and methodologies to something that was previously regarded as a black art. The system is part of the experience because the coffee system runs throughout the shop. It's the first walk-in coffee machine in effect, and customers sit there and watch as their coffee beans rush past in pneumatic tubes, as they move from storage bins to staging, roasting station, grinding and a brewing machine where they are dispensed with the repeatable accuracy of a purpose-built machine. Customers can choose from any blend of seven different beans and every aspect of the process is controlled."
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Nice and all but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nice and all but... (Score:4, Informative)
In a nutshell, 'they already thought of that'.
Parent
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Dilbert (Score:4, Funny)
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Now we just need (Score:5, Funny)
This is what it looks like. (Score:4, Funny)
Full color illustration here! [girlgeniusonline.com]
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No roast on demand (Score:2)
It says that they do not roast on demand because the beans need time to "cool and out-gas". I haven't done my own roasting before, so I was wondering how necessary that really is. If it's just dangerous gases to worry about (??), why not use suction to draw them away? Is there a way to speed up the cooling process, assuming it's really necessary?
Anyone know?
I love coffee.
-l
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FWIW, Sharpie marks don't out-gas once dry (an odd bit of trivia you may need when deciding what to use if you every want to tag anything on the space shuttle)
Re:No roast on demand (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:No roast on demand (Score:4, Informative)
Your idea of de-pressurizing the bean might work but before I went to the expense, it'd be worth doing the double blind to ensure it's necessary.
What makes the biggest difference is the quality of the bean. I've roasted Vietnamese beans that were god awful and Costa Rican beans that were sublime. Green beans come in all kinds of shapes and colors. The Vietnamese beans I sampled were a motley lot of various shapes in the same bag whereas the best beans have a consistent color and shape within the same bag. The color varies from region to region so there isn't a 'right color' as you can find good coffee in all shades of green.
One problem with this guy's business plan is dealing with neighbors who object to roasting coffee. I generate quite a bit of smoke when I roast my piddling pound of coffee and I have to wait until the wind is blowing away from one of my neighbors who has lupus. I can well imagine all sorts of problems trying to roast in a congested area.
Parent
Roasted vs Roasting (Score:3, Informative)
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The gasses aren't dangerous, it's mostly just C02. They just make the coffee taste off. There's been a bunch of discussion on how to speed up the process in the homeroast community, but the conclusion everyone inevitably comes to is that it's impossible. The beans need time to develop their flavours and get rid of the off-taste of CO2. Takes about 24hrs or so, depending on the beans & roast.
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Coffeemakers don't suck!
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No, but vacuum baggers do... and if it has the attachment for mason jars, I bet you could out-gas your beans pretty easily.
I'll try it with my next batch.
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0 comments yet.... (Score:2)
Re:0 comments yet.... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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The Coffepot webcam... (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdotters dream? (Score:2, Funny)
Compatible with IETF RFC 2324? (Score:4, Funny)
Low tech is better than high in things coffee (Score:4, Informative)
Skyshadow's Law: The more complicated the coffee maker, the worse off you are.
The best cup of coffee I've ever found is from a little coffee shop near my wife's office in San Francisco (I won't say the name, but it's near the SoMa Caltrain station). They make their excellent brew in a decidedly low-tech way:
Each customer chooses the type of coffee they want or (and this is a better option) tell the barrista to use their judgement. The beans are scooped up, ground and then poured into a very conventional filter basket along with enough water to produce one cup of coffee.
And that's it -- the best cup of java you're likely to find made by probably the lowest-tech possible method.
Re:Low tech is better than high in things coffee (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Does it Run Java? (Score:4, Funny)
If it did, the coffee machine would need 15 mins to start, require all the beans to be named a certain way, the path to each individual bean type explicitly defined in the CLASSPATH, and would freeze for 20mins doing garbage collection, usually at the most inappropriate time.
Re:Does it Run Java? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Standards based robots (Score:2)
Such a thing as TOO fresh. (Score:4, Informative)
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Do not compete (Score:2)
Another mention... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.bornrich.org/entry/walk-in-for-a-cuppa-coffee-from-javabot
Walk-in Bong (Score:4, Funny)
Something like this would put Vancouver on the map.
Prior art? (Score:2)
What the article NEVER SAYS... (Score:4, Informative)
Never. It talks about "machine of the future," that it's purpose is "to produce the most flavorful cup of coffee available," efficiency, control, etc.
It does not say whether that purpose was achieved.
The writer does not say that he tried some coffee made by the Javabot and that it tasted good.
The writer does not quote anyone who says they tried some coffee made by the Javabot and that it tasted good.
Doesn't go far enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Acmebucks, we brew your coffee in 154 easy steps!
Where's the Beans? (Score:3, Funny)
(Big Yawn)
When I can watch my coffee being GROWN via a live 24/7 satellite feed and Juan Valdez personally inspecting my every bean --- THEN I'll truly be impressed...
Re:Cubicle? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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You know that Saint Stephen got stoned, right? Now you must face the wrath of the redundant mods! Sorry dude.
-Steve
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Ah, a luddite. How cute (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, a luddite. How cute.
I've got news for you. Your standard of living, or that you can afford to spew pretentious words on Slashdot instead of being out in the fields with an ox-drawn plough, is because things like that already happened.
E.g., look at the clothes you wear. There's been quite the movement against mechanical looms in the 19'th century. In fact, that was _the_ original luddite movement. Turns out that it wasn't self-destructive or short-term after all. Previously you'd have maybe one set of clothes, total, for a decade. And you'd stitch and patch them when they broke, because it would be too expensive to buy a new set.
E.g., the fact that they're clean. Previously washing the clothes was a very time-consuming manual process, and it wouldn't be done anywhere near daily. If you enjoy pulling a clean new t-shirt out of the drawer daily, or a pair of socks, or underwear, or whatever, then roll it around in your head that people used to just wear the same clothes through mud and dirt and whatnot for quite a while.
E.g., if you enjoy a nice office job with a computer, it's only because agriculture got heavily mechanized and a small number of farmers can feed the rest of society to do better stuff. We used to need 5 peasant families to support a knight. Maybe also add a burgher family, although those were a lot fewer than that actually. Almost three quarters of the population used to be out there ploughing dawn to dusk, just for subsistence, in the good old days of non-mechanized manual labour. By sheer probabilities, chances are that would be your lot in life, if we still were at that point.
E.g., for that matter, read that again: dawn to dusk. Literally, that was how the acre was defined: the surface that a peasant with one ox can plough in a day, from dusk to dawn. That would be your daily schedule, for 6 days a week. Not to keep some cushy office job by putting up with a PHB's demands for overtime. That would be the _normal_ schedule, and just for subsistence.
E.g., enjoy all that free TV and free content on the internet and whatnot? Well, that too is because society now makes enough of a surplus, that marketing can blow on subsidizing those in exchange for ads. Previously your only entertainment would be the pub, sitting and listening to the same stories around the fire, and maybe a village dance on sundays. Don't think even books, because those were quite the uber-expensive things before Gutenberg went and made it a "highly reproducible mechanical process".
Etc, etc, etc.
Turns out that none of that actually made us any poorer. We just end up producing more, and affording to divert more work into entertainment and services.
Parent
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So basically, someone else should be poor (and for no other fault or merit than being born in China) so you can be rich? It's such a self-ce
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