Hey all! I recently purchased a used Hottop. I have roasted a Nicaraguan on it more than 20 times and cannot seem to avoid, what appears to be, scorching and an uneven roast. I have fiddled with nearly every variable that I can think of, with no success. I have charged anywhere between 220* and 380*. I have kept the fan at full blast throughout the entire roast and tried no fan. I have shut the heating element off for the first 30 - 60 seconds of the roast. I have tried a charge weight of 175g and 225g. I have both lengthened and shortened the roast, between a range of 9:00 and 16:00 minutes. I even took the whole machine apart, gave it a DEEP clean, and checked to make sure the heating element wasn't too close to the drum. Most recently, I removed the back filter 1/4 to fiddle with the air-flow. Every single roast, regardless of these alterations, has dropped like what you see in the picture. It doesn't drink well, either... Thoughts?

Coffee: https://www.sweetmarias.com/nicaragua-b ... -6127.html

Is it only with this bean? Have you had better luck with other lots of Guat? Maybe try a different source if your other SOs are doing better? Sorry, need more info. to be of any possible help. I've seen a little of this with one of my SOs (don't recall which and too tired to go through records). I wrote it off to the beans as I'd had good roasts of the same SO from another greens source a year prior. So, I've seen this but seldom and only one SO/supplier as I recall.

What's an SO? I haven't roasted anything else on it just yet. Getting my hands on Colombian and Costa sometime early next week.

Single Origin, I believe.

Vbrock9089 wrote:Hey all! I recently purchased a used Hottop. I have roasted a Nicaraguan on it more than 20 times and cannot seem to avoid, what appears to be, scorching and an uneven roast. I have fiddled with nearly every variable that I can think of, with no success. I have charged anywhere between 220* and 380*. I have kept the fan at full blast throughout the entire roast and tried no fan. I have shut the heating element off for the first 30 - 60 seconds of the roast. I have tried a charge weight of 175g and 225g. I have both lengthened and shortened the roast, between a range of 9:00 and 16:00 minutes. I even took the whole machine apart, gave it a DEEP clean, and checked to make sure the heating element wasn't too close to the drum. Most recently, I removed the back filter 1/4 to fiddle with the air-flow. Every single roast, regardless of these alterations, has dropped like what you see in the picture. It doesn't drink well, either... Thoughts?

Coffee: https://www.sweetmarias.com/nicaragua-b ... -6127.html

<image>

Short term advice: lower charge temp, go a little slower = a little longer in dry, half way in green start to speed up and roll through yellow and slow down as you come into City+ range. If you don't know what that means, see long term advice.

Long term advice: Read more. Buy roasted beans you like and try and roast like them. Drinking the store beans to hold you over and slow you down. I know Has Bean in the UK does this (selling the same green and roasted bean for comparison) SM or anybody who sells roasted and green might if you email them. Advice: Anybody can throw in super expensive beans that will mask all their crappy roasts and blame others, the machine, the beans and not blame their lack luster self.

Any chance you could break down some of the profiles you've ran anywhere in that 9:00-16:00 range? e.g. 5:00 dry, 3:00 Maillard, 2:00 development? (or, whatever given times you've roasted with...) I honestly don't know enough to speculate based off of the visual appearance, but perhaps you're coming into crack with too much momentum (but dropping too early to avoid roasty flavors?)...or the opposite: lacking energy coming into crack and essentially just baking/browning them while killing off flavor.

Speaking of, although they don't "drink well," what specifically are you tasting? Are you getting scorched/burned flavors? Are you getting papery brown flavors? Green flavors? Ashy? Etc?

Vbrock9089 wrote:What's an SO? I haven't roasted anything else on it just yet. Getting my hands on Colombian and Costa sometime early next week.

Previous poster was correct; I was using shorthand for Single Origin (a pure guatamalan sourced green- not mixed). Sorry for the confusion.

The problem has been resolved! I got my hands on a thermocouple today. This allowed me to roast with an accurate temerature gauge. Who knew that the ET probe in an old hottop could be so far off.

Turns out that I wasn't controlling 1st well, at all. My guess is that I was getting to first around 390* and getting up to 420 in 1:45 (my typical development time).