Phaelon56 wrote:Knowing when a batch is done is an art rather than a science. The motor noise does make it difficult to discern the difference between first and second crack - especially if first rolls into second. I did get fairly good at discerning the cracks and combined that metric with the smell of the smoke. There is a certain optimal point at which the smoke has a sweet smell and has not yet gotten any burnt or acrid notes. if that happens at the 14 to 17 minute mark then it's time to dump and cool.

Meaning to manually initiate the cooling cycle?

JY wrote:This evening I'll roast the first batch. I plan on following the directions in the manual and roasting 225g on the '8' setting.

To be continued...

I found the roaster easier to use by just setting the roast time setting to max (15 I think) and manually stopping the roast with the "cool" button at the appropriate time. I recall lots of complaints from users about how they couldn't get a good roast by hitting this or that setting when in reality they should have just ditched the factory settings and "gone manual". If you monitor the roast with a digital timer, you quickly get the feel of when 1C and 2C are likely to occur and that helps figuring out when to hit the cool button. On my roasts, second crack normally occurred at about 16.5 or 17 minutes into the roast and for approx. FC++ to vienna range, I normally stopped the roast between 20 and 45 seconds after rolling second crack starts (not just a few pops).

My Alps always sounded like machinery that was wearing out and on the verge of failure (that sound is normal).

Good luck.

Pat

After numerous 'small' batches on the Alpenrost, I jumped ship and moved on to a Behmor

I'm a much happier camper.