2019 Wrap Up

2019 has been a hell of a year. We installed our new 30kg roaster along with doser and new retail packaging.

We moved premises in October to a new state of the art roastery in Westlink Business Park.

On a personal level we welcomed our third beautiful baby girl Saoirse into the world (one week after the roaster was installed).

Heres a short video wrap video for 2019, looking forward with that 2020 vision.

Join Our Team! New position available

Title

Delivery Driver and Production Assistant (trainee roaster)

Reports To

Production Manager

Customary Hours

40 hours per week

Availability Required

Monday to Friday, with occasional weekends included. Must be able to arrange transport for early morning shifts, occasionally starting at 6am.

Position Summary

Are you interested in joining our team @ Silverskin Coffee?

This is a multi-tasking role in the delivery and production department of Silverskin Coffee Roasters. Primary driving duties include; delivering coffee to wholesale customers, organizing an efficient delivery route, troubleshooting any issues with wholesales customers on site. Primary production duties include; making coffee bags, bagging coffee, operating packing machinery, packing wholesale orders, warehouse stock management, weighing up green coffee. This is a great opportunity for someone with an interest is specialty coffee to develop his or her knowledge and skillset.

Required Attributes

Full clean Irish drivers license.
Experience in managing stock and performing regular stocktakes.
Experience as a barista to troubleshoot wholesale customer issues during delivery run. This is desired but not required.
Experienced with coffee machine and grinder operation to trouble shoot wholesale customer issues during delivery run. This is desired but not required.

Personal Attributes

An interest and passion for specialty coffee.
Patience and meticulous attention to detail, with a clear understanding of the importance of speed.
A desire to learn and expand specialty coffee knowledge.
Ability to work efficiently, diligently, and cheerfully as part of a team and also independently
Excellent at multitasking, prioritization, cleaning and organizing
Punctual

Rate: Negotiable

New Retail Packaging {100% recyclable peel-fresh cylinders}

We are very excited to launch our new retail option. Our current logo/brand is getting a bit of a makeover, and we decided we’d like a little bit of a change.

So we have done away with our retail bags and given a nod to the environment with a paper cylinder with peel-fresh technology.

This has meant investment  in a sealing machine to ensure the cylinders are 100% airtight we are going to apply the bottom rigid piece while the beautiful foil on top will be capped with a stay fresh lid.

Coffee is an amazing beverage and we work in an amazing industry along with our peers and colleagues we are striving for best practice and environmentally friendly solutions.

 

Hence the birth of a recyclable option for home, these cylinders can be kept and used for many purposes of course and I look forward to seeing them pop up in different scenarios throughout the home and cafe.

They will be available in 3 different colours, black for our house coffee, silver for single origin/rare coffees and of course for all you Christmas fiends there’ll be a festive version.

 

We have done some testing of the product to ensure the integrity of the peel fresh technology and foil to ensure no oxygen can spoil those amazing beans.  See below

 

Cylinders are placed under 0.03 mpa air pressure for 1 minute.

 

Clink the links below to see the magic happen.

 

 

 

 

 

Roaster Upgrade

Recently we purchased our new roaster (which you can read about on the site here) https://silverskincoffee.ie/2019/04/10/new-equipment/

In a bold move, we decided that our existing 15kg roaster would be upgraded to match the roasting style of the new machine.

This meant taking out the existing drum (thermodynamic) and replacing it with a new one (Vortex).

Here is a note on both technologies.

 

Thermodynamic Drum: The most advanced drum available in today’s industry. Built from two layers of mild steel with a middle layer of pure copper, it has extremely high thermal absorption and heat conduction characteristics. In contrast to standard drums in which roasting is performed by direct, limited contact between the beans and the drum. The Thermodynamic Drum exhibits a unique scheme of sophisticated heat conduction applied to a wider contact surface between beans and drum. Heat is transferred via the copper layer creating a 1.4 mm gap between the heat and the beans, removing any risk of burn marks. This drum excels in producing an evenly roasted batch of superb beans, allowing a higher range of temperature operation, and writes its own new language in thermal dialog – just imagine, reflected heat conduction.

 

Vortex Drum: Drum air-inlet screens configured at vortex geometry to allows very efficient high velocity air. This drum is 4 mm thick, made of two separate layers of perforated mild steel.
The perforated drum utilizes infrared radiation for roasting. The radiation is produced by the flame which is positioned horizontally, parallel and underneath the drum inside the ceramic combustion chamber. This drum is indifferent to the type of rare plate as air flows through the drum walls and around. This drum also requires low airflow to prevent excessive conveying heat by the air.
The perforated drum produces a stronger taste and a higher rate of caramelization in sugars. This much desired outcome occurs without running the risk of producing roasts with burnt marks on the surface of the beans as may happen while caramelizing with solid drums. Using this drum may prove favorable for filter coffee roasters or those who seek to obtain intense tastes for their espresso roasts.

No easy feat especially when the bearing housing at the front of the roaster refused to let go! Eventually we separated the old drum and installed the new one (which is considerably bigger) this meant adjusting the combustion chamber slightly or simply put saw away some of the protective housing *scary stuff.

One of the main reason for the adjustment to the housing was for the new burner to be placed inside. The old burner was a Pre-mix single nozzle**

 

Pre-mix single nozzle burners are first level new-generation gas burners. Not only that, they can operate as multi-fuel burners. Such burners are equipped with a centrifugal blower able to calibrate air quantity. They also come equipped with a calibration valve that controls gas quantity. Controlling gas quantity ensures air and fuel mix in accurate amounts resulting in complete combustion that derives maximal caloric value.

Just like with anything else, there are many manufacturers of these burners. Design and quality naturally vary. In a good quality burner, a projecting/radiation nozzle or a heat-radiating metal screen will be installed to supplement the mixing chamber. Such efficient setup secures oxidation at the tip of the flame. This gets rid of toxins such as NOx and SOx generated by improper gas combustion. In its more basic form, this burner cannot be modulated using a single control knob. Modulation requires optimizing air quantity manually with almost every single change in desired gas quantity.

 

This was upgraded to a Fully modulated burner  with greater control for sure ** see a note from the manufacturer about it’s high cost and over exuberance……if you’re gonna do it you’re gonna do it though right 🙂

 Fully modulated burners

Just like in the single/mono stage, in pre-mix single nozzle, multi-stage, or fully modulated burners caloric value can be changed and adjusted during roasting. With this type of technology, where the burner is located in a closed combustion chamber with optimal heat distribution, there is no need for full-resolution control. Two or three stages will provide perfect control for all commercial roasting purposes. Some roasting masters will nevertheless consider this insufficient. That is also fine: the technology is already here to match. As long as you promise to use it and are willing to pay for it, it can certainly integrate into your made-to-measure roaster. However, sometimes, high functionality can also be a source of confusion. Some clients are better off without a wide control range. Trust me, I have been supporting clients online for way more than twenty years since the early days of the Internet.

Having said that, 100% control is vital when the flame hits the drum directly. In this case, it is absolutely necessary to be able to go down to very low caloric values. On the opposite end, when the drum compartment is open and un-insulated, one has to take into account the cold surrounding air that interferes with the roasting process.

 

So simple really we have upgraded our existing roaster to ensure all roasts, all styles match up no matter which machine we use. Its been a huge learning curve already but one we are thoroughly enjoying.

if you’re following our intstagram you’ll see the hours spent uninstalling and reinstalling the kit.

 

Hopefully its worth the effort for our customers.

 

Brian