Cropster.org

Cropster welcomes new staff member

Martin Wiesinger — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:00:32 +0000

We are happy to welcome Andreas Benedikter as new member of our Cropster family. Andreas graduated at the university of Innsbruck in International Business studies, parts of which he completed at the UCA in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since that time Andreas has had a focus on Latin America which motivated him to dedicate his final thesis to “market entry strategies for Southern American markets”. Right after his studies Andreas took the opportunity to work with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Cali, Colombia, where he collected valuable experience in working with small holder farmers in food chains in Latin America and the Caribbean. Now being an active part of Cropster, Andreas will take care of marketing and sales matters and is always glad to provide a helping hand.

Cropster wins Best New Product and People’s Choice Award – Equipment for Origin – SCAA 2012

Martin Wiesinger — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:32:56 +0000

Cropster was nominated and took home the award for Best New Product and People’s Choice in the category “Equipment of Origin” at the 2012 Speciality Coffee Association of America (SCAA) event in Portland. It was an amazing ride until now and we are very happy and proud to got awarded. We also want to thank all the people that gave us their vote and supported us since the beginning.

But you can also be assured that we will not rest on those laurels. Our clients and customers are the ones that we truly care about and for which we will continue with our goal to empower farmers to achieve a strong position in the supply chain, support their high quality production and to give them a chance to earn a sustainable and fair income.

Thank you for your continuous and great support and for all the kind words.

Cropster wins Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award

Denise Günther — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:19:33 +0000

The sea Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award honors people and companies acting for the benefit of society, economy and environment and is presented in Austria. It is awarded to companies putting sustainable entrepreneurship into practice, which are aware of the importance of sustainability and care about the world of tomorrow.

We are amongst the ten companies winning the best sea award 2011. This was announced on the 19.04.2012 in Vienna’s historic Hofburg Palace. Follow this link or watch the video below, to get some more information about the award and its winners.

Thanks very much for the sea 2011! We are very happy that you support us in our vision and share the belief of sustainable entrepreneurship being the model for the future.

Vote for Cropster at the SCAA

Martin Wiesinger — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:47:13 +0000

We are at the SCAA in Portland but it also feels a little bit like being at the Oscars. We are nominated, in two categories, for best new product in the people choice award. If you are at the SCAA or just want to support us, then please send a text message with “OPEN11″ (for the open class nomination) and/or “EFO” (for equipment of origen) to (+1) 86677.

Please also drop by our booth 2106, if you are at the SCAA, or near by. We would love to say hello.

Auto-Start and End Detection

Martin Wiesinger — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:47:40 +0000

I want to kick off this blog post off with a personal believe:
I believe, or better said my personal experience is, that humans are not particularly good at multitasking. Meaning to perform more than one task at the same time. For sure there are people who are better than others, but in general it is not something we are eager to do and leads to worse results.

We at Cropster are always keeping this in mind when designing new features or updating existing workflows. We want to make things fail safe and as easy as possible to free up your time so you can concentrate on your work. Our software shall help you to improve your results, but in a seamless and integrated way.

When we look at the roast process, there are clearly 2 interactions that require a roaster to perform physical actions on both, the roaster and the roast logger. You have basically 2 options, you start the logger before you put in your beans, or afterwards. Same goes for the end of the roast. If we compare the roast curves afterwards then they won’t overlay correctly. Which is a bummer and also introduces an error in all post analysis where we want to use this values.

We thought we can do better and take this burden off you by automatically detecting start and end of the roast process. You just hit the start button before you put in the beans and our software does the rest.

The RI tries to detect the start for one minute. If no start is found, the first captured value is taken as starting point. During the first minute you can also force the start manually. Later on, the turning point and roast end are detected. If the RI detects the end it then gives you the possibility to accept it, or continue roasting and stop manually.

This new feature is opt-in, so if you want to continue to start and stop the RI manually, then you can still do so. As I said before, there are people that are damn good at multitasking.

Roast Profile Preview

Denise Günther — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:59:27 +0000

Viewing the curve while roasting is one thing. Until now Roasting Intelligence did not give you a summary before starting the roast. Now the Cropster Roasting Intelligence (RI2) shows the profile and gives useful information from the “perfect roast” before starting. You will get to know about the duration, the charge temperature, end temperature and any gas or airflow records you have made.

You can view the information as parameter or curve summary:

Parameter Summary

Curve Summary

Bean Temperature Rate of Rise (RoR)

Martin Wiesinger — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:13:34 +0000

I came across some talk about RoR in the last months, like here and here. I have heard of it before but have never thought about it as tool for live and/or post roast analysis. This changed on the day I came across James Hoffmann’s blog post showing the data as graph.

What is the RoR? The RoR is the rate of increase bean mass temperature over time. Lets consider the following example.

The image shows the change within the bean temperature over 30 seconds (04:00 to 04:30). In this interval our bean temperature rises from 143 to 149 fahrenheit, which translates to a RoR of approximately 6 fahrenheit.

To smooth out the graph we use a simple moving average – which helps to better highlight trends and filter out short-term fluctuations.

I’m happy to announce that with todays update of our Roasting Intelligence tool, rise rate graphs will be available to all our customers. You can also change the interval between curve value readings to fit your personal preference. If you prefer raw numbers over the graph, then you can also find the value below the corresponding temperature on the right hand side.

To enable the feature, go to the machine settings in your roasting client and choose an interval for the Rise-Rate.

We are already working on an update that allows you to compare the rise rates of different roast profiles. Happy roasting and stay tuned for future updates.

Cropster @ BioFach

Denise Günther — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:55:33 +0000

The BioFach 2012 was a great experience for Cropster. We were really delighted about all the interest people showed in our products and projects. We had many great talks to passionates about organic agriculture, coffee producers and roasters, chocolate makers, consultants and farmers from all over the world.

Our newest project “Lokalwert” gained most attention by industry experts and BioFach visitors. Lokalwert aims at supporting regions by building up local markets for agricultural products in order to foster efficient local trade. More information to be found on lokalwert.cropster.org.

Thanks for all the great talks and great impressions at the BioFach 2012. Already looking forward to getting to know the organic world even more better at the BioFach next year!

BioFach 2012

Denise Günther — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:45:52 +0000

Cropster will be at BioFach, the World Organic Trade Fair, in Nürnberg, Germany 15-18.02.2012. Visit us at in hall 1, booth number 170g.
If you are interested in talking to us let us know in advance and contact office@cropster.org.
We are looking forward to seeing you there.

Cropster is Proud Sponsor of the Coffee Roasting Challenge in Vienna 2012

Denise Günther — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:10:29 +0000

The Coffee Roasting Challenge is a three day competition debuting at the Word of Coffee in Vienna, taking place 12-15 June 2012. Specialty coffee roasters will be judged on evaluating the quality of green coffee, developing a roasting profile and on cup quality of roasted coffee.
The audience of this event will be able to see all the roasting information real-time as the roasting professionals use Cropster C-sar during roasting.
We are very excited to be sponsor of this first ever Coffee Roasting Challenge. As we will be there we are looking forward to seeing you at the World of Coffee in Vienna!