Pizza & Coffee
Just came from work, unexpected early but a pleasant surprise.
Knowing that my meal is half ready and looking forward to a nice full creamy and smooth espresso....a must after heavily abusing my body poring black acid through my organs from one commercial coffee brand which I do not wish to mention.

Opened up the front door, lights on and strait to my kitchen. My kitchen is base, the place I wish to be after a hard day work. It calms me down. My machines in hand reach, switching on my VBM and my high tech oven.
Yesterday I made 8 pizza's (Napoli style) at the birthday of my lovely wife and I have still have some home made dough, buffalo mozzarella and some other stuff left. So I made myself a real nice pizza while watching the K-1 finals in Hawai on Eurosport.

While my pizza is warming up I turned my attention to my set of green beans from Panama. Took 500 gram of beans together with my Frankensteiner coffee roaster outside. Its heavy duty and damn ugly but that's the beauty of it. After a while you stopped noticing its horrific looks and starting to appreciate its industrial side. More important, it does what it supposed to do...roasting..without any fuzz on temperature control or a high tech cooling system. I switched it on and the drum started spinning, kicked in the beans. Slowly its warming up and I hear the beans rolling...I suppose the neighbors hear it aswell cause its making a lot, I mean A LOT of noise.

The big difference with my last roasting session I used the 500gr instead of the 100gr which caused an unequal roast due to it centrifugal effect. Also it gives you the option to stick a spoon in and check how far the beans are in the roasting process.
Slowly its heating up and I try to memorize the smell of different stages. The first stage you smell the moist coming out of the beans, a pleasent grassy odor. This smell turned into a more intense odor and after a while you hear the cracking of beans. Its hard to hear cause the noise the machine makes so I have to follow my visual expertise on when they are ready.
After roughly 16 minutes the coffee beans were roasted, full city roast I guess. For your understanding...I am an amateur picking up knowledge by reading and experimenting.
I cooled down the beans by having them outside for a while and put them into my grinder...grinded my first 8gr espresso and tasted...I tasted chocolate...full strong..lovely!

If you ever have the chance..roast yourself, it probably isn't better than an experienced roaster would do but it sure gives that extra dimension to your espresso.

Everything was perfect...for except my pizza...my PIZZA!! I forgot my PIZZA!!!!