Can the Bullet R1 really roast better coffee than Quest M3s? - Page 4

#31: Post by **yorkeken** » May 28th, 2019, 5:21 pm

edgndg wrote:I don't have a bullet I do have a quest. I upgraded from behmor. I considered both. I wound up with the quest based on price, the substantial amount of user posts, and my general DIY attitude. It has taken me awhile to understand its nuances, but I now think I am producing really good roasts. On the plus side, because I am doing smaller batches (150g) it has enabled me pretty quickly to understand variability in roasts and how to reproduce various profiles. I probably have 100 roasts under my belt at this point. I don't love the lag (eg you have to make all your adjustments a minute ahead of time) but I am getting better and better at thinking ahead. I wouldn't say I have branched out to much into playing around with different types of beans, but I will at some point.

I'd also note that artisan has been my friend. I like being able to rewind to see what I have done in order to either reproduce or make slight adjustments the next time. It has a ton of customization features which I have increasingly used (e.g. setting power level custom buttons to mark my curves easily).

So, my general view is the quest is worth considering if you are more experimental in nature, don't mind doing a few smaller batches versus having the ability to do a bigger one, and don't mind a few early "ugh I'm chucking this" roasts.

Is there any chance you could share with me your heat/fan settings throughout your typical roast? I'm also trying to figure out the various Artisan config settings so any tips you could offer in that regard would be appreciated. I have a Quest M3S (purchased in April) and have about 15 roasts under my belt. While I'm learning quite a lot about how the machine reacts, I still feel like a beginner. FYI, I am using Artisan and I have 3 thermocouples connected to a Phidget 1048, one (Mill City Roasters probe) in the standard bean temp location, one (second Mill City Roasters probe) in the standard drum temp location and the third (6" probe from Omega Engineering) outside the drum in the upper left bean drop housing screw. Thanks in advance for your response.

#32: Post by **Randy G.** » May 28th, 2019, 8:19 pm

A Q, not worth starting a new thread.. Is the Bullet available in the US from a source other than SM's? I do know that they are available directly from Aillio as well.

May 28th, 2019, 9:02 pm

I don't believe so Randy - They seem to be the sole distributor here in the US from what I have researched.

#34: Post by **edgndg** » May 29th, 2019, 9:43 pm

yorkeken wrote:Is there any chance you could share with me your heat/fan settings throughout your typical roast? I'm also trying to figure out the various Artisan config settings so any tips you could offer in that regard would be appreciated. I have a Quest M3S (purchased in April) and have about 15 roasts under my belt. While I'm learning quite a lot about how the machine reacts, I still feel like a beginner. FYI, I am using Artisan and I have 3 thermocouples connected to a Phidget 1048, one (Mill City Roasters probe) in the standard bean temp location, one (second Mill City Roasters probe) in the standard drum temp location and the third (6" probe from Omega Engineering) outside the drum in the upper left bean drop housing screw. Thanks in advance for your response.

Feel free to PM offline if any of this is unclear. And as I said, take with grain of salt as I am still learning.

A few background notions:

1. I have BT probe same place, MET in the chute like you
2. My DE tends to be around 320, 1C around 400
3. I use a kill o watt
4. I dont mess with the fan -- set on 4 except for sometimes upping to 9 right at the end to blow off chaff
5. I made a basic bean cooler so as not to use the built inone -- I feel like that messes with temperature stability for back to back roasts
6. I like things on the chocolate-y side, roast for espresso
7. I am still playing with charge temp and development times
8. I am aiming for declining RoR and attempting to eliminate crash and flick
9. I am aiming for always cutting temperature through roast
10. As noted in original post, not messing to much yet with lots of different bean types
11. Roasting 150g batches, mostly espresso blends, or single origin south american/central american (in an attempt to keep things simple)
12. A useful idea for me, drawn from learning to drive stick as a teenager, is to find the balance point in terms of watts where BT and MET are relatively stable -- for me around 750W -- this has allowed me to anchor my heat adjustments around a bit of a tipping point if you will

General recipe (note throughout that the W readings are where I set things, but fan is using about 42W throughout, ie the actual "heat" is more accurately the reading below - 42W)
1. charge at 440F (but playing with this), fan on 4 as noted
2. kill heat at charge
3. soak til TP -- approx 1 min in -- heat up to 900W
4. about 2:30 in -- heat to 800W
5. at DE (about 4:00 - 4:30) -- heat to 750W
6. DE + 2:30 -- heat to 600W -- this is about 1c - 2:00
7. DE + 3:30/1C - 1:00 -- heat to 500
8. IC = heat at 400W
9. IC + 2 -- heat at 0W
10. Aiming for drop between 420 and 430F and development time of 25-30% (I understand this to bring out chocolate flavors)

Example artisan graphs:

slightly lower charge temp, longer dev time...

#35: Post by **Balthazar_B** » May 30th, 2019, 12:38 am

Sorry to play Hall Monitor, but shouldn't the post ahead of this one have its own topic, or at least be in a different one?

#36: Post by **another_jim** » May 30th, 2019, 1:49 am

Technically yes; but if it's just a short digression, it can stay here. If the posters want to continue the tutorial; they should pm me, and I'll split off the posts to a new thread.