Hi Henry,

I would find such a long drying phase quite tedious, and would avoid it unless absolutely necessary. It may be even longer than it seems, because it would, in addition, require a longer cool down between roasts. Since the the rest of the your profile is in line with regular practice, and the Mini 500 is a Probat style design, I'm wondering why it needs so long.

The actual drying, as far as I can tell is very slow below about 130C (it takes 20 hours to completely dry beans in a convection oven set at 95C -- the standard procedure or measuring bean moisture). If my nose is any guide, the drying rate picks up a lot above 130C, and the beans begin to visibly steam, smelling swampy and and vaguely like peas. It changes from moist steam to a much more smoke-like hay and baking bread quality at around 160C. This means that the actual drying phase is roughly between 130 and 160C.

So perhaps getting to 130C faster and running more ventilation from then on would speed things up. In my experience, the time spent getting to 130C, 5 minutes in the quoted profile, has zero effect on the taste and may just be wasted time and energy. The four minutes from 130 to 160 in your profile may be required, (it is on the Hottop, iirc) but I think if you open the dampers you might be able to reduce it by a minute or so and still get the same result.

Follow on discussion split to My days of being dogmatic about roasting are over.