Has anyone else noticed how much cleanup is involved?

BDL

'tis the nature of food prep. Most of us develop standard routines that best suit our setups so that clean-up is to a minimum. I can do everything from grind to clean-up in under 5 minutes. About once a week I clean the front of the machine and wipe up grounds from my station which takes another 5 minutes. A few things that work well for me is I dose my coffee into the basket with a funnel to make sure 99% of my coffee ends up in the basket, not the counter; I flush my hx into a measuring cup and flush the screen and basket over a Tupperware which are easily dumped into the sink and prevents buildup and more frequent cleaning of the drip tray; and I soak my steam wand between use which makes it wipeable with a paper towel (I don't like keeping a damp cloth because it gets mildewy and nasty with milk). For weekly cleanup I use a mini shop vac. If you find yourself cleaning for more than 25% of the time that you are enjoying your coffee, I think you need to look at how you can adjust for your needs to be more efficient and be able to go to the ball!

I find cleaning my equipment daily very theraputic. Once you get a routine down, it becomes quick but still takes a good 5-10 mins.

Richard,

Are you only referring to the clean-up time after roasting, or the whole "coffee-thing" (when it's taken to the level we all do)? For roasting, my clean-up takes less than two minutes. I've got quite the routine in general - set-up takes a couple minutes, roasting takes 11-15 minutes (for a pound which yields maybe 14 ounces of roasted coffee), then my two minutes of tear-down.

One reason why clean-up is a snap is that I heat-gun roast outside in a place where once my beans are cool, I use my cooling fan to blow away any chaff I've created, and I'm done.

As others have noted, roasting is just a therapeutic process for me. But I am glad I only need to roast once a week!

Woops! Did not notice what section this post was in. As far as roasting goes, yes outside makes cleanup a snap. If I roast indoors, again a shop vac does wonders.



...moved from Home Roasting to Knockbox by moderator...