Thanks so much for all the help. I'm still a little baffled as to why I can't get a proper 1st crack without the chimney open--my engineer husband is also confused.

Thanks for all the care and feeding if the Quest tips--avoiding a fire will keep my family much more tolerant of my coffee roasting addiction. Do they offer 12 step programs for this??

TomC

You can leave your chimney open during drying if you like, some do and just follow the steam/aromatics as the beans dry. But once you get the beans dry, you should have the chimney closed and max the fan out. More tinkering on both fan and heat after you've established first crack.

I have seen written many times one can open the chimney door and smell the roast and see the steam. On my 2013 M3 this does not happen. Because the fan never shuts off air gets pulled in via the door and a little via the drum and it gets shot out the back grill of the roaster. On pre-2013 roasters I can understand how it works, as the fan can be shut off. I can simulate a fan shut off by opening the bean cooler door; when I do I can then see-smell as you suggest.

Concerning the fan speed, the Quest instructions say to keep it minimum. But many people on HB say to max it. What am I missing here...fan on low should result in minimal fresh air drawn into drum and more heat, vs. full fan would pull in a lot of air and cool the drum.

Like Maureen, I have done a bunch of roasts, think I am getting somewhere, but still have not produced roasts as good as I do on my FreshRoasts. I am not stalling any roasts but nearly am...the ramp is very low, resulting in very poor 1C most of the time. Sometimes I end up in 2C thinking it is 1C. The only thing saving my roasts is that I am a seat-of-the- pants roaster on my FR roasters. So I am used to going by sight , smell, sound. So, I manage to abort before anything too bad happens (but not very much good either).

Dazed and Confused!
Maurice

It's been a while since I've roasted on my quest. Are you tracking with Artisan? If you could upload a profile it would be great.

You could try with a fixed medium-high airflow for the whole roast, only worrying about your power.

I decided to make the modification that Sternoleido discussed in the "Quest M3 fan not working?" thread. I cut the transistor wire near the fan switch that prevents the fan from turning off fully. My fan now will go to zero at about 1 on the dial, and at 9 the fan is much more powerful than before. The roaster behaves completely differently. When I turn the fan up now, the MET goes down, and the BT goes up, and vice versa. It also cools down much faster once the amps are turned off.

I was able to roast with the chimney closed, and the first crack was not pathetic! I'll taste it tomorrow, but I think this Is going to work.

Thanks so much!

I've noticed some beans don't have a loud C1. Others really come alive. If you try a different bean you may get that C1 your looking for. Not hearing it doesn't mean it's not happening. Take a sample from the tier and see if they are opening up.

I've had my QM3 for about a year now... it appears to be one of the 'newer' models with different components than past models. When I had the chimney open I had the same frustration as you... many many trials without any luck. I found when the chimney was open the roaster simply never reached the temp needed to roast.

What I found works best - while preheating close the chimney and fan on full... it seems to give the roaster the best overall preheat. I drop the beans typically at 350 w/ 150g loads. As soon as I drop I kick the heater up to 900w and the fan fairly low 2-2.5. Once I hit 300 degrees I kick the heat up a bit to about 1000w and fan a little more until just before 1st crack. Once I hit first crack I drop the temp down to about 700w and fan close to full. I used my killowatt I had from the Behmor days... IMO its one of the best ways to gauge how much energy I'm using on the Quest.