Yirgaman wrote:I'm new here but not to roasting on the Fresh Roast. I had the 500 years ago and then passed it down to my Son 5 years ago when I bought my Behmor 1600 plus. Before that I was roasting on various vintage poppers like the Poppery and Popper 2 with no mods.

The machine I really want and hopefully get one day is the Artisan 3-e. I listened to the owner on youtube and a light-bulb went off in my head with something he said which I implemented into my roast profiles. He said the only thing you need to do with this machine to control temps is just play with the air flow. This eliminates all of the back and forth between airflow and heat adjustments and gives you a more reliable roast by eliminating so many variables keeping the heat source at a constant temp.

So I thought why not try this with my SR800 / OEM Ext tube and see what kind of results I can achieve. I start off at 9/4 and work my way down to a 4/4 or 3/4 by the end of the roast for city- city plus. this is usually a total roast time in the 8-10 minute range. And the results are the best tasting coffee I have ever roasted. I will try and post some data since I do not use any software or probes. I just use the temp read out from the machine and log that info along with the mark for dry time and 1st crack and drop temp/time.

This is the way I roast on my SR800 w/OEM extension.

I have found that starting at power level 4 and fan level 8, I get 4- 5 minutes drying phase and then I drop the fan down to 6 or 5, depending the bean through first crack. Then, again depending on the bean, I'll go down another notch till second crack starts, which is where I stop 90% of my roasts.

I don't even look at the temperatures, I just go by color, smell and bean motion. I get excellent, repeatable roasts this way.

This has all, so far been with 10 oz. of Brazil, Nicaragua and Rwanda beans roasted to full city, +/-.

Yirgaman wrote:
So I thought why not try this with my SR800 / OEM Ext tube and see what kind of results I can achieve. I start off at 9/4 and work my way down to a 4/4 or 3/4 by the end of the roast for city- city plus. this is usually a total roast time in the 8-10 minute range. And the results are the best tasting coffee I have ever roasted. I will try and post some data since I do not use any software or probes. I just use the temp read out from the machine and log that info along with the mark for dry time and 1st crack and drop temp/time.

Nice! Glad to have the input!
Two questions:
1) so you're just adjusting the fan based on loft? How much loft are you looking for? (Or are you basing the fan setting somehow by how much heat you're wanting off the temp reading?)
2) do you always use 4? Is that based on the total roast time - so if a bean takes longer then next time you might up the heat setting?

It seems like a nice approach. I have been adjusting the heat setting based on what I see on the Artisan graph but it's hard when fan and heat both change how much heat the bean is getting.

I will post a video of my next roast . I keep the beans moving right about 1/2 up the cylinder and adjust as the beans lighten up to keep at that lever . My last 6 roasts have been at 4. I'm going to try a few at 5 and see the difference in roast/taste.

I've ordered an Ikawa Home roaster so this was my last day roasting on the Fresh Roast (I hope, but who knows?). Mainly I'm just wanting an Espresso bar roaster that I can leave out, dump beans in and hit a button and not watch. But yet it's fun to think I could dial in things - I don't know if I'll get that with the Ikawa Home but I'm not sure I got that with the Fresh Roast either. I basically roasted on the Fresh Roast until first crack stopped, then dropped the roast.

Here's what I came to find worked best for me:
- Equipment: Razzo 12" tube with extended chaff collector hooked up to 2 fidgets TC, one in the bean mass (BT) one just above a bit (ET).
- Charge Weight: 225g (I did 200 for a while then ran 250 a few times to deplete my beans and found it not bad, but 225 moved the bean pile a bit better and actually required fewer fan changes as the roast went on than the lower batch sizes do)
- No preheat
1. Start Artisan
2. Dump beans in and quickly start at 9 fan, 1 heat.
-2b. Drop fan a notch whenever the bean pile trampolines (you'll notice the drops on the graph below - I don't think I recorded each fan adjustment but you can kind of tell from the graph - I was making some great banana bread at the same time)
3. @about 1:30 start moving the heat up by 2 digits every 30 seconds or so until heat 7
4. @ FC start decreasing heat (in Artisan I'm just trying to keep the RoR below 20 by this time and decreasing, but not get to 0 before FC ends.
5. Drop the roast as soon as most of FC is over, or if it's above 405 degrees on my Artisan (many beans I'm hoping this is actually more like 395).
6. Let cool in the Fresh Roast for only about 30 seconds, then quickly dump into my homemade cooling tray (in my case a laptop fan system with a cake dusting pan).
-I do the next batch immediately or so and haven't found any difference in how things go.

Here is my last roast. Turns out to be a very even roast with this Rwandan. You'll notice the quick drops - those are each time I have to drop the fan speed. No way around that. Smoothing is only set to 6... I could set it way up and make the curve look nicer, but this level has been helpful.




I've enjoyed learning a lot on the Fresh Roast and think I've gotten ok results. At this point I've just been wanting to roast a good every day comfort blend sort of thing which I expect the Ikawa Home to be able to provide equally well. I've gotten some ok Ethiopians out of this too, but I don't think my skills with it are good enough to go coffee exploring. I'll likely be looking for someone local - maybe even one of my friends or at one of our gatherings - who would like to try this out too! Nice cheap inroad - I do think my time with it has saved me money overall and increased my knowledge and experience.

@MNate I have the factory extension chamber without artisan and I go by the temps on the machine knowing they are higher than the bean temps by atleast 20* or more. But when I reduce my fan speed by 1 it's an immediate rise in temp . Maybe the razzo works differently than the oem. Thoughts ?

The Razzo tube is pretty thick glass making some think there is some conduction going on - he's transfer from the beans touching the hot glass. Who knows. But for the most part I think it works the same.

I'm confused more often than not on how the heat and fan work together. Which of the following delivers more heat to the bean, if the heat setting is the same:
A) More fan so the beans are lofted more in the air
B) Less fan so the beans are just rolling

The readout of a probe in the mass of beans will read higher in B than A. (This is the same as you are noticing on the Freah Roast readout) Is that because the heat is being trapped in the mass of beans in B but escaping up the vent in A? But recall how convection ovens work: they usually turn your heat setting down 25degreesF and it cooks a bit faster because it is moving the air around better. We confuse fan with cooling because it feels good on a hot day but this is because it helps evaporate our perspiration... (and some accuse fluid beds as drying out beans too much, but I bet that's not really true). So you'd think more fan means more heat being transferred to the beans, but the readouts give us the opposite impression.

Ideally the beans are always lofted at the same amount so it isn't a variable, but that's really not the case with the Fresh Roast. And I'm not sure how to handle it or to really just ignore it, trust the TC (or Fresh Roast readout) and do whatever it takes to keep the Rate of Rise where I want it, adjusting the fan or the heat or a little of both. I for sure ignore the dips though when I turn the fan down a notch... it just seems like the probe is now getting its reading from something different and not that the heat has really changed that much (reading more from the beans than the air and the beans are cooler than the air).

It really doesn't make total sense to me.

I purchased the SR800 with extension just before Christmas. I'm brand new to roasting but been thinking of doing it for years now. I've roasted 12-8 oz. batches (two at a sitting) and everyone loves the coffee and I'm having a lot of fun but must admit I've been copying others settings and really feel I don't know what I'm doing .

I've tried: 1) followed some of "The Captain's Coffee" roast settings 2) hitting 370F drying for 3 minutes, 450F till first crack, and then max out at 450F to finish. 3) and couple techniques I've seen here.

Is there a simplified guide on what temps you are shooting for and at what times?

Thanks

Getting onto the SR800 bandwagon. Just placed an order for one with extension tube from home roasting supplies. I have been using a DIY roasting method, involving 2 matching stainless steel hand-sieves shaken over stove flame. I find it extremely tedious to keep shaking that for 15 minutes, my forearms get sore, and I feel irritation from the heat. As a result, I never had the patience to explore a consistent combination of bean dose and heat. On paper the SR800 checks all the boxes: reasonably big batch size (I can go through 1/2 to 1lb beans a week) so that I don't have to waste time doing too many batches, not overly expensive like the drum roasters, and reasonably easy to control. Fingers crossed!

I've had this for a few months with a non Razzo extension. My only downside is that I have to do three or four back to back roasts (w/30 mins intervals) to get a pound of roasted coffee. As for temperature, I just use my eyes and ears to gauge when to end a roast.

I've upgraded my SR800 with Artisan/Phidget. This has really improved my roasts by giving me something visually to adjust to. I now make 10 oz. batches with the FR extension. I roast 5 batches at a sitting to feed my household 1.5 #/week consumption. So I roast once every two weeks and spend around 1.5 hours since I run at least two cooling cycles between roasts. Still having a blast roasting my own beans.

Mike