Duplicating Jim Schulman roasting style with the Huky 500

Discuss roast levels and profiles for espresso, equipment for roasting coffee.
Ziv Sade
Posts: 58
Joined: 11 years ago

#1: Post by Ziv Sade »

Hi all
I was wondering if anyone among the Huky 500 users have tried to duplicate Jim Schulman roasting style with the quest M3 with the Huky?

According to Jim recommendation for the drying phase - he leaves the trap door open and using no fan or fan @ low speed & that way he can see the steam that comes out of the beans and smell the wet smell.

I was wondering if anyone have tried to leave the funnel of the Huky on the beans entry possition for all the drying phase & that's way with no fan working the steams will go out clearly out of the funnel

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slickrock
Posts: 272
Joined: 13 years ago

#2: Post by slickrock »

Consider that the Huky and the Quest are different enough beasts that roasting techniques on one may not be optimal or even relevant to the other. The Huky puts a LOT more heat and uses gas burners in various forms (some more convective then others) and owners may be using the stock perforated drum, all of which differ from Quest. With my setup on the Bluestar range, there is a lot of innate convective air flow with using atmospheric burners, so when I attempted an open chimney approach in the drying phase, there was a lot natural ventilation, almost too much to the point where early chaff (especially with naturals) was flying all over the place. As such, I've settled in to using the fan with chaff tray in place at a very low fan setting (using dimmer) and with a fully open damper during this phase and then crank the fan up when transitioning to ramp phase ( and you can pick up the smells from the fan exhaust). I feel this is also is need for the solid drum setup since ventilation channeling is more directed, benefiting from force air ventilation at all stages. There is also the fact that gas combustion produces water vapor, and that this may need to be "whisked" away quicker during drying phase (though I wouldn't be surprised that others may contend that this shouldn't be done - that trapping moisture via the damper is good thing?)
07/11/1991, 08/21/2017, 04/08/2024, 08/12/2045

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Ziv Sade (original poster)
Posts: 58
Joined: 11 years ago

#3: Post by Ziv Sade (original poster) replying to slickrock »

slickrock you are corect - i forgot to mention that i am takjing about the solid drum configuration of the Huky500. i was windering if you have the aur flow flowchart of the huky vs. the quest M3, in order to understand the logic of whats hapeen inside the huky when we increase the fan speed. please corect me if i'm wrong but i know that in the quest on a certain heat output of the heating elemnts, increasing the fan speed will suck hot air from the inside of the drum outside of the roaster, and on the way will cause the temrarute of the beans to increase, but on the same time will cause the temrature od the drum to decrease due to the loss of hot air? am i corect? if not then what's realy happen inside the quest?

based on the above, and based on the assumption that one is using the huky with a solid drum, does the effect describe above working the same on the huky? if not - what is the differance? is the chaff is the only reason for not using Jim approach?

thanks in advance
Ziv

Kfir
Posts: 348
Joined: 11 years ago

#4: Post by Kfir »

You can't compare the two roasters, each roaster has it's own dynamics and what works for the Quest will not necessarily work for the Huky.

Regarding the airflow it depends on the roaster design, strength of the fan etc. there is always a sweet spot between the heat power and fan speed were the fan still works with the roast and help to produce more convective heat and beyond that it works against the roast and slows it down (which at some points can be very useful).

There is no magic formula and a closed recipe for doing a roast and even if you will use the exact same roaster with the exact same coffee and use the same profile it still may not turn out the same because the room temperature or moisture level at your place my be different etc.

Suggestions and tips from others can be great guidelines to help you prevent mistakes and get you to a good start point but you still need to do a lot of trail and error by yourself and see what roast profile will work for you.

Kfir.

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slickrock
Posts: 272
Joined: 13 years ago

#5: Post by slickrock »

Ziv Sade wrote: i was windering if you have the aur flow flowchart of the huky vs. the quest M3, in order to understand the logic of whats hapeen inside the huky when we increase the fan speed. please corect me if i'm wrong but i know that in the quest on a certain heat output of the heating elemnts, increasing the fan speed will suck hot air from the inside of the drum outside of the roaster, and on the way will cause the temrarute of the beans to increase, but on the same time will cause the temrature od the drum to decrease due to the loss of hot air? am i corect? if not then what's realy happen inside the quest?

based on the above, and based on the assumption that one is using the huky with a solid drum, does the effect describe above working the same on the huky? if not - what is the differance? is the chaff is the only reason for not using Jim approach?
The interplay between MET, BT, Fan, and power is a rather interesting and is most likely affected by roaster design. About the only thing architecturally similar between a solid drum Huky and a Quest is the solid drum. Heat source aside, the way forced air ventilation works between them is very different and the fan on the Huky is drastically more powerful, so I would not be surprised if the dynamics between BT, MET, and fan speed would be different between these roasters, keeping in mind that I don't have Quest roasting experience to compare the two.

What I found on the Huky is that an "increase" in fan speed without added power does boost ET and BT, but my MET also go up a little bit as well( I attribute this to my own DIY placement of the MET probe, where some air leakage near the gap on the faceplate causes some eddy air flow near the MET probe which boosts the readings). But the BT/ET increase is real and the roast times do shorten and I see this a "convective boost" to the roasting process, but also a boost in roasting efficiency as well. And I find that there is a limit to all this in that if too much fan is applied, then the amount of heat exiting the system overtakes the heat entering the system, and the roast starts to slow down. But with the Huky you can always add more power (there is plenty to spare) to compensate and end up with a highly convective roast profile if you so choose. With the Quest, the most precious commodity are the BTUs from fixed rated heating elements, so this this gates how fan-convective you can go with roast profiles without resorting to the likes of a heat gun, unless you of course your operate with smaller batch sizes where BTU loss is less of an issue. So the net of this is that I'm not using the "Jim" approach, not just because of chaff issue, but rather with the Huky, I just don't need to.
07/11/1991, 08/21/2017, 04/08/2024, 08/12/2045