As I add beans purchased from Sweet Maria’s and dutifully add them to my growing list, I’m thinking it’s going to get a bit complicated identifying which beans to select when I save a roast and indicate what bean to indicate in the “Bean Roasted” field, unless only the beans that I have in my inventory show up on the list. Does that make sense?
At any given time, I may have have 4 or 5 beans (I buy 20 lbs at a time, four different beans of 5 lbs each), but if the beans that I’ve used up don’t drop from that drop-down list it’s going to get pretty long and all the Guatemala varieties (for instance), are going to look very similar to each other.
I’m on-the-fence about using the Roast.World database as designed. I played with it for a bit today and it didn’t take long for me to say “heck no, I’m not doing all this just so I can enter what bean I roasted in RoasTime”.
I’d like the ability to simply enter the bean name manually when I do the actual roast. I truly appreciate what the small Aillio team has tried to do with the online Green Bean inventory stuff in Roast.World. I also “get” the “social sharing” aspect to it. But for me, I don’t care to enter in all that bean data into a cloud-based inventory when all I need to do is log what bean I used in a given RoasTime session.
I agree. Keep it simple. I also want to make just a small notification / name for my bean. Now I have to login for roastworld, otherwise I can’t select my bean in RT.
When I order beans from Sweet Maria’s, I get an email with all that detail that I can copy and paste in to my bean selections, which is a relatively low hassle for me. I can do that manual entry while the Bullet is pre-heating with plenty of time to spare.
Thought has occurred to me that the store-front at Sweet Maria’s could further be integrated with Roast.World such that I opt-in to my purchases being automatically updated my bean inventory. One can dream, right?
It also seems that the database gets better over time, especially where more popular vendors are concerned. When I went through the sampler that came with my Bullet, seven of the eight beans already existed in the database.
Back to the original request, though, count me as another vote for “requesting the ability to hide or disappear beans from my inventory when the on-hand amount is zero.”
I agree with most of the above. It’s a hassle having to enter the bean data in Roast.World so you can select it after the roast is completed. I would like to have the ability to enter the bean data directly into RT prior to starting the roast. I have 80# of 3 different Colombians so I’m going to just put them in RW as Colombia. I’m going to try to give it the actual name when I record the roast. All of this is a work in progress and as time permits I’m sure the Aillio team will start to tighten things up.
Yes, both manual coffee name entry and the Roast.World database should be available as there are different user interests with regard to roast inventory and data.
When I started roasting (long ago), I used an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my inventory, where it was purchased, supplier rating (i.e. Sweet Marias), total weight, etc. But, I stopped referencing that data many years ago because much of it was more pertinent to the purchase-end, not the roasting end. I know what I have in my stash of greens, where it came from, why I bought it, and so on.
So for me, specifically regarding RoasTime, all I want to do is have the bean name(s) included in the RoasTime graph data for reference. I mention “bean name(s)” because I do a lot of custom blends where it would be cool to enter several bean varieties and their associated weights for that blend. That may be too much for the Aillio folks to accommodate and I do keep my own blend post-roast records (flavor assessment, what’s needed, etc).
Hi @jon.luker thanks for sharing your needs / suggestions. We are currently working away on providing some more extensive inventory management functionality. This includes the ability to add seperate batches of beans to your inventory, each will receive its own batch ID for identification. This means you may track inventory for separate shipments of the same bean if you wish, only batches with remaining stock levels will appear for you in RT.
Doing more within RT is something that has been discussed. Whether that’s the ability to add beans to your inventory from within RT or having a manual simple text field alternative, exploring these options is on the to do list following the new RW updates.
RoasterThing software used to be able to import green coffee data directly from Sweet Maria’s given the coffee code, but that broke at some point, I believe. This was a great feature but of course requires some effort from Sweet Maria’s side.
I confess I buy way too many beans. I try them and,
if I don’t particularly like them, they’ll sit till the desert heat turns them to dust and they blow away (actually, that doesn’t happen; beans seem to be indestructible). But there they sit taking up space in one of my 4 tubs.
If I like the beans I’ll (hopefully) get more and end up with a few bags. E.g. I have about 4 varieties of gesha from perhaps 6 or 7 purchases. Plus there’s beans for espresso that I buy in larger quantities.
All this takes tracking and so far I haven’t seen anything besides CRDB (Coffee Roasting Data Base, an Access-based program for $0) that does any better than what Roast.World is offering.
Imo, the latest changes have really smoothed the creation process and I’m starting to find it at least a little intuitive to use. I may have to go back and add the description or variety or whatever, but getting the basic bean has been much better. Separating orders into lots in order to manage inventory from multiple purchases has so far been too much effort… it hangs out there as something I ought to do, but I’m not running a roasting business so I put it in the too-hard-to-do pile.
If you Search for the beans, it’s important to get the beans into My Beans. When I roast I have to immediately edit the roast to give it a name to have a clue which beans I just used. Then I can go on to the next roast. Later I either Create the bean or Search for it. Either way it has to end up in My Beans- that’s where I see In Stock telling me what I have left. R.W keeps the inventiry updated. So far I have been asked for inventory amount (weight/price per kilo) if I Create the bean, but if I later edit the bean I don’t see the opportunity to enter weight on hand. If it’s there I haven’t stumbled over it.
Hah! Before I could publish the post @eli posted that they’re adding a way to track separate lots of the same bean. Great.
CRDB will do that but it takes a bit of work to insert the spider graph or description. It’s a very thorough DB effort by another person that buys way too many beans!
@eli Does RoasTime allow for multiple bean names (and weights) to be entered at the end of the roast in the case of blends? I have custom blends that use anywhere from 2 to 5 different beans in differing quantities. It is common for blends to have multiple beans and differing individual weights of the beans that comprise the blend. So, I’m just wondering if you folks thought of that and either have (or can accommodate) blend entry capabilities in the software?
For my needs I could just enter the “blend name” in the bean name field if manual entry is added at some point. But for those that are using the Roast.World inventory management connection with RoasTime, you may want to consider how that would work for blends.
