I just got a Behmor 1600 to get my feet wet in roasting. I want to use it for City/City+ profiles but have a few questions.

I've been roasting a Harrar at 1/2 pound sizes to explore the different profile settings on the device. I am wondering if the cooler profiles actually roast lighter since they go for longer periods of time. My concern is that it is balancing out and probably roasting to an equal level between the hottest and coolest profiles (p1/p5 respectively).

Does anyone know the best way to roast city/city+ on the Behmor? is my question. I understand based on the manual that P5 is meant for this, but as a home and professional barista I distrust manuals greatly.

Any advice is welcome and appreciated

Your general thoughts about the different profiles evening out from my limited experience with the Behmor so far is pretty spot on.

However, at the end of the day you can stop the roast so any of the profiles are going to work for city/city+ roast level, it's just how you get there.

I think the best advice is to get at least 5 pounds of one type of green and put it through all the profiles and then tweak them and see what you like the best. You want to create for your palate general guide lines of what you are looking to do then you can change them depending on each bean you get afterwards. And you probably want to do this with a few different types of beans i.e. a washed African, Central, Brazil, Sumatra etc.

It seems like voltage plays a large part too in Behmor roasting. I can do everything the same, in the same ambient temp and come out with different results...

I always got good results with P3-5 for light roasts. P4 was particularly good for some JBM I was roasting when I bought my Behmor. P2 works nicely to slow the roast between City & Full City(light medium - medium roast) if you stick to the correct weight. Just keep in mind that some people think that P2 is meant to stop right in between first and second crack but City occurs at then end of first crack and Full City hits just before second crack. Some people take this as "My Behmor isn't working right". The Behmor 1600 was designed to only roast to a medium darkness. The only thing left to tweak when using P2 is the time in which the cracks line up hence the +/- time options. You can add and remove roast time but it really helps to line up the profile properly if your looking for consistency.


Just throwing it out there. Try the Harrar at a medium roast on P2. If you can get a good full city roast you will like the muted acidity revealing the fruity/berry notes.

My understanding is the intention of the slower profiles is for them to be used with softer beans like Indos, Hawaiians and Jamaicans. P1 and P2 are meant for hard/high grown beans. Using P5 on a Guatemalan bean, for instance, will most likely lead to baked beans lacking character. Same but opposite if you used P1 on a Sumatra- it'd most likely end up tasting off (grassy/sour I would think). Probably better to choose your profile based on bean type then adjust the weight and length of the roast to get the roast level you want.

+1

I almost never use a P5, but do use P1 - P4. It can be easier to stop a roast at a C / C+ with some of the slower profiles, like P3 or P4 because of the stepped profile will have less momentum going into first crack and you have less likelihood of rolling right through first crack and into second crack.

It's best to "forward think" your roast by at least 15 seconds, the beans will continue to roast for a bit when you hit cool. For a coffee from Ethiopia, I'd go with a P1, P2, or P3 roast and I will normally crack the door on the roaster during first crack to dump some of the heat to have the cracks paced slow enough not to rush first crack (cracks about 0.25 to 0.5 sec apart maybe, not an avalanche of cracks), then you can hit cool prior to the end of first crack. This is where having enough coffee to make several roasts comes in handy, as you work on your timing. Be sure to pay attention to the sights and smells of the roast too. When the coffee starts changing from grass to hay to bread the drying phase is ending and you'll be approaching first crack after that.

Thank you everyone for your help! It is much appreciated! I have roasted the Harrar on P1, P2, and P4 and will be cupping each today in order to determine which is best. I will probably throw a P3 in there just to be sure. I was worried last night when 1st crack didn't arrive on P4 till about 14:15 into the roast that I was baking the coffee instead of roasting. Any thoughts on when it becomes a bake and not a roast in terms of timing?

I roast to City/City+ 90% of the time and that was the case when I had my Behmor almost two years ago. I wrote this in another thread but here's what I recall doing with my Behmor to hit first crack in the 9Min neighborhood and then stretch for 2-2:30 of development for City to City+....

It's been a while since I was roaster on my old Behmor, but here is what I recall doing to hit 1C in the 8:45-9:30 timeframe and then stretch 1C...

227g charges (this is ideal for the Behmor IMO)
P2-1/2 lbs profile trying to time the power drop right around 1C for the stretch
So with a 227g charge and the P2 1/2 lb profile you have to do some unnatural acts to make it work. If I recall correctly I started the profile with beans in drum and went no more than 60ish seconds...then shut down roaster and quickly restart as quickly as possible with the P2 1/2 lb profile. If you don't do this the power drop hits too early with that profile and if you let the roaster preheat too much (i.e. more than the 60 secs I alluded to) the roaster won't restart until it cools down.
I was hitting 1C in the 8:45-9:30 neighborhood almost 100% of the time with this technique.

Also, once you hit cool I opened the door and had a small fan I used to cool the beans as quickly as possible. Chaff will fly all over the place but I always roast in the garage so it wasn't an issue.

+1 on what MSH said only I use the 1 lb setting and preheat for 2 minutes. It more than likely is the same, but I'm going to try the 1/2 pound setting next time.

MSH wrote: 227g charges (this is ideal for the Behmor IMO)
P2-1/2 lbs profile trying to time the power drop right around 1C for the stretch
So with a 227g charge and the P2 1/2 lb profile you have to do some unnatural acts to make it work. If I recall correctly I started the profile with beans in drum and went no more than 60ish seconds...then shut down roaster and quickly restart as quickly as possible with the P2 1/2 lb profile. If you don't do this the power drop hits too early with that profile and if you let the roaster preheat too much (i.e. more than the 60 secs I alluded to) the roaster won't restart until it cools down.
I was hitting 1C in the 8:45-9:30 neighborhood almost 100% of the time with this technique.

Also, once you hit cool I opened the door and had a small fan I used to cool the beans as quickly as possible. Chaff will fly all over the place but I always roast in the garage so it wasn't an issue.

Thanks! I'm definitely gonna give this a try!

No problem. The key is to have that power drop hit just a bit before 1C which can be tricky. With the 1/2 lbs-P2-B setting the power drop (if I recall correctly) hits a bit short of 8 mins, so adding in that extra 60 sec preheat gives you about 9min of 100% heat before the power drop hits and then the lower heat to stretch 1C before you end the roast.
I highly recommend downloading the Roasterthing software to. It's a great tool to track your roasts with the Behmor and it's also a great inventory management tool for your greens.