farmroast wrote:ps any pics or comments on that 5000lb bowl roaster? if so, would appreciate a pm

Their sample roaster is the same as always, except for better chaff removal. They've renamed all their bigger roasters, so the ones at Green Mountain are now Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter roasters.

In the Jupiter, the bowl is spinning, the air is forced in from the the top, at the bowl edge, moves down the sides of the bowl, it then returns straight back up and out at the top center. The chaff and smoke are removed from this exhaust stream, then it recirculates -- apparently the heating and after burn air cleaning one gets on a shop roaster are done in one step on this thing. The bowl's spin and the air movement form the beans into a spinning, airborne doughnut shape. The control system monitored and controlled the inflow air temperature and speed, and thereby the bean temperature. The inflow air temperature is not really an environmental temperature, since it heats the bowl before it contacts the beans. It comes in at around 700F. Bowl temperatures were in the 400s, and more like the environmental temperature one expects. Roast can run from 5 to 15 minutes; I saw some profiling details, but I believe these are proprietary info.

The other two roasters have different details, but the overall air speeds and heat transfer rates are the same, intermediate between drum and air roasters. Since usable profiles depend entirely on air speed and heat transfer rates, it is obvious that the useful range of profiles in these machines is roughly intermediate between drum and air profiles.

Well, I guess I'll just stumble along in blissful ignorance then, a mere mortal who has fun roasting coffee that he and his friends truly enjoy and that stands up well to the efforts of the commercial roasters I'm able compare it to with my obviously inferior palate.

Ken Fox wrote:The analogy you make between the capability and limitations of home espresso making equipment vs. home roasting equipment does not hold up to any sort of scrutiny. Although a cheaper home espresso machine, like a Gaggia or a Silvia, may be harder to use than a more expensive one, the cheaper espresso machine does not actively try to defeat your efforts to use it. The Gaggia or Silvia (or whatever) simply lacks some of the features of their more expensive siblings, and requires you to put a bit more effort into the process in order to get good results. The situation with the cheaper roasters that purport to roast larger quantities in each batch, is that you can only control them if you work to defeat the manner in which they are programmed to work.

So no, I fundamentally disagree with your point. The owner of a Silvia or a Gaggia or whatever will learn a lot about making espresso at home that they can then transfer over to "better" equipment. There is essentially nothing that you can learn on a microchip driven home roaster that you can transfer over to another roasting device as you gain experience.

You can't be serious. What part of pushing the "steam" button on a Silvia before pulling a shot in order to raise the temp can be transferred to a better machine? What part of Silvia's one-pressure-setting pump can you transfer to a better machine with an adjustable pressure valve or to a lever machine? And how educational are the magic steam wands or the wands that have to be opened up before the machine tells you its ready in order for it to function properly? You don't carry any of those things on with you to a better machine. It is the exact opposite. Through these truly anti-logical steps you learn how to use the machines that you have to meet the ends that you desire. Hardly any more shocking or stupid than telling a Behmor that you will be putting in a 1/2 pound when you only intend on putting in a 1/4 pound, etc. If the variables needed to produce a good roast are available on a roaster and the roaster works, then there is value in learning how to use it if one has either through ignorance, or financial constraints, or whatever, ended up with one of these machines. If anything, the flaming hoops that you find so offensive in home-roasting machines are more sensical than those required by the low end espresso machines. I do not mean any disrespect in this, nor do I disagree with your criticism of home-roasting devices. But in demeaning the very value in trying to use these devices (whatever one's reason for doing so) if they can achieve a roast while saying that it is perfectly valuable to learn espresso on a low end machine with completely comparable faults and limitations, you seem to suggest that you simply have a visceral distaste for the design and function of the Behmor machine itself (or something else in its class, but all of your inferences seem directed at the Behmor).

GVDub wrote:Well, I guess I'll just stumble along in blissful ignorance then, a mere mortal who has fun roasting coffee that he and his friends truly enjoy and that stands up well to the efforts of the commercial roasters I'm able compare it to with my obviously inferior palate.

You just dont get it do you? Since when does enjoyment have anything to do with home-roasting of espresso or coffee? If you are truly enjoying your coffee then it probably sucks... mortal!

noah wrote:You just dont get it do you? Since when does enjoyment have anything to do with home-roasting of espresso or coffee? If you are truly enjoying your coffee then it probably sucks... mortal!

I know. I feel so ashamed.

Thanks Jim
I'll have to see if I can arrange a trip north to check out the Saturn! Interesting that they extended the profile range from 5-12mins on the 2008 model to 5-15mins on the 2009. I'm thinking that's telling me something, interesting.

I feel so honored to be able to participate in a forum with so many extremely talented home roasters who get outstanding results from their semi-automated (but cheap!) roasting equipment, that I cannot get standing in front of my sample roaster, twiddling the gas valve with great attention, second by second, in response to what I see in realtime from a custom thermocouple placed (with great difficulty) into the middle of the swirling bean mass of my sample roaster, read out on my Fluke.

It is an enormous blow to my self respect that I can only dream of such results . . . .guaranteed perfection in the cup, plug and play if you will!!

Obviously, I must come around and see the light.

ken

(Original reply, composed 6/5/09)
Ken,

I had gone over your post in this thread (as well as in other threads) before I replied, and had hoped to elicit some more specific detail with my question - for the vague, inexact nature of my original query, I apologize.

Let me try to be more specific:

Ken Fox wrote:(2) You need to be able to monitor your roast temperatures in a repeatable way, with the monitoring giving you some sort of information that you can act upon. Knowing what is going on with your temperature monitoring device when you have no way of modifying said temperature will be of no benefit, so in addition to having a way to measure temperature, you will need to have a way to modify heat input so that what knowledge you are gaining of the "on the fly" temperatures can be effected by something you can do with the heat source or ventilation or both.

Your mention of "roast temperatures", speaks to the earlier notion of the types of temperatures that can be measured: ET, BT, and exhaust. What are your thoughts on this? Do you concur with this idea? Having lurked on H-B for a while before I started posting, I'm vaguely familiar with some of the equipment that you have (the Hottop, the El Salvadorean POS, and the mucho expensivo sample roaster IIRC). Do you have specific measurement types and locations for each? Do they correlate with the Ambex article?

What monitoring equipment do you use/prefer? It seems that the type-K wire thermocouples/themometers seem to be the instrument of choice due to their accuracy, resolution, generally hands-free operation and relative variety of placement options.

You bring up a good point in mentioning the desire for an easily controllable heat source, and that is one area where prebuilt consumer-level roasters can fall short (sans modification).

All said and done, I'm starting to believe more and more strongly that there are certain pillars upon which successful roasting are built. They are:

Accurate, consistent temperature monitoring
Easily adjustable heat source (all other things being equal, more controllable = better)

The extent to which your roasting method supports these pillars will directly correlate to the ability you have to control any profile.

More to come,
-s.

Egad. What happened to productive online discussion?

Let's settle down here and try to get back to the topic.

Ken, I'll attempt to paraphrase your points, if for no other reason than to test my own understanding - feel free to correct me if you think that I've misinterpreted. One of your sticking points is that the majority (or maybe all) consumer-level roasting devices don't provide the level of manual control that would be most beneficial when it comes to being able to tweak a profile; this is with the expectation that being able to tweak the given profile in any direction will produce a significant difference in the cup.

Where I think it starts to go off the rails is when the thread switched gears into snark overdrive. Focus, Daniel-san.

Jim's post lays it out pretty clearly:

another_jim wrote:The "how to roast it" consists of two things, how dark to roast, and how to tweak their standard roasting profile. The tweaks will be longer or shorter, or less heat, more heat at various stages of the roast.

There have been a couple of different ideas on roast phases. Jim proposed:

1) drying phase
2) ramp to 1C
3) ramp to finish

and I haven't heard anyone call shenanigans on him yet.

Ken touched on charge temperature (ET prior to adding beans), but I haven't seen anything that nails down what "too hot" is.

Assuming that your roaster has the ability to tweak temps to extend/shorten phases, can we start exploring more about the faults that are encountered in each phase, and the possible causes?

Again, I haven't seen Jim's contrasts refuted yet:
- grassy vs dusty/leathery (too short/long drying phase)
- bready/cheerios vs. no toasty flavors (short/long ramp to 1C)
- too acidic vs. flat/caramelly (short/long finishing ramp)

Further thoughts?

-s.

Sherman wrote:(Original reply, composed 6/5/09)
Ken,

I had gone over your post in this thread (as well as in other threads) before I replied, and had hoped to elicit some more specific detail with my question - for the vague, inexact nature of my original query, I apologize.

Let me try to be more specific:



Your mention of "roast temperatures", speaks to the earlier notion of the types of temperatures that can be measured: ET, BT, and exhaust. What are your thoughts on this? Do you concur with this idea? Having lurked on H-B for a while before I started posting, I'm vaguely familiar with some of the equipment that you have (the Hottop, the El Salvadorean POS, and the mucho expensivo sample roaster IIRC). Do you have specific measurement types and locations for each? Do they correlate with the Ambex article?

Hello Sherman,

The El Salvadorean POS is not a real roaster, so I won't comment further on it since I don't intend to ever use it as a roaster in the future. As to the Hottop, I hacked in a TC along the lines of what Randy Glass has previously published, in fact inspired by what he has published. Since I don't use that roaster very much I don't have anything else to say about it other than that the location is very much more reflective of actual roast/bean temps then the location where Hottop itself puts the included digital thermometer. My sample roaster is actually not that expensive of a roaster. It cost about $2500 when I bought it however with modifications it has now cost me closer to $5K, although these added expenditures took place over a period of several years.

I don't pay any attention to the list of supposedly acceptable locations for putting a bean probe, and did not do so when I debated, for over a year, where to put the probe in my sample roaster. To me this is in the realm of "mental masturbation." If you are looking at putting a probe into a roaster you own, the question really is, "where can I put a probe that will give me a repeatable indication of what is going on during the roast, something I can follow and adjust my heat inputs by?" That is the important question. You can call it bean temp, you can call it exhaust temp, you can call it anything you want, but in the end it only needs to be a representative temperature that will be consistent across a wide range of roasting conditions. Wherever it is located, you can adjust your roasting inputs to it as long as the location is reliable and consistent.

Sherman wrote:What monitoring equipment do you use/prefer? It seems that the type-K wire thermocouples/themometers seem to be the instrument of choice due to their accuracy, resolution, generally hands-free operation and relative variety of placement options.

I got a K-type TC made for me by Omega of a certain length that I measured before I ordered it, to try to be in the middle of the swirling bean mass in my roaster.

Sherman wrote:You bring up a good point in mentioning the desire for an easily controllable heat source, and that is one area where prebuilt consumer-level roasters can fall short (sans modification).

All said and done, I'm starting to believe more and more strongly that there are certain pillars upon which successful roasting are built. They are:

Accurate, consistent temperature monitoring
Easily adjustable heat source (all other things being equal, more controllable = better)

The extent to which your roasting method supports these pillars will directly correlate to the ability you have to control any profile.

More to come,
-s.

I can't disagree with any of this. The only thing I can disagree with is people who over simplify the difficulty involved in doing a good job at roasting, and who believe that some cheap device can do the job for them in other than a mediocre way. There are automated ways of doing this roasting thing at a high level of precision, unfortunately they require either a whole lot of effort (like programming and installing your own PID) or they cost a lot. The cheap, off-the-shelf options are not going to give a discriminating consumer the sort of results he or she would like to get.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:The only thing I can disagree with is people who over simplify the difficulty involved in doing a good job at roasting, and who believe that some cheap device can do the job for them in other than a mediocre way. There are automated ways of doing this roasting thing at a high level of precision, unfortunately they require either a whole lot of effort (like programming and installing your own PID) or they cost a lot. The cheap, off-the-shelf options are not going to give a discriminating consumer the sort of results he or she would like to get.

Well, point well taken. But I would say that there is still an order of magnitude of price between a home coffee roaster and a commercial sample roaster. I don't think anyone has any illusions that a Behmor, etc. is going to give comparable results, but those counter-top machines do roast coffee better than most other options available to the average coffee lover in that price range. You are still going to get super fresh coffee plus the fun of blending and roasting at home. Fun and hobby being the operative words. Which is not to say we all can't learn from your efforts, which are greatly appreciated.

drdna wrote:Well, point well taken. But I would say that there is still an order of magnitude of price between a home coffee roaster and a commercial sample roaster. I don't think anyone has any illusions that a Behmor, etc. is going to give comparable results, but those counter-top machines do roast coffee better than most other options available to the average coffee lover in that price range. You are still going to get super fresh coffee plus the fun of blending and roasting at home. Fun and hobby being the operative words. Which is not to say we all can't learn from your efforts, which are greatly appreciated.

It is a hobby and no one should disagree with that. There are people who enjoy white zinfandel, and as a wine drinker I have no problem with that, even if it makes me want to laugh

I go back to the good old days of alt.coffee, where the home roaster was a mythical creature who roasted coffee at home by night in an old Poppery 1, and by day strutted through the supermarket with a sword, slashing those bags of dark oily beans, not to mention the Starbucks and Maxwell House on the shelves. But I digress. Whatever we may now think of alt.coffee, its prior existence and cultivation of early online coffee, made websites such as CG and this one possible.

Back during the zenith of alt.coffee, there were fewer idolized marquee roasters, but at the same time home roasters did not take themselves so seriously. The idea that some guy with a Freshroast would consider himself to be as successful a roaster as some high end professional would have been laughable back then, but that is where we are here in the "Home Roasting Forum" of HB in 2009. Home roasters have never thought as much of their capabilities as they do now, but that is where we find ourselves, here and now.

Roasting is a craft, a skill. Bean selection is difficult. Put the two together and you have a skill set that is hard to pull off. Try to do this with relatively large batch loads on cheap home equipment, and we are talking about something that is flat out impossible.

I'm not trying to put out the flame of anyone's desire to be a home roaster. All that I am saying is that you have to keep your wants and your capabilities in perspective. There is nothing wrong with doing an ok job on some ok beans and appreciating that for what it is. But imagining that you are Joe-professional roaster with your cheap off the shelf home roasting appliance, no training other than reading the manual and a few tips on a thread such as this one, using beans you bought from SM's or god-knows-where-else, well, sorry, that's a bit of a stretch.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:I feel so honored to be able to participate in a forum with so many extremely talented home roasters who get outstanding results from their semi-automated (but cheap!) roasting equipment, that I cannot get standing in front of my sample roaster, twiddling the gas valve with great attention, second by second, in response to what I see in realtime from a custom thermocouple placed (with great difficulty) into the middle of the swirling bean mass of my sample roaster, read out on my Fluke.

Obviously, I must come around and see the light.

ken

You dont need to come around and see the light, you need to re-read the original post of this thread and realize that its purpose is to provide a road map and introductory principles of coffee roasting for BEGINNERS (i.e., people with either crude or off the shelf equipment, not folks using Ken Fox's 5k sample roaster with his years of experience). It follows from the very purpose of the thread that the immediate goal is not to produce a roast on par with Terroir, Intelly, or Ken Fox, just as the numerous threads on how to pull espresso shots are not geared, or appropriate for WBC baristas looking to win competitions.

Every hobby has a point at which it moves on to the level of absolute perfectionism, and once people reach that point, they more often than not are completely unable to remember what it was like prior to that stage, or understand how people are so stupid as to not see the obvious (and necessary, of course) superiority of doing this the perfectionist way. All that comes with time, and an awful lot of experience and failures along the way - unless of course you began your roasting with a device that meets all of your present criteria. You did, didnt you?

Hi,

To Jim's original post I'd like to add one thing: that we should talk about the kind of beans one would normally use when developing a basic roast profile. Obviously they should be of very good quality but not the US$100 a pound stuff. Less obviously, they probably should not be a blend, since a blend will tend to muddy the effects you are going to be tasting for. That would also eliminate something like a Yemen, whose natural diversity tends to produce the same problem for the purposes of this experiment. It shouldn't be too soft, since that will make it a bit delicate, so Brazils are probably out; too easy to make ashy. It should probably be a bean that someone you respect feels will show well at a lighter roast level. And to reiterate one of Jim's original points, if possible it should come from a source from whom you can also get an excellent roasted sample of the same bean, so you can compare, and that roasted bean should be divided into small lots, vacuum packed, and frozen if you can. You should buy a fair amount of the green, ten pounds or so, because you are going to ruin a lot of it, and that green should also be divided, vac-packed, and frozen to ensure consistency in your explorations.

Best,
David

Ken Fox wrote:...imagining that you are Joe-professional roaster with your cheap off the shelf home roasting appliance, no training other than reading the manual and a few tips on a thread such as this one, using beans you bought from SM's or god-knows-where-else, well, sorry, that's a bit of a stretch.

Yes, but it makes for a lively forum, though.

It seems the important aspects of roasting include:
Accurate temperature measurement
Accurate temperature control
Accurate control of times for different phases

It would be great if they came up with an affordable roasting machine you could use at home that allowed you to achieve these goals or at least had control buttons and gauges that allowed you to believe you were achieving these goals.

There are other sites that focus around preset trials and errors. H-B with Jim as our moderator can be more about the coffees and the roasting process and the machine dynamics(not just the buttons). Again I will say that I believe this brainstorming session is about finding an approach that meets the above opportunity. Once a "best" approach is determined the details and format can be developed.
Now my thoughts on machines. IMO off the shelf roasters are generally not designed for those who want to use the approach that I mentioned above. For example, with the Behmor you buy beans from an origin, look up the recommended P setting, select a batch size, add or subtract time for level of roast and sit back and watch. For the masses this is a perfect approach. Some choose to learn how to manipulate the presets to adjust the results in the cup. I received a Behmor shortly after release to look at it's dynamics. My least interest was with the presets but more with it's overall abilities and shortcomings. I did find that it can be a capable roaster for those who want to use my first mentioned approach. The mods are not all that difficult or expensive but I will not get into them in this post. I generally look at mods in 2 ways. Tweaking shortcomings and not allowing the roaster to have a brain and thermostats that can do something on it's own that I can't control. Some sort of on the fly control is IMO a must for advanced roasting. Once a off the shelf is turned into manual operation with a few other tweaks you then can profile using standard roasting principles. This will allow us to do group thinks.

drdna wrote:
It would be great if they came up with an affordable roasting machine you could use at home that allowed you to achieve these goals or at least had control buttons and gauges that allowed you to believe you were achieving these goals.

Unlikely such a machine would get safety approvals or that a manufacture would want the press of houses burning down because someone set it and forgot to adjust it or control it or that they were even using it. The percentage of people who want such control would actually be a limited market too. The answer is to merely disable the idiot controls and safety features and accept responsibility doing so.

noah wrote:You dont need to come around and see the light, you need to re-read the original post of this thread and realize that its purpose is to provide a road map and introductory principles of coffee roasting for BEGINNERS (i.e., people with either crude or off the shelf equipment, not folks using Ken Fox's 5k sample roaster with his years of experience). It follows from the very purpose of the thread that the immediate goal is not to produce a roast on par with Terroir, Intelly, or Ken Fox, just as the numerous threads on how to pull espresso shots are not geared, or appropriate for WBC baristas looking to win competitions.

Every hobby has a point at which it moves on to the level of absolute perfectionism, and once people reach that point, they more often than not are completely unable to remember what it was like prior to that stage, or understand how people are so stupid as to not see the obvious (and necessary, of course) superiority of doing this the perfectionist way. All that comes with time, and an awful lot of experience and failures along the way - unless of course you began your roasting with a device that meets all of your present criteria. You did, didnt you?

It's very simple, Noah. If you want to learn how to roast, then buy a roaster that allows you to control the roast parameters manually, and the more easily you can control them, the better. At the low end this would be the right type of popcorn popper or small air roaster, probably coupled with a variac. The combination should not cost much more than $100. At a higher end you could either fabricate something, restore some old junkshop/thriftstore find, or set up a BBQ grill roaster. At an even higher level, the sky is the limit. You can further improve your skills by sending out roast samples periodically to people whose taste you trust, and maybe drop in on some friendly professional roasters if they will let you stand around while they roast, to get additional pointers.

If on the other hand all you want to do is to roast coffee, and you don't see it as some sort of learning experience, then buy whatever sort of roasting appliance that fits your budget, and that you think you would like. Your results will still probably be better than what most people can buy at the local market, and most people that you serve drinks to will be happy with them.

Just don't confuse learning how to roast with roasting; they are not the same thing.

ken

farmroast wrote:Unlikely such a machine would get safety approvals or that a manufacture would want the press of houses burning down because someone set it and forgot to adjust it or control it or that they were even using it. The percentage of people who want such control would actually be a limited market too. The answer is to merely disable the idiot controls and safety features and accept responsibility doing so.

Has anyone figured out an easy way to do that with the current Hottop? I bought mine as a backup, and it certainly is capable of doing a decent job, but the "safety features," coupled with a very poor layout of buttons on the touchpad, have made using it such a pain that mine sits in the garage and I never use it.

All I want or need from the Hottop is to control the heat, the fan, and to be able to charge the roaster and dump the beans when I CHOOSE TO DO SO.

ken