This month, we're celebrating one million recorded roasts on Roast.World. Let's do a little math with that number...
According to our stats, the average batch size on the Bullet is 651.007 grams, with an average net weight of 541.7 grams. That equates to 651,007 kg of green run through Bullets, yielding 541,700 kg of roasted coffee. (1.2 million lbs for our American friends.)
At 10 grams per cup we arrive at 54,700,000 cups of pour-over. Espresso shots? Line up 27 million of them for over 852 miles of crema.
No matter how you measure it, a million recorded roasts is quite a milestone for the Aillio community (and it doesn't even include all the roasts that were never synced to Roast.World).
We think this is a great time to take a look back on how RoasTime and Roast.World got to where they are today -- and also to offer everyone a little glimpse into the future.
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The very first version of RoasTime -- then known as Roast.Time.
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Although the GUI wasn't as pretty as it would one day become, Roast.Time 1 set the tone for everything that followed. Working alone on the software, Jacob Lillie gave early adopters of the Bullet a means to record and save roast profile data, to analyze those roasts with simple tools, and even to upload roast and debug data to our support team whenever their assistance was required.
The Bullet R1 was data-driven from the get-go, because we believed then as we believe now that more meaningful data creates a better user experience, in all ways. With that in mind, our attention soon turned to building an online space for roasters to share, discover, measure, analyze and learn from that data together -- Roast.World.
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In late 2017, we began working on Roast.World simultaneously with a Roast.Time port to Mac that was not so much a port as a complete top-to-bottom rewrite. Released in 2018, functionality was limited, but the software was beginning to look a little friendlier, and for the first time our users could upload their profiles to the cloud and view them there.
RoasTime and Roast.World have been "synced" at the hip ever since.
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Screenshot of a RoasTime 1 port to Mac.
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Hot on the heels of the Roast.Time rewrite, RoasTime 2 was soon released for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The countdown to a million roasts had begun!
RoasTime 2 changed everything -- even the spelling of "RoasTime". Over the next couple years, we continued developing new functionality and features, highlighted by the Roast Recipe Creator, but also including dozens of small, iterative improvements for more customization and better usability. RT2 was the first version of our software to include playback and overlays, and to allow users to manage their bean inventory.
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The first beta version of the Recipe Creator in RT2
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RoasTime 3 and the new Roast.World
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As is often the case with software, eventually the framework we had been relying on was creating more problems than it was solving, and we were forced to migrate to a new one.
In 2020, RoasTime 3 was released concurrently with a brand new version of Roast.World. This involved a massive amount of back-end improvements to make both platforms snappier, and also to make it easier to add new features -- and we have certainly added a lot of new features since!
RT3 has added predictive roasting, a calendar view, shortcut keys, and innumerable improvements to the highly customizable GUI. Roast.World got a new look too -- cleaner, less purple -- as well a complete inventory management overhaul with much finer control. It now also offers the ability to download and save other people's profiles and recipes, which can then be run or played back automatically on RT3.
Other recently added features include:
- IBTS RoR support for RW/RT3
- Contextual information to recipes on RT3 and RW. i.e. the bean’s country, recommended weight, etc.
- More filtering options so you can better filter roasts and recipes that are public
- News Feed
- Embed feature that allows you to embed roast profiles on the RW Community or on your personal website
But we ain't even close to done...
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RoasTime 4 will be the first multi-lingual RoasTime, with support for Mandarin, Danish, English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Thai. There will finally be an option to toggle between kilograms and pounds, as well as a sleeker, more intuitive Recipe Creator that will no longer require time conditions.
Maybe what excites us most is something you're gonna have to wait to use -- the beginning of support for AiO. But although AiO is taking data-driven roasting to new levels across the board, Bullet users will also benefit from some of the new features and functions we are planning for Roast.World and RoasTime, many based on AI and machine learning.
(Perhaps this is a good time to remind everyone that the data on Roast.World is only as meaningful as you make it. "Untitled Roasts" of "Unknown Bean" with no cupping notes don't provide much context for you, us, or anyone else!)
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IMPORTANT NOTE: RT2 server to be taken down this month
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We have one more important thing to share about our RT/RW ecosystem: We are shutting down the legacy Roast.World servers for good at the end of the month, August 31st. This will NOT affect RoasTime 3 users in any way.
For the few of you still using RoasTime 2, please note that:
https://id.aillio.com/ will no longer work- You will no longer be able to login to any version of RT <
v3.0.0
- No syncing will work within any version of RT <
v3.0.0
- No debug logs will upload from RT <
v3.0.0
Before you begin using RoasTime 3, you will want to save your roasts and recipes from RoasTime 2. In the coming days, we'll be explaining exactly how to do this on the Roast.World community, in this thread. If you have any questions or concerns, you can post them directly to the thread. |
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Erc 0004 -- A firmware fix is forthcoming
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As reported on our Roast.World feed, our support team has noticed an uptick in Bullet owners reporting ambient temperature related errors, particularly ErC 0004, as a direct result of roasting outside and in garages while temperatures around the world continue to climb.
We will soon release beta firmware 605 to raise the upper limit of the IBTS ambient temperature. This will not affect the health or safety of your Bullet, and in most cases it should resolve Erc 0004.
Still, please keep in mind that the Bullet was designed to roast in conditions below 30C/86F. Anything above that, and you're far more likely to trigger its safety features, which will prevent you from continuing to roast.
If you absolutely must roast at higher temperatures, roasting with a fan aimed at the Bullet can keep the components cool enough to continue. If you roast light and don't mind roasting small batches, please consider bringing the Bullet inside to roast under an oven hood when it gets too hot (or too cold) to roast large batches outdoors.
Also of note: roasting in environments with wildly fluctuating temperatures dramatically affects your roast profiles and recipes, making roast-to-roast consistency all but impossible as the seasons change.
If you want to take your roasting to the next level, there is no substitute for a dedicated venting solution in a well-conditioned indoor environment. For examples and advice, consider perusing our Community Forums, where there are a number of creative venting solutions posted by fellow roasters. The unofficial FB forum for Aillio Bullet users is another large community with good info. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team, support@aillio.com
That's all for now everyone. Keep drinking great coffee.
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