asicign wrote:a greater distance from to gun to beans than the article recommends. .

Keep a timer (or watch) in front of you and target first pops for six minutes. If you don't reach that, address your combo of batch size (too large) and/or HG wattage (too low.) If you want to ramp up the temp by bringing the HG closer, you can avoid divots by stirring faster, but you shouldn't have to work excessively hard, better to lower the batch. Find a consistent distance from the beans (it's a physical/visual learning curve.) That distance should allow for coming closer (and stirring faster) when you want to ramp up the temp (for me, this is often at the start of 1st c until it's clear that the beans require less heat to keep the temp rising (clues come from smell, maybe a little smoke, and heat on your stirring hand and face.)

Let your tools determine your batch size. There's a sweet spot of HG power, bowl size, and batch size that will make it "easy" to accomplish a roast in 10-12 minutes. Sometimes a faster roast is a good idea, but I can't recall any benefit to going beyond, say, 12-14 minutes.