Solar Coffee Roasting: A Weird Desert Experiment

One more thing - a full roast cycle worked out at around 0.6kwh/kg (this is both the preheat energy and the roasting energy). It took a while to work out the usage and then double check against Bellwether’s own calculations.

Crew:

Michael Losada - Camera
Ryan McKee - Production Coordinator
Bruce Feagle - Drone and Camera
Marc Hlavaty - Sound Recordist
Thies Lemke (Locations Unlimited) - Location Representative
John Rogers - Colourist

Music:
"Galaxy" by Sunny Fruit
"Learning Curve" by Chris Mazuera
"Reconditioning Has To Start Somewhere" by Dear Gravity
"Coming Back Home (GOOD Remix) by WEARETHEGOOD


Links:

My Books:

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[bndvr]

Watching James break bad coming out of the RV is truly a magical moment, even sitting in the plastic chair

[tristanwegner]

10:55 James being delighted by the fact that they turned sunlight into coffee. He will be so happy when he learns about coffee plants and their use of the sun!

[burgers]

James Hoffmann standing perfectly lit in a sunset desert in front of a Bellwether is a more beautiful commercial than anything Brad Pitt produced for Nespresso

[Parent-Thetical]

2 things from my mind:

1) I just love the direction James has gone with his videos. The level of serious coffee knowledge juxtaposed with his fresh sense of humor just makes my day.

2) I can’t wait to see the Hames Joffman for this one!

[JadeNeoma]

There was no need for the cinematography to be this good but its so good im glad you spent the time to do it

[ratchetz]

Whoever on the creative team paired the cuts of James coming out of the trailer in the morning with that soundtrack choice is a genius. It was absolutely ridiculous, and incredibly perfect.

[boudebier]

For my graduation I recently designed a compact solar coffee roaster and water boiler using vacuum tubes originally designed for rooftop water heaters. Instead of converting sunlight into electricity and then back into heat I used solar heat directly. I was only able to produce very small batches and the roasting process was definitely not as controlled as usual but none the less quite a fun experiment. If you Google "living with the sun coffee" you can read more about it :).

[combscoffee]

Great example my friend! We currently operate a 31 kilowatt solar powered coffee & cacao roastery in Gainesville Texas. We use electric Giesen and Diedrich drum roasters at the moment. I have thoroughly enjoyed building and scaling my green certified business (i.e., 2 solar powered cafes and a solar powered food truck) for the past 10 years! Cheers to the future 🙌

[robojimtv]

As an electrical engineering graduate, just wanna note that kW is a measure of power which in and of itself is a rate of energy delivery. So kWh is the actual measure of energy. The Bellwether being rated to 9kW means that it needs 9kWh of energy to run for an hour. If you multiply it by 3600 to get the output in the SI unit for energy, you get 3.24 MegaJoules. Also all of this doesn't account for energy lost in the conversion to battery and then from the battery to the actual roaster.

[RR-qizw]

An interesting BTS fact: James now holds the Guinness World Record for most sunscreen applied in a single day.

[illuminantXtX]

The shot of James grinding that coffee while dancing seriously turned my shitty day into a less shitty day. Thank you so much :)

[cinemaocd]

Imagine the sherif showing up thinking he's cooking meth but he's roasting coffee...I loved everything about this: James measuring power in the number of espresso machine group heads you could power; describing the process of solar power as electrons being bullied out of place by the sun --which is as good an explanation as any solid state physicist will give you and of course, the ROBE...it;s all so bloody excellent.

[sagopalm]

Glad to see the groundwork being laid for coffee roasting on mars.

[aaroncarter]

This was shot by stone cold professionals, you can tell. Just the confidence to hold these beautifully composed wide shots, you don't see this kind of work on YouTube very often.

[guidoandreoli]

Beyond the content and the general idea of ​​the video, I would like to say that it also turned out to be genuinely beautiful. This had beautiful landscapes, beautiful construction of the photography and also that touch of silliness that we like so much in you. Thanks for continuing to push coffee culture around the world, James. Greetings from Uruguay

[gutobernardo]

James please never stop making these skits out of your videos! You are the most cinematic and comedic coffee specialist and my world is better for that ❤️

[mr.skidmarks]

James: we are gonna roast coffee with something more practical
Also James: *sits on a roaster in middle of desert in California*

[QuietMisdreavus]

My local coffee shop here in Denver uses a Bellwether to roast their coffee and it's really nice. You can see their machine in the cafe right when you walk in, and i had no idea how it worked until you showed off this one today. Thanks for doing this!

[EmilyGallagher]

James wearing a woolly jumper in the California desert might be the most James thing of all. I am so pleased to see you are back, I missed your videos.

[natepowers]

So proud to have been a part of building the first few verisons of the Bellwether roaster! So many amazing people still working to make it even better each day.