All images courtesy of Artisan.
The shepherds of the open-source Artisan coffee roasting software released Artisan V3, the new generation of the free product.
The new version that became available last week supports the execution of roast schedules and planning for users of Artisan Plus, a paid service geared more for professional users. The upgrade to the core Artisan suite allows Plus users to create production schedules and plans across multiple machines and locations.
“Roast scheduling is the first in a series of capable new features to improve the efficiency of roasting operations,” Artisan Co-Creator and Maintainer Marko Luther recently told Daily Coffee News. “It replaces pen-and-paper scheduling of roast operations.”
Roast schedules can be created based on expected yield or optimal batch size. The system accounts for coffee weight loss, based on past roast data, and accommodates both pre- and post-roast blending. It eliminates the need for manual data entry while in the act of roasting and contributes to a more completely automated roasting session, according to the curators.
“The increased automation helps reduce planning errors, improves roast accuracy and saves time,” said Luther.
A prominent new feature for all users of the free core software is “advanced summary statistics,” which gives users more control about which statistics are shown, and where they are shown, during roast logging and reviews. Users can now create their own customized statistics summaries. The V3 version also includes support for more coffee roasting machine models.
The scheduling dashboard
The first complete builds of the Artisan system came online in 2010, following roughly a year of public development. An international phenomenon from the beginning, the open-source project’s maintainers currently reside in Germany and the United States, with contributions coming from individuals around the world.
The paid inventory management service, Artisan Plus, launched in 2019, courtesy of a company founded in 2013 by Artisan contributers Luther, Paul Holleis and associates. Based near Munich, the Artisan company has also launched specialized coffee equipment, including the Tonino and Tiny Tonino roast color analyzers and the Colino bean-sorter.
“The main motivation for developing the Artisan Plus platform was to generate funds for the Artisan project, keep the project running and keep the Artisan app available for free,” Luther said. “The other motivation was the demand from many Artisan users who run commercial roasting operations for integrated inventory management and other services such as tax reporting.”
Currently the Artisan roast logging system is translated into more than 30 languages and is available on all desktop platforms. Luther estimated that there are approximately 50,000 Artisan installations, with at least two thirds of users being coffee professionals.
“We will continue to innovate and develop new features that improve roast quality, promote sustainability and support the latest roasting trends,” said Luther. “In addition to fully automating the roasting process itself — including the associated pre- and post-production steps and the creation of traceability documents — this requires further hardware and software integrations with services provided by other companies along the chain. The just released Artisan Plus roast scheduling is just the first in a series of such productivity improvements in our queue.”
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
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