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☕ Coffee ☕: Ingredients, Roasting, Grinding, Brewing, and Tasting

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If that wasn't real, then those guys pulled it off beautifully. Even the posture thing was funny.

@jammin, Tom? You know who this is? Is that video parody or not? And when you say "still your fav source for coffee", does he sell coffee? I didn't look into it at all.
 
If that wasn't real, then those guys pulled it off beautifully. Even the posture thing was funny.

@jammin, Tom? You know who this is? Is that video parody or not? And when you say "still your fav source for coffee", does he sell coffee? I didn't look into it at all.

Oh my haha. I thought everyone knew that was Tom, owner of Sweet Maria's. He makes spoof videos like that frequently. They're getting a little tired imho.
 
Roasted a couple days ago. Did the El Salvador (?) Kilimanjaro that roastmasters had up a while back. Also did a Ethiopian YC dry process Aricha I believe it was. Wow. Great bean that Ethiopian. Super fruity to my palate.

For whatever reason I was able to get artisan working on the Windows notebook finally. Not sure what I did, but it worked. Wondering what settings to use on all the stuff now.

TD.

-edit.
Wow! Adding a bit of sugar to that YC makes the strawberry notes really pop!
 
So you're using Artisan to control your roaster?

I just use the numerical feedback, especially RoR and drum temp as a guide.

Yeah for quite a while in fact. Still consider myself a beginner at trying to get a roast that I like. It is quite difficult to get a nice coast into 1c phase without stalling or blasting through, but seems generally to be slowly getting easier bit by bit. I know that the are a bunch of alarms and bells and whistles you can add, plus general fiddling around with the smoothing and other mathematical stuff that I don't really understand. Mostly it helps me see how fast I am approaching an expected 1c phase so I can adjust heat and fan to try and extend that part of the roast, and also so I can refer to previous roast data to see when I can expect 1c from a saved session log graph.

Turns out that I can't figure a way to implement a PID function so I can have it follow a previous, or manually generated roast curve. At least not using the native USB port. I bought a tc4 shield for my arduino thinking that I'd be able to use those with the USB without having to dissect my roaster (any more than I already had to perform the upgrade to the k+). I'm sure that if I was more obsessed with doing this, that I could find a way to make it happen, but, that isn't the case. At least not yet.
 
Well.

I put the behmor brazen Brewer in my Amazon cart and left it there.
Then I had to get some particular thing my daughter wanted for her birthday a couple days afterward, that she had picked out on Amazon. Well next thing you, I get an email that the coffee pot had been shipped....:D

I could always return it but.... Have a feeling that it might very well replace my ~9 year old technivorm.

TD
 
Tanzanian Update: 1 Week after roasting, the coffee was delicious. It was just boring and had muddy flavors up until the 7 day mark, but that's when it really was beautiful. Problem was, my 7 day pot was also my last pot of that roast haha. So, another went into the roaster and will sit for a week.

Interesting thing yesterday while roasting with the Behmor: My "B" Chamber temp reached 325 around 7 mins into the roast, and I couldn't figure out why (since for me it normally tops out at about 307. I'm looking all around, trying to figure out how this could have happened when I realized I forgot to put the Chaff tray in with the beans.

So, if any of you Behmor roasters are ever looking for higher chamber temps, leave out the chaff tray.
 
Interesting thing yesterday while roasting with the Behmor: My "B" Chamber temp reached 325 around 7 mins into the roast, and I couldn't figure out why (since for me it normally tops out at about 307. I'm looking all around, trying to figure out how this could have happened when I realized I forgot to put the Chaff tray in with the beans.

So, if any of you Behmor roasters are ever looking for higher chamber temps, leave out the chaff tray.

That's interesting. Honestly, since i vacuum both the chaff tray and the inside of the roaster after each roast now, I've kinda wondered what good the chaff tray does for me.

Question: do you have the chaff tray in or out while you preheat the roaster?
 
SWMBO wasn't impressed with the new coffee brewer arriving in spite of my lame excuse. Its significantly larger than the Technivorm. It arrived with a cracked plastic handle cover on the carafe..... I'll brew coffee with it tomorrow, but it is either going back (until I go through the 180 paper filters I bought for my technivorm) or getting exchanged.

Recall when I said that the Technivorm would retain water and that it was unpredictable and variable how much was retained? Well, I unplugged it tonight after unboxing the Behmor, and I inverted it over the sink and a bunch of water came out... I don't like that. The reservoir on the Behmor is on the very top, then there is a control panel, and then there is a drawer type filter basket area and then the carafe goes below. This way, no place for water to be retained? The reservoir/heater at the top does retain 1-2cc water perhaps, but, insignificant compared to the Technivorm.

I will say that I have become pretty good at micro-managing a uniform extraction from the technivorm though.

With the Behmor you can program the water brew temp (and it seems to have an altitude compensation calibration so you can enter you elevation at 250 ft increments. I am at about 110 as far as I know here in FL), and you can program a "pre-soak" time. I can't tell yet having only run a batch of plain water through it, if it closes off the filter basket drain while it "soaks" or not.

It has a flat bottom basket type filter and comes with a gold foil filter, but I think I might prefer using paper filters. I'll try out both ways and maybe do some testing over the weekend if I get time: seeing if the water I put in is consistent or if there is retention someplace like the Technivorm; doing some grinder dial-in back-to-back brews to see if I can start to call my shots on the universal brewing chart using the CoffeeLab refractometer. The Technivorm was terrible at this. I suspect any coffee brewer that retains water in a variable fashion like this will fail miserably at any attempts to achieve consistency in extraction.

TD
 
Question: do you have the chaff tray in or out while you preheat the roaster?

Out; when I preheat I don't have anything in there.

Tricky, sounds like you have quite the dilemma there.

Last night my wife says, "oh, Sur La Table has something called a Bonavita on sale. Have you heard of that?"

As far as I'm concerned, that's basically permission to buy, right?
 
Coffee today is markedly better than yesterday. Only change was I changed the grind to more coarse (two "notches" on my grinder, which goes from 1 to 10). I guess I was over-extracting.

I wonder if overextracting is OK if I justy reduce the amount of coffee. Probably won't touch it now since I'm pretty close to perfect I think.
 
That's interesting. Honestly, since i vacuum both the chaff tray and the inside of the roaster after each roast now, I've kinda wondered what good the chaff tray does for me.

Question: do you have the chaff tray in or out while you preheat the roaster?

Oh my god. That is brilliant. I have been trying to figure out how to clean the roaster of all the chaff that the stupid tray does not want to catch. I thought I was doing something wrong since 1/4 or so does not catch. I have been inverting the machine over the trash can and using a broom to clean the rest. Vacuum it is.

The directions I read said to preheat then install the drum and tray so I read that as just preheat the roaster itself without either.


On a different note, I have been noticing that I go through the 1/4 lb roasts I do really fast. What kind of weight shrinkage do you all typically notice from a roast? Do you roast by pre-roast weight or compensate for post roast weight?
 
Do you roast by pre-roast weight or compensate for post roast weight?

I start with 8 oz green beans, and I usually end up with about 6.8 oz roasted beans, give or take a little.

Personally, I like 8 oz roasts because there is a little bit of control over the heat without the roaster getting carried away. I used to do 4 oz roasts, but they got hot quick. Then I tried 12 oz but I couldn't swing the temps like I like to with some of the beans I was doing. So, I've settled on the 8 oz roast.
 
On a different note, I have been noticing that I go through the 1/4 lb roasts I do really fast. What kind of weight shrinkage do you all typically notice from a roast? Do you roast by pre-roast weight or compensate for post roast weight?

The only time I measured before/after weights was my first roast. It lost 17.5% of its weight.

I was overroasting then, so the % now is probably a bit less than that.

On my ghetto roaster, I roast exactly 1lb at a time.
 
I requested a replacement form Amazon. Brewed with it today and I will say it produces a very good cup of coffee. The reservoir does retain a bit of water and condensate but it is negligible compared to what the technivorm retained. I have yet to perform measurements. Takes a while to brew the full pot. Ground coffee bed was nice and level from small brew I did in the morning, but I haven't checked it from the full pot brew I did for tonight's coffee (working late shift). I might fiddle with the pre soak time and see what I prefer if I can tell a difference at all, and also measure the extraction at my current grind setting to see if I can get some consistency going.
 
Well I have a repeat customer from my Christmas Blend distribution. It's nice to sell the home roast, but I am bummed the guy buying it wants it pre-ground and is making it in a Keurig.

Oh well. Money is money and not everyone is as anal as I am... with their brewing methods :eek:
 
back to back roast of a Kenyan. consistency in roasting is always a challenge in the home roasting world. Total time on these roasts were withing 9 seconds of eachother with identical 1C times. 9 second difference in the stretch

wmnxoj.jpg


11gkgmd.jpg
 
Nice. I roasted last night using new notebook PC instead of Macbook. I may go back to Mac. For one thing bigger screen is nicer. another is temp probe variance. Temps on PC seem about a good 15-20 degrees lower maybe more. 1c at 330 seems way too low plus forever to get through drying phase which I think is also bogus. I know you can plug in offsets but I really need a way to calibrate probes with another thermometer somehow
 
^i use an Omega data logger which connects to my PC via USB. 1/16" in probe in the shell for MET and 1/8" probe in the drum for BT. Pretty happy with it so far.
 
^i use an Omega data logger which connects to my PC via USB. 1/16" in probe in the shell for MET and 1/8" probe in the drum for BT. Pretty happy with it so far.

Hmm. Well the rabbit hole keeps going....
I can't find omega USB logger on Amazon, but I am reminded that I have the arduino tc4 shield that is basically for doing this on roaster without a native USB like mine (now) has. Seems like it'd be one step forward, two steps back to further modify. Sooner or later I'll probably do it, of for no other reason than to have PID ability. If so, maybe I'll put a hole in there to calibrate against another thermometer that I can later seal off with some jbweld putty. I am due for a tear down for cleaning I think.
 
I haven't used the chaff tray on a Behmor since the third roast. You can literally roast a third of a pound more without it. I hit it with a shop vac about three times during the roast. No BBQ chaff flavor that way and you can roast any coffee that way. Been doing it like that for more than three years.
 

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