I have followed Kenneroast's guidelines for perforated drum. I charge at 450F and 454g. Is having such a long Malliard phase bad? This is a DP Ethiopian Banko Fuafuate. I pulled a shot immediately after roasting which I know most don't do but it was actually really great. I did 15 grams in / 30g out 201F in about 24 seconds and it wasn't overly acidic (probably because of long Malliard) but almost perfect. It definitely had some notes of berry and was quite balanced in terms of sweet/acidic. In order to shorten my Malliard do I just need to apply more heat through the dry phase and a little into the malliard? I have been following the below guidelines because I am so new to roasting I really am not sure how to follow a roast and make adjustments along the way.

It seems like you are getting there. While "in theory" that may be too long in Maillard, only the cup can tell. What we do here (and did at the Huky forum) is mostly comparing notes, in this case Artisan graphs.
you can try and charge lower, rendering a lower TP (I go as low as 75C (167F) or even lower. With a perf drum I go for a charge temp around 360-380F. This will give you a longer dry phase, which doesn't affect the roast that much anyhow. The idea is to build up a good momentum hitting a full pound charge with full throttle burner during most of the dry phase. At around (just before) DP, I'd reduce the burner to half and then adjust for the profile I am aiming for. This will build up pressure in the beans which supports the Maillard process (very simplified...).

(Even though I use a solid drum with my Huky, I've used a perf drum for a year... None of them are better or worse, just different from each other.)

Is this on a Huky? I would recommend going to 3.5kPa at about the 0:30 second mark to build up some more momentum earlier in the roast. Then maybe decrease the power a little slower than you did last time to speed up the roast. You'll want to try and smooth out your RoR as you approach 1C, I find I need to reduce my gas pressure a decent bit around BT 382 on dry processes Ethiopians but then increase it back to about 1-1.5kPA around 395-400 at the beginning of 1C and then reduce it again once you're rolling.

I charge 360g at 450 and shoot to finish under 12 minutes. Helps keep things from baking/stalling and the flavors stay bright and acidic.

Here is a recent roast of mine: Ethiopia Harrar

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I will definitely make some modifications to Kenneroast's suggestions. I think for someone just starting they are great and have worked for some other coffees. Yeah the shot I took was really great. It was like someone poured some welches fruit juice into my shot very subtle though. I wonder 4-5 days in what it will taste like. I only drink espresso. On occasion I will do a chemex, french press or pour over. Perhaps I need to try other methods to get different taste out of the coffee.


Braden

When I started with the Huky I had ordered a solid drum which I used for about a year. I then ordered and switched to a perf drum. I also used Kenneroast's instructions to get started, which was a great start, but after a while I had modified the control scheme to suit my personal preferences... which are...
My ideas on this are that all the small changes to heat and air can be reduced to 3 fixed air flow settings and 3-4 heat settings. The way to get there is to take a roast which I really like and denominate that a "base roast". As I always log the control (heat and air) changes in Artisan, I can work out where I can reduce those "quick" two or three changes down to one. All of this is a repeat and tweak process, not done in one day, rather a month or two (...six ). Once you have this base roast under your belt, you do have a starting point which you can apply to most different coffees. After a while you'll learn how to re-act when any particular coffee does not respond the way you expect. But it's very important that you've created that base roast which you can repeat over and over (which is hard to to with say 8 heat changes...).
Even though the basic discussion was on a DP Ethiopian which turned out nicely, a good bean for creating that "base roast" would be a good quality washed central american. (I'm currently having a late breakfast with a Colombian I roasted last week. That particular coffee has about the "tightest" 1C I've ever experienced. Going into 1C has only a couple of stray pops and then comes a very distinct 1C where almost all of the beans crack within some 20-30 seconds. I'm saying this because this coffee apart from tasting very good is a very good and stable coffee which behaves very well as a "base roast" coffee.)

Thanks for the advice I will definitely do that! I pulled another shot today of the Ethiopian so about 12 hours post roast and still tasting amazing. I will need to find my low-medium-high for fan...I think last time I was doing 30-45-60 or I might need to do 40-55-70 I did the lighter trick and its hard to tell 45 bend / large bend / cut out... Gas i'm thinking about 3.5-4.0kPa because all of my roasts thus far have been rather long Malliard or do what cerone said and turn up the heat 30 seconds in because I don't turn it up until I hit TP. I know a lot of people hate that the Huky is so clunky but I love that I have to stay on top of the roast the whole time. It gives me something to do. I have 10 lbs of dp ethiopian from klatch so i'll have some opportunity to try different profiles.

... "12 hours post roasting" is a very short time to rest the beans. 3-5 days is more "normal" when it comes to find the "peak". But the fact that the coffee is amazing already is a good sign of having bought very nice beans.
About turning on the heat... I have found that if I turn on the heater at 1.10 (70 sec) it picks up momentum and is giving me the power at about 1.30, i.e at TP. The burner is a little hesitant to get up to speed. Once there it is an excellent heat source for the Huky.
This depends on your gas regulator capacity, but for a 400g - 454g (1 pound) charge, I would hit the gas full whack in the beginning and stay there for most of the drying phase. (Which is why I charge quite low...) I then usually go down to 2.0kPa some 30 sec before DE. Once you get this right, it's just a matter of doing some simple math to calculate the timing of the milestones.
Setting the fan isn't that important. I.e it doesn't matter that much if you set the Variac at 45 or 50%, as long as you're in the ballpark. Finding the high and low settings are a bit more important, because that low setting should be low enough not to dry the beans too quickly, but still add some oxygen to the burner. The high setting should vent the roast, keeping the heat at that low but still positive RoR. Too much fan will suck up too many beans into the exhaust. Also, the lighter trick does work well for solid drums, while noone really have explored airflow settings for the perf drum to the same extent. Having said that, I havn't seen anything saying that you should set up the airflow much different with a perf drum.

Great info! I will write down some guidelines and try this out and see what happens. So maybe a 440 charge temp (I worry going too low...what do you recommend?) and gas at 4.0kPA and then go down to 2.0 once DE is done?

You don't really have to worry about charging a little low. The only thing that will happen is that the drying phase is a little longer. That drying phase has very little impact on the roast, the only thing is maybe not to get it too short or crazy long. (4-7 minutes is fully ok.) For a full pound, I'd probably go for around 390F for charge temp. But you have to experiment with the variables of charge temp and heat adjustment. (I deliberatly don't mention airflow, as you already have some decent settings. Do use the same settings throughout your experimentations, else you will go nuts... )
Once you find a good starting point (charge temp), you can really just leave the air and burner at the same setting up until approaching DE. The RoR should rise to around 40F/min and then slowly decline to say 30F/min by itself. Going into Maillard at that pace works well for me, but it should be easy to adjust to taste. The principle is then the same for Maillard. Try e.g 2.0kPa ad mid-fan setting and you will hopefully see the RoR decline from 30F/min to around 20-25 within a few minutes... adjust to taste, but try to find out how to make it with only one adjustment (else it will be very hard to reproduce, which leads to the roast being hard to tweak)...