Kaffidrinker - please feel free to ask any clarifying questions if the discussion has gone above your understanding!!

If you are roasting is in a cold room and you are looking to shorten the roast times with pre-heating - in my experience, you'll need to do it with the beans in. Try 2:00 of "preheat" and reset for the roast.

As to damaging the elements, they cycle on and off during most roast cycles. The only item to worry about might be the main control board (digital display, buttons etc.) but it's got a fan and you roast in a cold/cool area. There are some thermal sensors in the machine that usually keep it pretty far out of overheating trouble.

Let us know how it goes.

At this point I have done literally hundreds of Behmor roasts over dozens of units (I test and refurbish them). I roast in a unheated shop, and any time the temperature is under 70 F, I pre-heat the Behmor, drum, chaff tray and beans included. As my beans are stored in this environment, they are often cool, so this basically warms everything to ambient/spec temperature of the roaster without 'wasting' precious countdown time. I pre-heat 1:15, stop the system, select the profile I want and start again.

This will work in any environment, but you may only see a benefit in cool weather. As others have pointed out, it will not really shorten your roast times as much as help them meet specs if they are a little long due to the environment.

Generally my thought is why waste energy heating up, but not really roasting, cold beans or materials.

Finally, there is a 130 C set point which will keep you from (re)starting the roaster if the chamber (side wall, really) is over 130 C, so I only go a little over a minute. From my experience with this, I don't see any way you could harm the roaster doing this.

Greetings from another migrant from that other forum.

This thread kinda strikes me as trying to work around some of the limitations of the Behmor. I have already run into that wall, too. It would be nice to have that virtually infinite control over the roast profile that other, much more expensive roasters (Hottop) or the tricked-out poppers have. Joe has hinted about doing this in the future, but from what he's told me, the process will be long and expensive.

So how does pre-heating on P1 for a minute or so - something I have thought about - differ from using one of the ramped profiles, meaning P3/4/5? Besides going balls to the wall with P1 or P2 after the pre-heat, that is. This is where the lack of control over the timing of the individual segments comes into play.

My wish lists would be for more control over the timing of each segment, instead of all of them as a whole by adding or subtracting time before hitting start, or lengthening the final leg after hitting start, and more control over temperature, especially by having the ability to monitor ET and bean temp. Or am I describing that other roaster I mentioned?

I've been doing this for about 8 months and it has worked great. I pre-heat for 2 min hit the off button then select the roast profile you want and press start. I usually hit 2C with 30-60 sec left on the timer. This is all done with beans and roaster at room temp. I have noticed if you try to pre-heat past 2.5 min the safty will kick in and you will have to wait for the roaster to cool down before starting the main roast.

George

Thanks Alchemist and gblass1... I hope to try this tonight. Contemplating to run two roasts; one preheated and one from cold. Curious if there'll be any difference.

jnani wrote: So how does pre-heating on P1 for a minute or so - something I have thought about - differ from using one of the ramped profiles, meaning P3/4/5? Besides going balls to the wall with P1 or P2 after the pre-heat, that is. This is where the lack of control over the timing of the individual segments comes into play.

I'm fairly new to using the Behmor, but have been watching my roasts with a thermocouple taped above the drum and tried out pre-heating as described. The way I understand it, running a pre-heat roast for a minute or two at most and the immediately re-starting the Behmor delays the drop in temperature where the afterburner kicks in to suppress the smoke. Doing a one or two minute pre-heat, followed by P1 will give you a nice continuous ramp up to maximum temperature so it's like a P1 roast on steroids. A pre-heat allows you to get closer to first crack before a temperature drop occurs. It also allows you to get an extra minute or two of roast time at the beginning.

I did notice that I got a little more smoke with a two minute pre-heat, but I'm roasting in my garage and attending the roast closely. Obviously, if your going to try a pre-heat, then you need to pay close attention to your roast and your on your own there.

I haven't done many P3-P5 roasts, but I don't imagine that you would get any advantage from a pre-heat roast (besides increasing the amount of roast time available) since with those profiles you are intentionally employing a gradual ramp. Also, if you pre-heat and then immediately start a P2 - P5 profile, then it can really throw you off trying to keep track of when the different segments of the roasts change from first leg, second leg, etc.

-Chris

jnani wrote:This thread kinda strikes me as trying to work around some of the limitations of the Behmor. I have already run into that wall, too. It would be nice to have that virtually infinite control over the roast profile that other, much more expensive roasters (Hottop) or the tricked-out poppers have. Joe has hinted about doing this in the future, but from what he's told me, the process will be long and expensive.

I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head. You can't have everything. It is all a trade off. High expense (and lower capacity) or lesser control and better price and capacity.

In a way, I don't see pre-heating as any sort of work around of limitations. It's a drum roaster roasting 1 lb of coffee on 15 amps. No other roaster comes close. I know of no other drum roaster that does not have pre-heating. It isn't included per se in the Behmor as there is no safe (read ETA accepted) way to pre-heat, load the beans and start.

Due to the temperature regulation on the profiles, pre-heating does not significantly change any. Sort of to just re-iterate, all it is doing is getting all the roaster components up to a normalized temperature. It's absolutely no different than I do on my home made drum roaster or virtually any large commercial drum roaster. If you are roasting in 80 F weather with 80 F beans, I can't see the pre-heating will do you hardly any good at all. It may shave a minute off the apparent time, but in those conditions (optimal) you also don't need the extra minute as the profiles should reach any desired roast level withing the allotted time. If they don't something else is up (dirty roaster, low voltage, etc), and pre-heating is not a 'fix' and won't 'help'.

BTW, I have hacked a Behmor for infinite user control, albeit totally non-savable/reproducible (except to my own abilities). It's actually pretty simple as the circuit is pretty obvious. It just takes inserting a variac into the element circuit and swapping the TC location (so it does not turn off the elements).

I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head. You can't have everything. It is all a trade off. High expense (and lower capacity) or lesser control and better price and capacity.

Nothing inadvertent about it. All of Life is a trade-off, a balancing act. Nothing is perfect.

Joe has promised a future upgrade to the Behmor to allow infinite control - and I would love to have that. But using P3/P4 and playing around with the start time gives that initial drying time I have noticed all the Hottop roastmasters talk about, with a sort of ramp to get up to first crack; it's actually a step up, not a ramp, but it works for me. Technically speaking, score one for the Hottop (leaving out higher dollar sample roasters and such).

On the other hand, I rather like the radiant heat method of the Behmor.

The real trick is to get a true bean temp reading, which will be nearly impossible with the Behmor, given its rotating mesh drum inside the roaster, and the "thinness" of the bean mass - which helps the heat transfer to the beans.

Sorry, if you don't care for a soap box stand, please look away

That said, this bit about 'making up for shortcomings' etc, inserting whatever phrase you desire, generally annoys me about product criticisms.

No body complains about the law of gravity. No body complains about the laws of motion. But everyone (ok, a lot of people) complain when they can not have everything they want in a roaster.

There is a common designer's adage of "good, fast, or cheap, pick two". Anyone who promises is basically not being truthful, either to you or themselves (i.e. they can do it for a short term, but not long term).

This says it well. http://kottke.org/05/04/pick-two

In regards to roasters, I would say the variation is "Price, Capacity or Control/automation". Pick any two. That's all you get. Asking or wanting more or complaining that #3 isn't there and calling it a deficiency or shortcoming or the like just isn't right in my opinion. There will NEVER be a cheap, high capacity, fully user controllable roaster. It's utopia and just a dream that won't happen.

The Hot top has (some) capacity, and control/automation. It's expensive.
The Gencafe has Price and control but not much capacity.
The Freshroast as price, and minor control. No capacity
The Behmor has Capacity and Price.
Homemade usually has price and either control or automation. Or automation and is expensive (PID).

So sure, the Behmor may come out with better user controls but I predict one of two things - it will be more expensive or have lesser capacity or a compromise on all. You can't have all three in spades.

Soap box rant over.

While I too can identify "opportunities" in the Behmor as it sits, I'm going to give the little guy a pat on the back for being relatively durable. It certainly would have been easy to cut corners there and I have not found that they did. My first roaster was a Zach and Dani's and it was not 50% of the build quality of the Behmor although it was 50% of the price and had 50% of the capacity.

For the MSRP of $299, I think that you get a pretty decent value and if you can come to terms with the way that it works, it should be with you for a long time. Even if it's not, a beginning roaster (like myself) should get at least a $299 education from it.


WES