I think artisan is very useful with the Freshroast SR800. I roast to the darker end of medium for espresso and start out at a fan of 9 and heat of 1 and shoot for a dry end at about 3 minutes. After that, I hit increase the heat rapidly to power the roast through the browning phase and into development. I've abandoned the idea of the slowly descending ROR; it may work for drum roasters but I don't think it works with the Freshroast. I try and keep my ROR in the 25 to 35 range and that has given me some very good espresso. Thanks for trying the Freshroast and posting videos of your experiences.
Hi Alan. Thanks for your comments and watching my video. Very interesting. I am use to a ROR range of 30 on the high end with a drum roaster down to 5 during the end of my roast. It would make sense to have a higher ROR, especially to keep momentum through first crack and approaching second. Based on comments on this video so far, I feel much better about my lack of success with the ROR. Still enjoy the roaster, but to be honest, I 'm hoping someone will have figured out the ROR issue with this roaster and share. That would be exciting.
Kinda not surprised at Artisan being "overkill". I have the SR800 with ext tube, and have really been having consistently stellar roasts since employing your phase approach. I typically go for around a City+ roast level using ~ 9:30 total roasting time. Starting at 9/1 fan/heat, I adjust both to achieve around a 25°/minute temp rise on the unit's readout for the 1st 2-3 minutes, 20° until 1st crack, and then 10-15° until I end the roast. Dry phase ends at around 4:15 (45% of 9:30), FC at 7:35/430° (35% browning), with the roast ending at 9:30 (20% development). These times vary slightly depending on the bean (particularly peaberry), but it's always really close to this template. This'll typically gets me to 460-470° at finish. If you were ending at 425° or so, that explains your bland coffee. In my experience, if I end lower than 450 or so, the coffee is pretty lifeless. Painful lesson. I've found that using the temp readout throughout is very important. Just like following an Artisan ROR graph, I can follow how the roast is progressing. Where the probe is isn't an issue as long as it is the same roast-to-roast. This is what works for me, and has been surprisingly consistent. Thanks for what you do. Really makes me think.
Thanks for those details. Yep, following the phase approach and now worrying about the ror has been my approach with the freshroast with good results. I have not spent a lot of time relying on the dial temps but that makes sense to help you reach your target. No, not “makes sense”. That is really smart to do that. Nice work. I want to address Steve’s comment on temps. I was equally surprised at the temps Steve. I’m gonna chalk it up to. Micro climate that is 100% convection heat transfer. That is not actually the bean temp. J Lantz takes his coffee to city plus with a ror at 20 degrees per minute at drop, which is high compared to a drum roaster, figuring the ET on a drum would be maybe 35-50 degrees different than the BT, that would put the beam temp on his coffee somewhere around 425 which is approaching second crack on my drum roaster. I’m not positive on this but it seems to maybe address the temp disparity. Great conversation J and Steve
@@VirtualCoffeeLab Yep. Because in the end, the only things that matter are: 1.) Your process gets you the best tasting coffee for your palate, and 2.) You stringently document that process to consistently deliver it. If water boiled at 215°F instead of 212°, would it matter? No, we'd simply know that and go from there.
Righto, my 2c. "Roasting to make the graph look pretty" is definetly not the right way to get great coffee. But roasting in the absence of information is also harder than it should be, so use your logging as another sense or tool, but never go too far from the key ones that tell you what's going on - sight and smell. I'd strongly suggest not chasing the graph - as you saw, with a hot-air roaster and excessively granular settings, you will always be over-compensating in your adjustments, and it'll be all over the shop - in fact I'd go almost as far as saying turn off displaying the delta-BT as its way too distracting (and if you are going to have it on, change your scale so you can see it). What I would suggest is you do your "normal" roasting process, while capturing the data in Artisan, and going to town looking at the data and what it gives you, and how the new data you have could have been used to change what you did. You certainly won't get instantly better coffee with the data, but you may be able to use it as better guide to handle the normal roasts, and certainly also be then able to better reproduce the exceptional roasts you do.
Great suggestions Brett. Luigi also shared some similar constructive comments. I’ve been getting great results without artisan but wanted to give it a try and see what the fan and heat are really doing to the roast. So you are using the ET line only with Artisan. Are you using any other references. I will do some normal roasts using only my senses and a timer while recording the roast with artisan as you suggest. That should be really interesting 🧐
Hey Mike, I have an FR800 without the extension tube and I use artisan, however I put my 3mm diameter bean temp probe right in the middle of the bean mass instead of above and below. My experience has been literally exactly the same as yours. I also think it is impossible to get a smoothly declining ROR. The steps in fan speed and power setting are just too big. Last weekend my computer crashed during the drying phase and I had to wing it for the remainder and it came out great because I had my eyes and my nose glued to the beans. I have commented on your videos before about how difficult it is for me to split my attention between artisan and the beans and I think now you really understand my question. I think fluidized bed roasters are just more suited to being computer controlled like the Ikawa, and drum roasters are more suited to manual control. Thank you so much for posting your videos it is great to get some validations on my experiences.
Hi Matt. Thanks for your message. Yes, I remember you sharing about you being overwhelmed monitoring roast color and smell and then the ROR and now incompletely get your question from a few months back. I think the issue as you stated is with the steps in temperature change with one adjustment. There could be a combo increment like one click fan down and heat down one click but I haven’t spent enough time time experimenting. I’m glad you are getting good results focusing on your phase percentages. Thanks for the encouragement Matt.
I have my long probe in the bean mass for bean temp (not touching the bottom) and the short I use for air temp. It may be good to calibrate the probes and adjust the temperature in artisan. I find that using both delta BT and ET I can predict BT drops and spikes by watching the delta ET that changes before delta BT. That being said, I find roasting low density beans really hard with the sr800 as they just won't hold heat (possibly because there is no heat sink in the roaster, like there is in a drum?). I find not changing the fan after DE helps with a consistent ROR. Also, keeping a high fan makes a less dense bean mass and provides a BT that isn't accurate. When you keep changing the fan, you change the density of the bean mass, so you are getting artifacts in your BT/ROR and make adjustments that are too course. Kind of like overcorrecting a skid in a car....you end up in the ditch.
Lots of good information here Dr. Sober. The delta ET is something I do use but didn't pay attention to in this roast because I had my hands full with the knob and the ROR. I realize the Delta ET forecasts digitally well before the graph does so thanks for that reminder. You mentioned "NO HEATSINK" in the fresh roast. One way to look at this is the coffee itself is a heatsink. As we apply heat to the beans and the heat is transferred into the bean structure, it gets to a point where instead of soaking in the heat, it gives off heat (exothermic reaction/first crack). So while the bean mass is not moving much, there is bean-to-bean transfer of heat. More movement and less touching means less transfer. Good catch there Dr. Sober. That is really interesting. I knew that lower fan speed meant higher temperatures because the beans are blocking the air from escaping through the top of the roaster, increasing heat. BUT the bean-to-bean transfer is something I hadn't included in my roasting with the Fresh Roast. Truthfully I don't think we could ever get an accurate bean temp. Ikawa placed their probe above the mass. Why would they do that? (I think it was to simulate a temperature that is more closely related to the bean temp, not the hot air blowing in the beans. What do you think? Thanks for watching and for your comments!
We recently received our Kaffelogic Nano 7 here in the US. What a different experience, even though the tools a similar. Both use air. Both have temp probes, but with the Nano 7, you select a profile, and the machine simply hits those temps and times. This means that I’m watching and smelling the beans the whole time. My only action is to log 1st crack. I’ve found that I can change the level at the end to keep the development phase going or cut it short. By contrast, you look like you’re trying to drive a car blindfolded with the passenger saying “a little to the left, too much, now turn right, more right!” Having good software and a PID control makes all the difference. Instead of distracting the roaster, it does the mechanical bits, while the roaster focuses on the coffee color, sounds, and smell. I’m looking forward to applying your techniques to build my custom profiles. This little roaster is a joy to use!
Hi Jon. Yep, even professional, world champion coffee roasters are using automated roasters. This roaster was used for competitions. www.stronghold-technology.com/product/s7x. These are nice for production roasting . Have fun creating profile and learning how they influence the cup.
Yes! Kaffelogic is also used competitively. I just had a big win. I had done a roast with a stock profile that was close. I noted the times for color change, first crack, and I targeted 20% development. The log showed too much heat early. I reduced the early temperature, and created a smooth curve that set those temps at my desired times. Lo and behold, the beans responded exactly as predicted and the early temperature spike was eliminated. I roasted two additional batches and they matched perfectly. I’m amazed that after one trial roast (with a good initial stock profile) that I could hit the bullseye. Now, future tweaks with that bean can be to optimize taste. I can hardly wait for it to finish its rest period!
Great video....my sr800 has a 12inch Razzo extension tube with the port for the bean temp prob...I use Artisan with two probes. The chaff collector has the mod to allow for increased are flow and more room for chaff. I almost always roast 225 g of green beans. I have used Artisan alarms to automate events. I heatup the sr800 to a charge temp of 310 degrees then I drop in the beans and the timer resets to 0 minutes as soon as the bean probe drops to 290 degrees...takes about 3 seconds... turning point is almost always at 140 degrees. With settings at 9 and 1 it progresses to dry end after 4:30. Once I see the beans fully turn yellow I mark dry end without watching for a specific temp. At dry end I start watching ROR and make air flow and bean temp changes to try to keep the ROR close to 20 degrees per minute. It with the Artisan estimated time for first crack to try to get it at about 9 minutes. I prefer city+ for all my roasts. I hope to get 40...40...20 percentages but that rarely happens. Sometimes 35...40...25. Sometimes 35 ...50...15 Weight loss can be 13 to 20 percent. As you said in the video, there can be a dramatic ROR drop right after first crack begins and that drop is hard to prepare for or recover from. One commenter said to just do one of your roasts without looking at the Artisan while roasting then when you finish check it out and see what Artisan shows you that might benefit your future roasts. I think that is a great idea and one that I will be doing all the way to the end on my next roast. What is great is my daughter likes the decaf I roast for her and my son likes the coffee I roast for him. I am the only coffee drinker in my home so to use 600+ grams of roasted beans a week I do Drink Coffee Any Time of the Day
Thanks for sharing. I'm curious how those phase percentages influenced the cup? I too am going to roast like i usually do with the fresh roast without looking at the graph and then see what happens. That will be a real interesting. with a 20% weight loss it sounds like you are going pretty dark. Isn't is great to be able to roast for others and see them enjoy the coffee you crafted?
Today i did 3 roasts. The first one I used the procedure recommended by Ken, the maker of the Razzo extension tube without relying on Artisan and just watching the beans. After completing the roast a reviewed tha Artisan chart. I would say that his procedure gave a pretty decent ROR...the next two roasts I did relying on Artisn to guide me through the Roast. One the first I tried to use heat adjustments primarily on the second I primarily used air flow to control ROR.1 My weight losses were about 13 percent for all roasts. I prefer using Artisan but it certainly is not necessary... BTW...I put SSP burrs in my Caedo 37s Grinder so when I get them fully seasoned I hope to see some benefit to the taste of my espresso which I Drink Any Time of the Day
I'm a first-time coffee roaster. I didn't start getting great coffee until I started using artisan. Now I would never imagine using a fresh roaster without it. It can heat up and crash easier than a drum roster. So artisan really helps me understand if my RoR is even remotely in the right area. No the graph isn't perfect, but it's not hard to get close. When I'm roasting I just check the bean temp and calculate the RoR needed to get through that phase in the desired time. It's easy math to do in your head so I just keep updating based on how the beans are taking shape. Assume you want a 5 min dry, 3 min maillard,
Just looking into artisans designer mode thanks to another comment here. Seems like a great way to do what I explained about visually so you don't have to do the math in your head!
Hi Nick, thanks for watching and your comments. Yes, you know I'm a fan of roasting phases. I love the example you gave for your target temperatures and understand your concept. I use this similar method BUT rather than temperature targets, I am focusing on event targets. The temperature targets change based on the type of bean, style of roast and the mass size of beans you are roasting. If you are always roasting a similar type bean in the same roaster, temperature would be similar as well as the event times (dry end, first crack, drop). I like your approach with the ROR range for each of the phases, very cool. As far as the fan and bean movement goes for consistency, a couple of others have suggested the same thing and that is a great idea, making perfect sense. I would love to see one of your Artisan Roasts. If you want to send it to me go to my channel homepage here on YT and then look for the "about" tab/link and scroll down the page to email me the graph. Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it. Lastly the designer tool is helpful to create and then use as a background BUT it is really important to set it up like the roaster behaves. In the beginning the ROR skyrockets off the page and then before dry end starts to plummet. This page link talks about designing based on your roaster behavior - artisan-scope.org/docs/designer/ . Feel free to share your roast you created in the designer mode as well. Thanks!
I’m completely new to roasting and have an SR800 (no extension tube) and I LOVE artisan! I went into this a couple months ago with no idea how roasts should progress. Being able to see graphs and set targets for myself based on what people online are sharing has been supremely helpful. I baked some of my early roasts before Artisan because I had no idea I was going too slowly. Personally I have found a smooth RoR impossible to achieve, but since I’m new to all this, it doesn’t bother me. I’m roasting great coffee. Personally I just target times and temperatures (Artisan’s Designer mode is great for this) and iterate from there based on how it tastes afterwards. Also as someone who loves darker roasts, lots of the FreshRoast recipes I found online were targeting lighter roasts, which led to much disappointment for me. I definitely dropped some early roasts too soon for my tastes.
I had a very similar experience! Super easy to bake coffee in the freshroast. But artisan helps a ton! I got pretty good at anticipating what's going to happen if I do nothing or if I add heat/drop fan. So I kinda adjust things just before artisan shows it's needed. I've been able to smooth the graph out a lot! You have me very curious about designer mode. Gonna have to look into that!
Tyler, thanks for watching and for being a subscriber to my channel! I appreciate you sharing your experience roasting the the SR800. The designer mode is a great help to craft phase percentages and curves. Artisan-Scope website talks about making sure you create a profile that matches the behavior of your roaster. So, in the case of the Fresh Roast, the first half of the roast has an ROR that is through the roof and then likes to come crashing down. This is different than a drum roasting profile. I was watching this video, while focused on automation, still included helpful example of the designer th-cam.com/video/5OrrdhCTBPE/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for all movies on TH-cam. I learned a lot from them. In my country (Poland) its hard to find any information about roasting coffee, so i really appreciate Your work. My English is not very well, but thank God i understand most things you talking about on movies :)
Thank you for watching my videos Dawid. I am glad you are learning and able to understand me. I intentionally talk a little slower in my videos because many of my viewers are from other countries. Thank you for your encouraging words.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab i think that if You try to share your roasting experiences for example on Instagram, it will help You achieve more views, more subscribes. Anyway, I wish you more views and more subscribes :) im planning to buy Behmor 2020 SR ( 220 volt version of 2000ab) and im thinking about sharing my experiences on Instagram, i think its good to infect people with roasting passion :)
Instagram is a great platform to use. I am limited on time and want to be able to answer questions and help. Having different places for the conversation requires more time for me. I appreciate the suggestion and agree it is a great place to engage people with your content. Thanks for the suggestion.
Do you think the probe placement might have been and issue with the B/T at the end? I have the Razzo V5T and the B/T probe is through the chamber wall at about the center of the bean mass while roasting. It seems to give a fairly accurate B/T. I do believe what you say about trying to control the roast using the Artisan. I have my guide that I've used (basic fan/temp/time) and use Artisan to record the roast and mark events IE; fan/temp changes and dry/1st/2nd crack times. If a good roast outcome, I can use the graph as a background the try to duplicate by event timing. Also allows me to notice differences in environmental factors and bean suppliers. Overall a very informative video!
Hey Timothy, Thanks for your comment, for sharing your experience, and for watching my videos. i think that was my first attempt at using artisan with the Fresh Roast. There was so much going on I think I made the comment that "artisan was a distraction". I'm sure not having enough experience using Artisan with the Fresh Roast was a big factor in that statement. Since then I have spent more time working with the Fresh Roast and artisan. I believe Artisan can be helpful as I demonstrate this in my recent artisan/fresh roast video here th-cam.com/video/J3GEK9ydJr4/w-d-xo.html One of the takeaways from that video was the use of the natural curve. I didn't make any adjustments to the fan or heat after dry end. Finding the right combination of heat and air after dry, seems to be important. I have had others mention my bean placement as well. I appreciate your comments and I'm glad you are having great results with your placement being in the bean mass. I use these probes for other roasters as well so I am a little limited to the length of that probe. Honsetly, I'm happy with my probe placement, I think. It could be a little lower BUT I still don't think I want it to go into the bean mass. The closer the probe gets to the hot air, the more the air temperature will influence the roaster. For me, I think the BT helps me see trends BUT I'm not sure it is possible to get a true bean temperature from an air roaster like the Fresh Roast. Just for reference, the probe placement was kind of a strategic choice, as mentioned here at 2:20 - 4:15 and I reference the IKAWA method. I think the biggest challenge is controlling the rate of rise in the Fresh Roast is because of the incremental, dial steps for fan and heat. I wish these steps were less impactful (more granular). Changing my heat one step should not cause my ROR to crash.... There are a few genius electrical people who have hooked the Fresh Roast up to a PID system and it is a game changer. Let's hope that someday, the Fresh Roast or some other air roaster manufacturer brings an affordable feature to the home roaster community.... currently, the LINK and Kaffelogic Nano are the only PID air roasters but they are expensive.
I have 2 sr540s and have been roasting for 3 years now. I do not use any software but I do use a temperature meter. What you call exhaust I call intake. All I do is thread a exposed bead thermocouple in the slot of the chaff collector between the plastic and screen. I adjust temperature based on bean movement. I try not to have excessive bean movement just a gentle flow. I also like to add a little heat at the beginning of first crack buy easing into first crack so as to need a little boost. My temperature is only a guide and varies but I do not like the machine temp to be over 465 and the exhaust over 410 at the end of roast. A kilowatt meter is helpful to make sure your circuit has enough power and to understand how to use circuit fluctuations. I get great results and I am my own harshest critic, along with my wife, and or close coffee lover’s family and friends say the coffee I roast is the best they ever tasted. I know technically I could probably do better but by using all your senses you can roast consistently great coffee on the sr540. My suggestion is to hook up the software and roast a roast like you were without it and do not look at the graph until the roast is complete. You may learn something from that. The only way to know if a roast is good is if it taste good. I love your channel and your passion. Your sincerity truly shines and your content is of great help to everyone that watches. Thank you!
Hello Robert, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the thermocouple placement. Very interesting. I have had others talk about the fan speed and bean movement. My concern, especially during the drying phase, is the lower fan speed will cause even higher temps and my dry time will be 3 minutes or less. Is that your experience? Yea, I did call it the exhaust (I come from the drum roasting sided) but it is known as the inlet temperature by Ikawa I think. I forgot to mention that in my video. I have put my roaster to the kilowatt test and it is slightly low while I roast. My house was build in the 60's. You are right, the taste is the bottom line. I plan to roast with Artisan hooked up yet not referencing it until after the roast. That should be an eye opener! Thanks for your comments and kind words Robert. I'm glad my videos seem to help other home coffee roasters. This whole TH-cam thing has been a really interesting journey.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab Hi Mike. I start with f9 p1 and that gets me through drying phase. The thermocouple allows me to monitor rate of rise and as it slows down it lets me know my temperature stability. I have an outlet I use that is the closest to the breaker box and does not drop as much under load. As the beans brown and dry and get lighter in weight that’s when I decide which controls to use for temperature control. I find if airflow is restricted to much it inhibits first crack and on the other hand if the beans are really moving I feel I could lose to much moisture to quick so I settled on my gentle movement technique and adjust from there. I roast mainly on the darker side of medium up until touching or just getting into second crack and experiment lighter or darker depending on the results. Roasts usually end in 9-12 minutes. I like washed Central and South Americans the best along with washed Ethiopians and have experimented with lots if not all other regions and varieties. I would love to expand on my roasting experience by trying different roasters and techniques but for now as long as I am happy with the results I am getting I feel content. I do have a razzo 9” extension tube ordered and should be here any day so that will be interesting. I am interested in your results from a blind roast graph. Thanks again for all your time and contributions to the home roasting community.
When I started roasting, many years ago, I had one of the first Fresh Roast devices. I had no idea what I was doing and managed to make some decent coffee. Eventually it seemed like too much effort to roast a small amount of coffee but not before I wore that Fresh Roast out. I went several years without roasting. I believe around 2014 I got a SR500 as a gift. I had seen my dad's Hot Top and never could spend the money on one, so I started roasting on the SR500. I am able to get a more even roast by picking up the unit as it is running and tilt it around in a circle to create more stirring of the beans. It always seems like the fan is not powerful enough until the beans start to swell. I eventually got my dad's Hot Top and roasted on it for a couple years. It's an older model and has very little control of air and temperature. I considered getting the 1000 kit that allows it to be connected to Artisan But never have. I instead got a 5-pound drum roaster and started learning to roast using your and other videos. I love my drum roaster but i need a smaller test roaster. In order to get really good coffee i need to roast at least 3 pounds at a time in the drum roaster. I am considering getting the Hot Top upgrade kit. I have seen some videos where the Hot Top performs very good. 1000 dollars buys a lot of green coffee so it might be better to just keep roasting 3-pound batches in the drum roaster until I get the desired finish. Thank you for all the excellent videos
Hi Ron, thanks for watching. That sounds like a lot of money just to be able to connect to artisan. Will the upgrade allow you to control the roaster with the software? You Still selling your coffee?
Thanks Mike for a very informative video. I do not have a Fresh Roast roaster, nor do I have or have ever used Artisan. But there is one way in which this video has been very encouraging to me. When I got my Bullet roaster, I knew that a lot of people use it with RoasTime, a logging and control application running on a personal computer (much akin to Artisan). But something told me to start my Bullet learning by using manual mode without any software, so I am doing that. I always wonder if not running software had or is hindering me somehow from knowing how to control and use The Bullet. Earlier on in my Bullet roasting, I used some external aids to help me roast (like timers and other apps), but I noticed they didn't help me much and made it seem like more work for me to do to get a good roast. In short, they were distracting. Just like you found and showed us, adding more stuff to keep track of and do can actually make roasting more difficult. In my case, I was learning how Bullet controls affected roasting and how to use them to achieve a desired change in roasting, PLUS I was learning how to use the external timers and apps to help me know when I needed to make roasting changes. In your case, you were learning what the temperature probes might be telling you about how the beans were roasting (since probe temperatures were totally different from your drum roaster), AND you were learning how to read Artisan's temperature/time curves (which were also totally different than those of a drum roaster). In both our cases, we were trying to do TWO new things at the same time, which was difficult and distracting. (I have now stopped using external aids). Do I think software for roasting is bad or wrong? Absolutely NOT!! What I do think for me at least, is I need to learn one thing fairly well before I introduce an additional learning curve. Could I suggest that what may have been good for you in your first use of Artisan would have been to use Artisan solely for recording data the first few times, and not for making ANY decisions. Start Artisan, turn the screen around, and do a Fresh Roast roast like you have done before that got you successful results. When the roast completes, then turn your screen around and look at what was recorded. Then, maybe, you can make some associations between what data looks like for good results. I can't help but compare this to my whole learning experience on the Behmor, where I had to try different things until I got a good roast, then saw how the time/temperature looked that achieved that. Thanks again Mike.
Great comments and suggestions Lou. Agreed, too many things going on at the same time. I will roast like I always do and see what artisan has to say after I finish the roast. I have a feeling, based on some viewer comments who experiment with my roast event times, the graph will be really bad. But, like I said in my video, I get really good results manually roasting on the fresh roast. Are you still roasting totally manual and not using the software on the bullet?
@@VirtualCoffeeLab Yes, I still roast manually. But I am thinking there will not be a lot of difference in roast control when I start using software - I either push buttons on the control panel, or I press them on the keyboard. One advantage to using the software will be not having to remember to record temperatures (verbally into an audio recorder) and then later construct a graph. That is a huge advantage to me since then I can just do roast control things. Another big advantage is being able to see projected (calculated future) temperatures with the current ROR. (I think I can do that with RoasTime, but not sure). So using the software would make things easier for me. A minor advantage for me in using RoasTime is to playing back and exactly replicate a previous roast. I call it a minor advantage since I haven't gotten to the stage where the same coffee is consistently available, and I am "grooved" into a consistent roasting control. Automatic playback is possible since The Bullet allows the software to change any of the settings (heating level, fan speed, and drum speed) in real time as the roast progresses. But it is simply a time-based playback of control settings. I'm pretty sure the software cannot be programmed to make decisions on changes based on other parametric data like ROR or even temperature - it's only time-based.
@@luigicollins3954 one of these days we will roast together Lou. Life has been crazy for me lately but we will connect. I would love to see you roast some coffee on the bullet.
I have an SR800 with a Razzo mod chaff collector. I started with the OEM Extension and have since purchased a Razzo v5 roasting chamber. I've been roasting using Artisan for some time now. I have the Phidget 1101_1 4X with BT & ET k-probes. There's a few quick things we can change to help your roasts with Artisan, & there's a few settings you'll need to change. I'd be very happy to help.
Scott, could you share them here for others to read? Or, if you want to email, you can go to my youtube homepage and click on the "About" tab/link and then scroll down to the "email me" button/form. Thanks for watching and sharing!
Your post @scottOlsonoulson caused me to anticipate further replies in this thread as you seem to grasp how to roast good coffee with the spoken components. I just started working with Artisan and Phidgets and am open to ideas. I hope you read this and are able to enlighten the community.
Old school SR500 roaster here purely going by look, sound and smell. Just learning about Artisan, extension tubes and the changes in SR540/800. I was thinking the same thing as you said it, does all this extra complexity REALLY help roast better coffee? More granularity and data for sure but unless doing this at scale does it really help or even matter? I may grab a Razzo tube but not sure I need Artisan or an updated SR model. Analog low/med/high heat + rotary fan control works great! What am I missing?
Thanks for watching @PiquedFlow . I think your spot on. I've roasted some great coffee on the FreshRoast without data hookup. Data is helpful in context with what you are seeing, smelling and hearing. It is almost impossible to get a nice ROR throughout the roast. At times it is almost distracting. See my more recent FreshRoast video where I use artisan to help me roast a PNG coffee.
Interesting video. I was thinking an SR540 or 800 looks like more fun than my Link - there needs to be some fun in roasting and the Link is not it. Anyway, it appeared in this video you were trying to draw a graph using the controls on the roaster verse roasting the coffee, which may be why you said Artisan may be more of a distraction and I can see that. I don’t quite understand why the probe you labeled as the bean temp was not actually in contract with the beans, but was more of an environmental temp. Were you just using the ET as a proxy for BT? I don’t quite understand. Another excellent video. I like how you narrate over the actual roast and explain what you are doing.
Thanks for your comment Edward. This was my experience when I first began to use Artisan with the Fresh Roast. Since then, I have had more experiences using the two together and while it can be a distraction, I do find it helpful to monitor the roast progression. I think the temperatures I am seeing in Artisan are more helpful than the standard "fresh roast display temps". Now the probe placement. Both the LINK and IKAWA have a bean probe that is not down in the bean mass. On the IKAWA the bean probe is at the top of the roasting chamber while the LINK is close to the top of the bean mass. I don't want direct hot air influencing my probe in the fresh roast. Testing different positions, i realized the closer I put the probe near the beans, the the more the BT temperature looked like the ET temperature in Artisan. I landed on the position I am currently using because it seems to perform similar to my drum roaster. I was getting the hot air temp which would give me a great visual of my "power", while the BT line I get correlates well with the actual bean temps I am used to working with in my drum roaster. It might not be the right way, but I am happy with how it displays. I have had others question me about this and I completely understand why it might raise an eyebrow.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab I thought it was pretty ingenious of you to place a probe right at exhaust outlet at the bottom. In the Link with 100 g batches the temperature probe sits in around the bean mass from what I can tell once the beans get a little lighter.
Oh my, where do I begin? I use a SR800 with the Razzo extension tube ,,I’ve been getting pretty consistency ROR on my graphs, of course they do change with different kinds of coffees,,,I’ve probably roasted 10- 15 different kinds since I got the machine over a year ago…I’ve zeroed into the following roast parameters. I read my bean temp with the thermocouple placed in the Razzo hole,which is in the first quarter height of the tube, putting it right in the middle of the bean mass. I start by preheating the chamber to 345f,,my settings are at fan 7, heat 8. Once I reach the charge temp , I remove the chaff collector and add my charge(215g) At 4 min I’m just past the yellow stage and temp is around 360 F. At 5:30 min I change my settings to 6-8,,,dropping my fan, as beans are really jumping around , At 7 min,,,I’m at 407F and close to first crack, At 8 min I drop my fan to 6 again to slow bean movement , dropping heat to 7 ,bean temp is now at 418F,,,I try to slow down the heat now. I now go another min or min and one half to 9:30 min total time. At 6 fan 7 heat 423 f drop temp,,9 to 9.30 min total This was a Oaxaca Mexico Cepco coffee bean 16% loss I think the SR800 had some improvements on its heat processor and controls over the earlier models Hope this helps… I’ve never tried such a low heat setting as 1 or two,,,I’m afraid it would take ten min or more to reach yellow stage ,,,and my machine is pretty powerful,,,have to be careful with the fan speed or the beans would jump up into the chaff collector.. Thanks your your videos,,,we all learn from them Ken
Hi Ken. Yours and my profiles are really similar except for a couple of things. I too roast around 215g/batch to end up with around 180 g (3) 60 g doses. Times and temps seem pretty similar, except I've never preheated the chamber before adding the beans. Instructions and other videos never mention doing this, though I do know other types of roasters always include this. This might be why your drop temp is around 25-35° lower than mine. Can you give me some insight on your experience roasting this way, maybe how you came up on this and the differences you see using a pre-heat vs not preheating. Thanks.
@@jlantz3691How and where are you measuring your temp? I saw a video that said it was good to do a preheat,,,I really haven’t done any without the preheat,,but will try one next time,,,I didn’t think it really does much as it heats up so fast anyway ,Are you using a Razzo extension tube also? I do rotate the chamber slowly during the first 4 minutes Happy Roasting
@@kensafranek2306 I'm just using the readout on the unit for my temps. I figure if I'm using the same baseline, I can make changes and be pretty clear on how those changes are affecting the roast process. I do have an ext tube (not Razzo), and have the Razzo chaff collector mod. I think what you said about the chamber heating up quickly is why the 800 instructions and vids I've seen don't include preheating the chamber. I typically roast 217 g of green beans to get 180 g of finished product at 15-16% shrinkage. This gives me (3) 60-gram doses. I start out at 9/1 fan/heat, and go from there. One 'rule of thumb' I've found is that 1 unit of fan is equal to 2 units of heat, as far as temp readings go. My "average" temps (per minute) for a roast are: 290° (1minute in), 315, 340, 360, 380, 400, 420, 440, 460 on a 9:30 roast. Dry phase ends around 4:15 (45% of 9:30), Browning phase (35%) ends (at FC) around 7:35. FC is usually around 430°. Development (20%) ends at 9:30 (460 +/-). This delivers a City+ roast level. Obviously this isn't exact for all roasts, but it's surprisingly close. Peaberry beans kind of throw a wrench into it, and I pretty much only use 'Washed' process beans. I favor Central and S. American origins, with an Indonesian thrown in once in a while. Truly have been getting good, consistent roasts with this set-up for > 4 months. I've been roasting for 1 1/2 years.
@@jlantz3691 Sounds like you have things under control My units temp consistently runs higher than the bean temp due to where the internal sensor is located within the base
@@kensafranek2306 I see. Again, as long as you are using the same source, temps are relative and any any adjustments you make will be reflected in that temperature reading. While temps at the bean mass may be ideal, I would assume that those temps would be relative to the temp readings elsewhere, all else being equal.
Hi Ken, Yea, I've heard that. I think my electrical current is a little lower. That might make the difference. I was roasting 170 grams on this video. Further into the roast as the coffee dried the beans were jumping up pretty close. Another factor is I have not modified my chaff collector like many have with the extension tube. Do you think having more restriction of air at the chaff collector like I do might reduce the amount of bean movement?
When I start on f9 my beans barely move also that’s why you really can not compare settings and should just try to compare by using descriptive terms. I have 2 st540s and the fan and power do not respond the same on the same circuit at the same time and the temperature readouts are not the same so trying to compare settings is not the way to communicate.
Also, I did measure the bean temp vs the chaff chamber air exiting temperatures. After first minute, these numbers track in parallel on the roast curve with the chaff temp being about 30 F lower than the bean temperature. It seems there is some loss of heat or my probe in the bean pile is reading too high (maybe cuz it is closer to the hottest air that enters near the bottom of the tube?). Bottomline, my bean temps make sense based on common experiences in other roasting vessels so I opted to go with the direct bean temp measurement.
Thanks for sharing your temperature experiences with the fresh roast John. Yes, I think you are right. The probe low in the bean mass seems to be skewed because the hot air from the inlet is affecting the probe readings. I’m thinking the very top of the bean mass might be more accurate. Regardless, they are just reference points. Sight, smell and sound are primary tools with the fresh roast.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab thanks for the reply! Basically, I agree Artisan can be distracting but it has some advantages when roasting decaf (which is mostly what I do). Many decafs are already dark when you start so you cannot rely on color at all to judge where the roast is. But smell still works and temperature of the beans. That is why I opted to place the probe into the bean mass. I use the probes with thin fiberglass sheathing and just drape them over the edge of the glass. I tape them on a SS tube so that the weight keeps the probe from bouncing around. I do put the probe high in the bean mass. I get proper temperatures for dry end (320 F) and first crack (390-410 F). Also, I did get very smoothly declining ROR after I figured out that I need to not touch the fan and heat settings upon approaching first crack. The fan setting change will cause a huge roller coaster in particular. I use ET probe like yours (again, draped over edge but threaded down below the air feed plate) and get my ET to the right spot about 30 seconds before FC and it is smoothly declining therafter. Your video on using environmental temperature info to control the roast is spot on and is the way to get a smoother ROR for the Fresh Roast near the end of the run in my opinion. Thanks for the videos - I have learned a ton very quickly from your channel and a few others (shout to Dave at the Captain's Coffee in particular).
Great information John. Can you send me a pic of what the probe please. If you go to my youtube channel homepage, look for the "ABOUT" button alongside the other menu items like videos, live, playlinst, community, etc.. and email it to me? That would be great. I get the decaf color issue. I'm glad my exhaust temp video was helpful. How are you managing your heat and fan from charge till first crack and what is your total roast time?
I will send you some photos. I start at Fan 9 and Heat 1 and assess bean mixing and quickly adjust fan speed down. Went down to 7 almost immediately, then to 6 at 1:30 and then 5 at 1:45. I hit dry end of 314 at 2:50. Heat went from 1 to 2 at 2:30, then 4 at 3:30. From 3.5 minutes onward I did not touch anything. ET stablized at 460 F in about 30 seconds after that last heat adjustment and with only a small wiggle in ROR due to that heat change. First crack (FC) was at 6 minutes and 400 F. ROR was 14 F/min at FC and was down to 1 F/min at drop (7:48). This run could be improved ... I need to heat the beans up quicker and build more momentum ... there seem to be a little flick right at the end of the run. I think getting ET to 480 F earlier and then lowering heat right before FC one setting would have avoided the flick. Taste was very bright and enjoyable in the cup, even with the small flick. I will send the Artisan roast curve to you as well. I can send all the bad ones too ... where I struggled much more so than you did ... but I will not waste your time. In the end, my conclusion is that I was just touching the Fan and Heat knobs too often and going up and down. I now try to move in one direction at a time ... hotter and hotter until right before first crack when I now will start dropping the heat a tad ... I am still perfecting that timing and ramp down in the heat button. I stay away from adusting the fan at the end since it causes a larger change to the ROR.
Outstanding John. Got your email with photos. I meant to ask how much Colombian coffee you are roasting per batch in the Fresh Roast? Looking at the profile you sent, you accomplished what I was trying to do. Great job. I would experiment with the height of your bean probe but honestly, it doesn't matter at this point. I would be interested to see your result with the increased power you were talking about earlier in the roast. In your email, you sent me the same profile twice (duplicate). You could also experiment with the timing of the middle phase. Maybe that increase in the power like you are thinking will shorten that phase just a little. I wonder ifmight notice a change in the cup doint that. The Behmor hack is interesting. How did you drill that hole? Got a machine shop in the garage? hehe. Thank you very much for sharing. I will give this a try and see if I can replicate the declining ROR.
Hi Jake. Thanks for watching and for your comment. I'll be glad to share my artisan .aset file. I have supplied the links to the hardware you will need and in my video I do share where you select your device you are using. In the video you can see how my wiring is attached to the phidget. When you download the .aset file, place it wherever you want to keep it. I chose to place it where all of my .alog files are saved. Once you turn on artisan, go to help/load settings and select the .aset file. You may need or want to make some tweeks to some of the settings. I'll try and upload that to my "extras" page on my buymeacoffee.com/VirtualCoffeeLab/extras website. I won't be able to provide artisan support. Their website has the documentation you need to make adjustments.
oh, you will likely need the Phidget driver installed if you haven't done that yet. I was trying to double check the file i was about to upload and I can't do it on my computer at work because it doesn't have the phidget driver. I'll have to double check the file tonight and try to get it uploaded.
The ROR curve is the measure of slope (derivative) of the temperature curve. It picks up on variations of temperature. The temperature graph is trending fairly well if you were to fit a curve through the data-points. Is roasting quality really that sensitive to tiny shifts in temperature? If not, I think ROR curve isn't very useful. A smooth ROR really suggests an expensive roaster, with a sophisticated feedback system. Slight variations in the roast quality in home roasting is expected. It is like driving on a asphalt road with tiny bumps. I am going to follow up on my message with some physics: The relationship between heat (q) stored within a _uniform_ volume (here the coffee beans) and temperature (dT) as follows: q = m C dT q: the amount heat stored in the beans (proportional to increase in the heat released by the source) m: mass of the beans C: beans specific heat capacity(how much heat they can store) dT: is the change in temperature for SR800 we have q = m1 C dT_1 for a commercial large capacity unit we have (assuming equal amount of heat) q = m2 C dT_2 where m2 >> m1 given equal amount of heat released by the sources we have the following m1 dT_1 = m2 dT_2 considering that m2 is much larger than m1, dT_2 is lot a less sensitive to the noise and incremental changes in the amount of heat generate from the source as compared to dT_1. This translates into a much higher sensitivity of the SR800 temperature to changes in the generated heat when compared to the a commercial large volume roaster. As such the ROR curve will be all over the place for SR800.
Thanks for your comment Martin. Agreed. The small roasting environment, small bean mass, and the incremental heat source all add to a descending ROR that will not look pretty. And you are right, most home roasters do expect this.
Ok Mike, me again :). I thought long on this and ended up purchasing an SR800 with an extension tube with the thought of integrating Artisan. I’ve watched another video on this but I like your dual setup… but one thing you said puzzled me. I’m only at 4:39 of the video so perhaps the answer comes later but… The long temp going all the way down is your exhaust? I’m confused… if I understand it correctly, that’s the air that will be going into the beans and in theory won’t it be cooler as it leaves the chamber? Ie. Wouldn’t you raise the longer one up a bit to get true bean temp and then use the shorter one at the top to get true exhaust temp?
Hmm, I just finished the video… maybe that’s not a good thing to try and implement? I’ll have to go through the comments and see what others are saying.
Read question. Air roasters are different than drum roasters. They generate and blow out hot air at the very base of the beam mass. This is the hottest point and is called the inlet temperature. When I roast using my drum, my hottest temperature is my exhaust temperature. The exhaust temperature is almost always higher than the beam temperature. This is one reason why I have my exhaust temperature probe all the way down poking into the inlet where the hottest point is. The beam probe is the shorter probe on my roaster, set up for the freshroast. It probably could be a little longer so that it was touching the beans when the beans are moving around. Probably halfway down the tube. Realistically, hot air is blowing through the beans and reading an accurate bean mass. That’s the nature of hot air roasting. IKAWA placed their bean probe above the bean mass. Watch the IKAWA videos and you will see what I mean. I realize that many freshroast people are doing it differently. You should experiment and decide what works best for you. You’ll notice that in many of my roasting videos with the drum. I’m talking about exhaust temperature because it helps me understand what’s going on in my roasting environment Temperature wise. To me, that inlet temperature for the freshroast is a real eye-opener. When I make temperature changes on the dial, I am mediately see the response on that red line and that is all due to the probe being placed just inside the little holes at the bottom of the roaster where the heat is coming out.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab ah, I’m following you now. That’s interesting, I would have thought that exhaust temp was lower due to absorption by the bean mass. A lot of good info in the comments, I’ll have to play around with it and find a good group to join.
For those diy'ers you can get artisan for about $25. That's assuming you already have a raspberry pi. All you need is a generic thermocouple ($10) and an adafruit max31855 ($15). Hook those up to the rpi and run artisan directly on the rpi. You just need to write a little python script to pull in the data. I don't use any smoothing so my curve is noisy as hell, but it doesn't bother me.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab hey I'm not sure what the control button is. But I'm just using the prog feature in the device assignment settings to call a python script that's written to the rpi storage. I'm definitely not an engineer. I found some threads on people doing this exact thing. That got me 80% there. But I did have to write my own python script. It took a couple days to figure it out. It was my first time writing any code. I'm happy to share it with anyone interested.
Nick, I am definitely interested in trying this. I'm kind of slammed but maybe this winter we can connect. My son is a programmer so it shouldn't be too difficult. I know he has a raspberry pi. The standard artisan download comes with a feature, when checked, allows capable roasters to connect with artisan and control temp and fan to the buttons in artisan. So, if you change the fan from a 6 to an 8, artisan controls the roaster. The "control" button appears in the upper right corner of artisan when this feature is turned on. I have not used it but people with roasters like the hottop do ...... i think. I would love to see a pic of your artisan profile using the rasberry pi.
ROR? Artisan looks pretty complicated to use. Does it require you to physically modify the roaster? I’m not very handy. And does it work on iOS? If not, it’s off the list.
Hello, I'm new to roasting and would like to track my heater temp but not use it as my Exhaust Temp? I read somewhere that the phidget uses the 0 connectors for BT and 1 connector for exhaust, I could not see how they are connected and would the exhaust temp normally be lower then the BT? Not sure if you have to make changes in Artisan to compensate? I'm probably missing something.
Hello Harry. If we are talking drum roasting, traditionally the exhaust temp is higher. On an air roaster you can go either way. I think it doesn’t matter which one is connected to the 0 or the one because artisan allows you to switch them within the settings. I would recommend you connect a probe to the 0 and then turn on artisan and see which temp is registering. Then the rest is up to you. Back to the air roasting settings, some news, the inlet temperature, as they’re bean temperature, and then place another probe higher in the bean mass for the exhaust. A real bean temperature isn’t possible, because the hot air is blowing through the bean mass. And I like what Ikawa did, and that is using the inlet temperature as the exhaust and then placing another probe above the bean mass and using that as the B in temperature. Check out my Ikawa videos and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The exhaust temperature is normally higher than the bean temperature in the drum roasting world. The red line represents the exhaust temperature and normally runs along the top of the graph. Let me know if you have other questions about this. Thanks for watching!
@@VirtualCoffeeLab I seen the swap option so easy switch, I did connect one to "0" and it showed as BT (Might be as simple as 1 probe = BT), I could move it to 2 or 3 to see what it does as a test. What I was thinking was the probe in the air without the bean mass around it has to be faster swings and higher peaks? I need to get my exhaust done and start using Artisan, can't wait to stop manually charting my roast data.
I explain my reasoning to use the longer probe that is at the bottom for my exhaust temp. Start watching at the 2:03 mark and you can decide if you want to go that route or another way.
Every week Steve. I’m doing at least 5 roasts Per week on the drum roaster. I plan on showing more drum roasting videos (if that is what you meant) but needed to see my promise to my series on roasting temps. I’ve got a big roasting job coming up. Remember the non profit that asked my son and I to roast bags of coffee they were giving to donors last fall? Same group asked us to do it again and it will be twice the volume. We’re planning on buying a large 60kg bag! Thanks for your comment Steve. Any particular topic you are interested in?
Maybe someone else has already asked this in the comments, but why don't you do the opposite? (attached the probes, but don't look at the screen, do your thing that you get a good result with and later have a look at the graph to see "what you did basically" ?
Thanks for your message. I have roasted with probes in and not paying attention to artisan. The result is large changes to the ROR because of the large steps each fan or heat setting. Ideally, the FreshRoast needs half steps (smaller changes when going from one number to the next. As far as taste goes, I’ve roasted some very good coffee with these swings. I think that is what you are getting at.
In general, I think your fan speed was too high, and your power too low. I would start with power at 7 or 8 and drop the fan speed when I want the temp to rise. Use the fan to control heat in general.
Hi Scott, thanks for watching and your comments. Your suggestion is another method of heat management when using an air roaster. When you use this method, what is the roast level you are aiming for. Are you referencing the FR temperature? Are you using Artisan? Also, I'm curious what your event times look like using the power level of 7 or 8 from the beginning of the roast. I will try this on my unit. Are you using a 540 or an 800. What about an extension tube? Last, what is your batch size. Thanks again for sharing. Your responses will help me when I try your method. Thanks.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab SR800 no extension tube. Using artisan. One thermocouple down right into the beans, but not near the heat of the base. I'm currently roasting 6 oz of an Ethiopian natural, so I'm dropping at the end of first crack to bring out the source flavors. Fan high at start to prevent scorching fan=9 power=8. At 1-2min, Fan 8 power 7. Pretty steep temp rise at first and into Millard at fan=7 power=7, but at 4 min I'm at fan=6 power=7 to prevent stalling as I head into first crack. After first crack around 5-6 min I level it off fan 7 power 7 until end of first crack at 7min and into cooling.
Why can't green coffee bean producers or retailers provide 1st, 2nd crack temps and detailed roasting notes. I don't think it would cost them much. Someone who does that will sell more beans than who doesn't. At this moment roasting coffee is more of an art than science. Unpredictable and subjective.
They aren't able to determine that. There are several variables including the type of roasting equipment, the profile (how much heat is being applied to the bean), moisture loss the bean goes through because of age, and other reasons why first crack can happen at different times with the same coffee bean. Coffee is somewhat of an art because we can "craft" the coffee to taste differently based on how we roast it :-)
Once again I will opinionate before gaining any experience, but bear with me please. I've done just a half dozen sensory roasts with my new 540, and letting your earlier videos be my guide I have gotten what seem to be great results, just twisting the knob at about the times that you have and just making small adjustments to try to get your phase times. With your level of skill, you don't NEED Artisan, and I see where it is (or was) at least mostly a distraction. What it certainly does, though, is give you a record of the numbers that arose as you roasted, but perhaps NOTHING more. As Artisan cannot control the 540, it can't manage anything, and in fact you remain responsible. The 540 Artisan should give you some (perhaps for YOUR purposes useless) information about the roast, and give you one more (perhaps useless) understanding, besides color, scent, sound etc. It seems like being able to do that granular analysis of a roast (and ability to compare one roast to another) might make ME better sooner, and I have the hardware in the mail to give it a try. Seems though that letting the graphs as they generate be the boss is a bit cart before horse, so I'm guessing I'll use Artisan as more of a post event debrief tool, at least initially. Thanks for all you've done to demystify the roasting process, you have saved me from wandering the wilderness to having a fair sense of direction!
I'm glad my videos have helped and you have experienced great results. One thing Artisan can do is display your ROR as a number. Try to ignore the graph and reference the ROR number every 30 seconds to give you an idea of the pace of your roast. When roasting without Artisan, we would use color change, smell, and the pace of first crack to determine our roast momentum. Too fast and we get fireworks at first crack. Too slow and we end up crashing just after first crack begins and our crack session goes silent. I'm thankful my videos make sense and have pointed you in the right direction!
I think artisan is very useful with the Freshroast SR800. I roast to the darker end of medium for espresso and start out at a fan of 9 and heat of 1 and shoot for a dry end at about 3 minutes. After that, I hit increase the heat rapidly to power the roast through the browning phase and into development. I've abandoned the idea of the slowly descending ROR; it may work for drum roasters but I don't think it works with the Freshroast. I try and keep my ROR in the 25 to 35 range and that has given me some very good espresso. Thanks for trying the Freshroast and posting videos of your experiences.
Hi Alan. Thanks for your comments and watching my video. Very interesting. I am use to a ROR range of 30 on the high end with a drum roaster down to 5 during the end of my roast. It would make sense to have a higher ROR, especially to keep momentum through first crack and approaching second. Based on comments on this video so far, I feel much better about my lack of success with the ROR. Still enjoy the roaster, but to be honest, I 'm hoping someone will have figured out the ROR issue with this roaster and share. That would be exciting.
Kinda not surprised at Artisan being "overkill". I have the SR800 with ext tube, and have really been having consistently stellar roasts since employing your phase approach. I typically go for around a City+ roast level using ~ 9:30 total roasting time. Starting at 9/1 fan/heat, I adjust both to achieve around a 25°/minute temp rise on the unit's readout for the 1st 2-3 minutes, 20° until 1st crack, and then 10-15° until I end the roast. Dry phase ends at around 4:15 (45% of 9:30), FC at 7:35/430° (35% browning), with the roast ending at 9:30 (20% development). These times vary slightly depending on the bean (particularly peaberry), but it's always really close to this template. This'll typically gets me to 460-470° at finish. If you were ending at 425° or so, that explains your bland coffee. In my experience, if I end lower than 450 or so, the coffee is pretty lifeless. Painful lesson. I've found that using the temp readout throughout is very important. Just like following an Artisan ROR graph, I can follow how the roast is progressing. Where the probe is isn't an issue as long as it is the same roast-to-roast. This is what works for me, and has been surprisingly consistent. Thanks for what you do. Really makes me think.
I know temp readings vary greatly but 460 to 470 would be burned beyond recognition
@@Stevesbe Again, SR800 (not 540) with ext tube. Captains Coffee has vids on the Fresh Roast where David takes the temps to >500°. Weird.
Thanks for those details. Yep, following the phase approach and now worrying about the ror has been my approach with the freshroast with good results. I have not spent a lot of time relying on the dial temps but that makes sense to help you reach your target. No, not “makes sense”. That is really smart to do that. Nice work.
I want to address Steve’s comment on temps. I was equally surprised at the temps Steve. I’m gonna chalk it up to. Micro climate that is 100% convection heat transfer. That is not actually the bean temp. J Lantz takes his coffee to city plus with a ror at 20 degrees per minute at drop, which is high compared to a drum roaster, figuring the ET on a drum would be maybe 35-50 degrees different than the BT, that would put the beam temp on his coffee somewhere around 425 which is approaching second crack on my drum roaster. I’m not positive on this but it seems to maybe address the temp disparity.
Great conversation J and Steve
See my comments about temps on the fresh roast.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab Yep. Because in the end, the only things that matter are: 1.) Your process gets you the best tasting coffee for your palate, and 2.) You stringently document that process to consistently deliver it. If water boiled at 215°F instead of 212°, would it matter? No, we'd simply know that and go from there.
Righto, my 2c. "Roasting to make the graph look pretty" is definetly not the right way to get great coffee. But roasting in the absence of information is also harder than it should be, so use your logging as another sense or tool, but never go too far from the key ones that tell you what's going on - sight and smell. I'd strongly suggest not chasing the graph - as you saw, with a hot-air roaster and excessively granular settings, you will always be over-compensating in your adjustments, and it'll be all over the shop - in fact I'd go almost as far as saying turn off displaying the delta-BT as its way too distracting (and if you are going to have it on, change your scale so you can see it). What I would suggest is you do your "normal" roasting process, while capturing the data in Artisan, and going to town looking at the data and what it gives you, and how the new data you have could have been used to change what you did. You certainly won't get instantly better coffee with the data, but you may be able to use it as better guide to handle the normal roasts, and certainly also be then able to better reproduce the exceptional roasts you do.
Great suggestions Brett. Luigi also shared some similar constructive comments. I’ve been getting great results without artisan but wanted to give it a try and see what the fan and heat are really doing to the roast. So you are using the ET line only with Artisan. Are you using any other references. I will do some normal roasts using only my senses and a timer while recording the roast with artisan as you suggest. That should be really interesting 🧐
Hey Mike, I have an FR800 without the extension tube and I use artisan, however I put my 3mm diameter bean temp probe right in the middle of the bean mass instead of above and below. My experience has been literally exactly the same as yours. I also think it is impossible to get a smoothly declining ROR. The steps in fan speed and power setting are just too big. Last weekend my computer crashed during the drying phase and I had to wing it for the remainder and it came out great because I had my eyes and my nose glued to the beans. I have commented on your videos before about how difficult it is for me to split my attention between artisan and the beans and I think now you really understand my question. I think fluidized bed roasters are just more suited to being computer controlled like the Ikawa, and drum roasters are more suited to manual control. Thank you so much for posting your videos it is great to get some validations on my experiences.
Hi Matt. Thanks for your message. Yes, I remember you sharing about you being overwhelmed monitoring roast color and smell and then the ROR and now incompletely get your question from a few months back. I think the issue as you stated is with the steps in temperature change with one adjustment. There could be a combo increment like one click fan down and heat down one click but I haven’t spent enough time time experimenting. I’m glad you are getting good results focusing on your phase percentages. Thanks for the encouragement Matt.
I have my long probe in the bean mass for bean temp (not touching the bottom) and the short I use for air temp. It may be good to calibrate the probes and adjust the temperature in artisan. I find that using both delta BT and ET I can predict BT drops and spikes by watching the delta ET that changes before delta BT. That being said, I find roasting low density beans really hard with the sr800 as they just won't hold heat (possibly because there is no heat sink in the roaster, like there is in a drum?). I find not changing the fan after DE helps with a consistent ROR. Also, keeping a high fan makes a less dense bean mass and provides a BT that isn't accurate. When you keep changing the fan, you change the density of the bean mass, so you are getting artifacts in your BT/ROR and make adjustments that are too course. Kind of like overcorrecting a skid in a car....you end up in the ditch.
Lots of good information here Dr. Sober. The delta ET is something I do use but didn't pay attention to in this roast because I had my hands full with the knob and the ROR. I realize the Delta ET forecasts digitally well before the graph does so thanks for that reminder. You mentioned "NO HEATSINK" in the fresh roast. One way to look at this is the coffee itself is a heatsink. As we apply heat to the beans and the heat is transferred into the bean structure, it gets to a point where instead of soaking in the heat, it gives off heat (exothermic reaction/first crack). So while the bean mass is not moving much, there is bean-to-bean transfer of heat. More movement and less touching means less transfer. Good catch there Dr. Sober. That is really interesting. I knew that lower fan speed meant higher temperatures because the beans are blocking the air from escaping through the top of the roaster, increasing heat. BUT the bean-to-bean transfer is something I hadn't included in my roasting with the Fresh Roast. Truthfully I don't think we could ever get an accurate bean temp. Ikawa placed their probe above the mass. Why would they do that? (I think it was to simulate a temperature that is more closely related to the bean temp, not the hot air blowing in the beans. What do you think? Thanks for watching and for your comments!
We recently received our Kaffelogic Nano 7 here in the US. What a different experience, even though the tools a similar. Both use air. Both have temp probes, but with the Nano 7, you select a profile, and the machine simply hits those temps and times. This means that I’m watching and smelling the beans the whole time. My only action is to log 1st crack. I’ve found that I can change the level at the end to keep the development phase going or cut it short.
By contrast, you look like you’re trying to drive a car blindfolded with the passenger saying “a little to the left, too much, now turn right, more right!”
Having good software and a PID control makes all the difference. Instead of distracting the roaster, it does the mechanical bits, while the roaster focuses on the coffee color, sounds, and smell.
I’m looking forward to applying your techniques to build my custom profiles. This little roaster is a joy to use!
Hi Jon. Yep, even professional, world champion coffee roasters are using automated roasters. This roaster was used for competitions. www.stronghold-technology.com/product/s7x. These are nice for production roasting . Have fun creating profile and learning how they influence the cup.
Yes! Kaffelogic is also used competitively.
I just had a big win. I had done a roast with a stock profile that was close. I noted the times for color change, first crack, and I targeted 20% development. The log showed too much heat early. I reduced the early temperature, and created a smooth curve that set those temps at my desired times. Lo and behold, the beans responded exactly as predicted and the early temperature spike was eliminated. I roasted two additional batches and they matched perfectly.
I’m amazed that after one trial roast (with a good initial stock profile) that I could hit the bullseye. Now, future tweaks with that bean can be to optimize taste. I can hardly wait for it to finish its rest period!
Nice Job Jon!
Great video....my sr800 has a 12inch Razzo extension tube with the port for the bean temp prob...I use Artisan with two probes. The chaff collector has the mod to allow for increased are flow and more room for chaff. I almost always roast 225 g of green beans.
I have used Artisan alarms to automate events. I heatup the sr800 to a charge temp of 310 degrees then I drop in the beans and the timer resets to 0 minutes as soon as the bean probe drops to 290 degrees...takes about 3 seconds... turning point is almost always at 140 degrees. With settings at 9 and 1 it progresses to dry end after 4:30. Once I see the beans fully turn yellow I mark dry end without watching for a specific temp. At dry end I start watching ROR and make air flow and bean temp changes to try to keep the ROR close to 20 degrees per minute. It with the Artisan estimated time for first crack to try to get it at about 9 minutes.
I prefer city+ for all my roasts.
I hope to get 40...40...20 percentages but that rarely happens. Sometimes 35...40...25. Sometimes 35 ...50...15
Weight loss can be 13 to 20 percent.
As you said in the video, there can be a dramatic ROR drop right after first crack begins and that drop is hard to prepare for or recover from.
One commenter said to just do one of your roasts without looking at the Artisan while roasting then when you finish check it out and see what Artisan shows you that might benefit your future roasts. I think that is a great idea and one that I will be doing all the way to the end on my next roast.
What is great is my daughter likes the decaf I roast for her and my son likes the coffee I roast for him.
I am the only coffee drinker in my home so to use 600+ grams of roasted beans a week I do Drink Coffee Any Time of the Day
Thanks for sharing. I'm curious how those phase percentages influenced the cup? I too am going to roast like i usually do with the fresh roast without looking at the graph and then see what happens. That will be a real interesting. with a 20% weight loss it sounds like you are going pretty dark.
Isn't is great to be able to roast for others and see them enjoy the coffee you crafted?
Today i did 3 roasts. The first one I used the procedure recommended by Ken, the maker of the Razzo extension tube without relying on Artisan and just watching the beans. After completing the roast a reviewed tha Artisan chart. I would say that his procedure gave a pretty decent ROR...the next two roasts I did relying on Artisn to guide me through the Roast. One the first I tried to use heat adjustments primarily on the second I primarily used air flow to control ROR.1
My weight losses were about 13 percent for all roasts.
I prefer using Artisan but it certainly is not necessary...
BTW...I put SSP burrs in my Caedo 37s Grinder so when I get them fully seasoned I hope to see some benefit to the taste of my espresso which I Drink Any Time of the Day
Thanks for the collow up. on your roasts using Ken's procedure. I'm gonna try that this week with the 540.
I'm a first-time coffee roaster. I didn't start getting great coffee until I started using artisan. Now I would never imagine using a fresh roaster without it. It can heat up and crash easier than a drum roster. So artisan really helps me understand if my RoR is even remotely in the right area. No the graph isn't perfect, but it's not hard to get close.
When I'm roasting I just check the bean temp and calculate the RoR needed to get through that phase in the desired time. It's easy math to do in your head so I just keep updating based on how the beans are taking shape. Assume you want a 5 min dry, 3 min maillard,
Just looking into artisans designer mode thanks to another comment here. Seems like a great way to do what I explained about visually so you don't have to do the math in your head!
Hi Nick, thanks for watching and your comments. Yes, you know I'm a fan of roasting phases. I love the example you gave for your target temperatures and understand your concept. I use this similar method BUT rather than temperature targets, I am focusing on event targets. The temperature targets change based on the type of bean, style of roast and the mass size of beans you are roasting. If you are always roasting a similar type bean in the same roaster, temperature would be similar as well as the event times (dry end, first crack, drop). I like your approach with the ROR range for each of the phases, very cool.
As far as the fan and bean movement goes for consistency, a couple of others have suggested the same thing and that is a great idea, making perfect sense.
I would love to see one of your Artisan Roasts. If you want to send it to me go to my channel homepage here on YT and then look for the "about" tab/link and scroll down the page to email me the graph. Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it.
Lastly the designer tool is helpful to create and then use as a background BUT it is really important to set it up like the roaster behaves. In the beginning the ROR skyrockets off the page and then before dry end starts to plummet. This page link talks about designing based on your roaster behavior - artisan-scope.org/docs/designer/ . Feel free to share your roast you created in the designer mode as well. Thanks!
Oh ya this is a fc+ espresso roast
I’m completely new to roasting and have an SR800 (no extension tube) and I LOVE artisan!
I went into this a couple months ago with no idea how roasts should progress. Being able to see graphs and set targets for myself based on what people online are sharing has been supremely helpful.
I baked some of my early roasts before Artisan because I had no idea I was going too slowly.
Personally I have found a smooth RoR impossible to achieve, but since I’m new to all this, it doesn’t bother me. I’m roasting great coffee.
Personally I just target times and temperatures (Artisan’s Designer mode is great for this) and iterate from there based on how it tastes afterwards.
Also as someone who loves darker roasts, lots of the FreshRoast recipes I found online were targeting lighter roasts, which led to much disappointment for me. I definitely dropped some early roasts too soon for my tastes.
I had a very similar experience! Super easy to bake coffee in the freshroast. But artisan helps a ton! I got pretty good at anticipating what's going to happen if I do nothing or if I add heat/drop fan. So I kinda adjust things just before artisan shows it's needed. I've been able to smooth the graph out a lot! You have me very curious about designer mode. Gonna have to look into that!
I just checked out designer mode. Seems like a great tool to have an ideal curve showing in the background as you roast! No math needed lol.
Tyler, thanks for watching and for being a subscriber to my channel! I appreciate you sharing your experience roasting the the SR800. The designer mode is a great help to craft phase percentages and curves. Artisan-Scope website talks about making sure you create a profile that matches the behavior of your roaster. So, in the case of the Fresh Roast, the first half of the roast has an ROR that is through the roof and then likes to come crashing down. This is different than a drum roasting profile. I was watching this video, while focused on automation, still included helpful example of the designer th-cam.com/video/5OrrdhCTBPE/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for all movies on TH-cam. I learned a lot from them. In my country (Poland) its hard to find any information about roasting coffee, so i really appreciate Your work. My English is not very well, but thank God i understand most things you talking about on movies :)
Thank you for watching my videos Dawid. I am glad you are learning and able to understand me. I intentionally talk a little slower in my videos because many of my viewers are from other countries. Thank you for your encouraging words.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab i think that if You try to share your roasting experiences for example on Instagram, it will help You achieve more views, more subscribes. Anyway, I wish you more views and more subscribes :) im planning to buy Behmor 2020 SR ( 220 volt version of 2000ab) and im thinking about sharing my experiences on Instagram, i think its good to infect people with roasting passion :)
Instagram is a great platform to use. I am limited on time and want to be able to answer questions and help. Having different places for the conversation requires more time for me. I appreciate the suggestion and agree it is a great place to engage people with your content. Thanks for the suggestion.
Do you think the probe placement might have been and issue with the B/T at the end? I have the Razzo V5T and the B/T probe is through the chamber wall at about the center of the bean mass while roasting. It seems to give a fairly accurate B/T.
I do believe what you say about trying to control the roast using the Artisan. I have my guide that I've used (basic fan/temp/time) and use Artisan to record the roast and mark events IE; fan/temp changes and dry/1st/2nd crack times.
If a good roast outcome, I can use the graph as a background the try to duplicate by event timing. Also allows me to notice differences in environmental factors and bean suppliers.
Overall a very informative video!
Hey Timothy,
Thanks for your comment, for sharing your experience, and for watching my videos.
i think that was my first attempt at using artisan with the Fresh Roast. There was so much going on I think I made the comment that "artisan was a distraction". I'm sure not having enough experience using Artisan with the Fresh Roast was a big factor in that statement.
Since then I have spent more time working with the Fresh Roast and artisan. I believe Artisan can be helpful as I demonstrate this in my recent artisan/fresh roast video here th-cam.com/video/J3GEK9ydJr4/w-d-xo.html
One of the takeaways from that video was the use of the natural curve. I didn't make any adjustments to the fan or heat after dry end. Finding the right combination of heat and air after dry, seems to be important.
I have had others mention my bean placement as well. I appreciate your comments and I'm glad you are having great results with your placement being in the bean mass.
I use these probes for other roasters as well so I am a little limited to the length of that probe. Honsetly, I'm happy with my probe placement, I think. It could be a little lower BUT I still don't think I want it to go into the bean mass. The closer the probe gets to the hot air, the more the air temperature will influence the roaster. For me, I think the BT helps me see trends BUT I'm not sure it is possible to get a true bean temperature from an air roaster like the Fresh Roast. Just for reference, the probe placement was kind of a strategic choice, as mentioned here at 2:20 - 4:15 and I reference the IKAWA method.
I think the biggest challenge is controlling the rate of rise in the Fresh Roast is because of the incremental, dial steps for fan and heat. I wish these steps were less impactful (more granular). Changing my heat one step should not cause my ROR to crash....
There are a few genius electrical people who have hooked the Fresh Roast up to a PID system and it is a game changer. Let's hope that someday, the Fresh Roast or some other air roaster manufacturer brings an affordable feature to the home roaster community.... currently, the LINK and Kaffelogic Nano are the only PID air roasters but they are expensive.
I have 2 sr540s and have been roasting for 3 years now. I do not use any software but I do use a temperature meter. What you call exhaust I call intake. All I do is thread a exposed bead thermocouple in the slot of the chaff collector between the plastic and screen. I adjust temperature based on bean movement. I try not to have excessive bean movement just a gentle flow. I also like to add a little heat at the beginning of first crack buy easing into first crack so as to need a little boost. My temperature is only a guide and varies but I do not like the machine temp to be over 465 and the exhaust over 410 at the end of roast. A kilowatt meter is helpful to make sure your circuit has enough power and to understand how to use circuit fluctuations. I get great results and I am my own harshest critic, along with my wife, and or close coffee lover’s family and friends say the coffee I roast is the best they ever tasted. I know technically I could probably do better but by using all your senses you can roast consistently great coffee on the sr540. My suggestion is to hook up the software and roast a roast like you were without it and do not look at the graph until the roast is complete. You may learn something from that. The only way to know if a roast is good is if it taste good. I love your channel and your passion. Your sincerity truly shines and your content is of great help to everyone that watches. Thank you!
Hello Robert, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the thermocouple placement. Very interesting. I have had others talk about the fan speed and bean movement. My concern, especially during the drying phase, is the lower fan speed will cause even higher temps and my dry time will be 3 minutes or less. Is that your experience? Yea, I did call it the exhaust (I come from the drum roasting sided) but it is known as the inlet temperature by Ikawa I think. I forgot to mention that in my video. I have put my roaster to the kilowatt test and it is slightly low while I roast. My house was build in the 60's. You are right, the taste is the bottom line. I plan to roast with Artisan hooked up yet not referencing it until after the roast. That should be an eye opener!
Thanks for your comments and kind words Robert. I'm glad my videos seem to help other home coffee roasters. This whole TH-cam thing has been a really interesting journey.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab Hi Mike. I start with f9 p1 and that gets me through drying phase. The thermocouple allows me to monitor rate of rise and as it slows down it lets me know my temperature stability. I have an outlet I use that is the closest to the breaker box and does not drop as much under load. As the beans brown and dry and get lighter in weight that’s when I decide which controls to use for temperature control. I find if airflow is restricted to much it inhibits first crack and on the other hand if the beans are really moving I feel I could lose to much moisture to quick so I settled on my gentle movement technique and adjust from there. I roast mainly on the darker side of medium up until touching or just getting into second crack and experiment lighter or darker depending on the results. Roasts usually end in 9-12 minutes. I like washed Central and South Americans the best along with washed Ethiopians and have experimented with lots if not all other regions and varieties. I would love to expand on my roasting experience by trying different roasters and techniques but for now as long as I am happy with the results I am getting I feel content. I do have a razzo 9” extension tube ordered and should be here any day so that will be interesting. I am interested in your results from a blind roast graph. Thanks again for all your time and contributions to the home roasting community.
When I started roasting, many years ago, I had one of the first Fresh Roast devices. I had no idea what I was doing and managed to make some decent coffee. Eventually it seemed like too much effort to roast a small amount of coffee but not before I wore that Fresh Roast out. I went several years without roasting. I believe around 2014 I got a SR500 as a gift. I had seen my dad's Hot Top and never could spend the money on one, so I started roasting on the SR500. I am able to get a more even roast by picking up the unit as it is running and tilt it around in a circle to create more stirring of the beans. It always seems like the fan is not powerful enough until the beans start to swell. I eventually got my dad's Hot Top and roasted on it for a couple years. It's an older model and has very little control of air and temperature. I considered getting the 1000 kit that allows it to be connected to Artisan But never have. I instead got a 5-pound drum roaster and started learning to roast using your and other videos. I love my drum roaster but i need a smaller test roaster. In order to get really good coffee i need to roast at least 3 pounds at a time in the drum roaster. I am considering getting the Hot Top upgrade kit. I have seen some videos where the Hot Top performs very good. 1000 dollars buys a lot of green coffee so it might be better to just keep roasting 3-pound batches in the drum roaster until I get the desired finish.
Thank you for all the excellent videos
Hi Ron, thanks for watching. That sounds like a lot of money just to be able to connect to artisan. Will the upgrade allow you to control the roaster with the software?
You
Still selling your coffee?
Thanks Mike for a very informative video. I do not have a Fresh Roast roaster, nor do I have or have ever used Artisan. But there is one way in which this video has been very encouraging to me. When I got my Bullet roaster, I knew that a lot of people use it with RoasTime, a logging and control application running on a personal computer (much akin to Artisan). But something told me to start my Bullet learning by using manual mode without any software, so I am doing that. I always wonder if not running software had or is hindering me somehow from knowing how to control and use The Bullet. Earlier on in my Bullet roasting, I used some external aids to help me roast (like timers and other apps), but I noticed they didn't help me much and made it seem like more work for me to do to get a good roast. In short, they were distracting. Just like you found and showed us, adding more stuff to keep track of and do can actually make roasting more difficult.
In my case, I was learning how Bullet controls affected roasting and how to use them to achieve a desired change in roasting, PLUS I was learning how to use the external timers and apps to help me know when I needed to make roasting changes. In your case, you were learning what the temperature probes might be telling you about how the beans were roasting (since probe temperatures were totally different from your drum roaster), AND you were learning how to read Artisan's temperature/time curves (which were also totally different than those of a drum roaster). In both our cases, we were trying to do TWO new things at the same time, which was difficult and distracting. (I have now stopped using external aids).
Do I think software for roasting is bad or wrong? Absolutely NOT!! What I do think for me at least, is I need to learn one thing fairly well before I introduce an additional learning curve. Could I suggest that what may have been good for you in your first use of Artisan would have been to use Artisan solely for recording data the first few times, and not for making ANY decisions. Start Artisan, turn the screen around, and do a Fresh Roast roast like you have done before that got you successful results. When the roast completes, then turn your screen around and look at what was recorded. Then, maybe, you can make some associations between what data looks like for good results. I can't help but compare this to my whole learning experience on the Behmor, where I had to try different things until I got a good roast, then saw how the time/temperature looked that achieved that. Thanks again Mike.
Great comments and suggestions Lou. Agreed, too many things going on at the same time. I will roast like I always do and see what artisan has to say after I finish the roast. I have a feeling, based on some viewer comments who experiment with my roast event times, the graph will be really bad. But, like I said in my video, I get really good results manually roasting on the fresh roast.
Are you still roasting totally manual and not using the software on the bullet?
@@VirtualCoffeeLab Yes, I still roast manually. But I am thinking there will not be a lot of difference in roast control when I start using software - I either push buttons on the control panel, or I press them on the keyboard. One advantage to using the software will be not having to remember to record temperatures (verbally into an audio recorder) and then later construct a graph. That is a huge advantage to me since then I can just do roast control things. Another big advantage is being able to see projected (calculated future) temperatures with the current ROR. (I think I can do that with RoasTime, but not sure). So using the software would make things easier for me.
A minor advantage for me in using RoasTime is to playing back and exactly replicate a previous roast. I call it a minor advantage since I haven't gotten to the stage where the same coffee is consistently available, and I am "grooved" into a consistent roasting control. Automatic playback is possible since The Bullet allows the software to change any of the settings (heating level, fan speed, and drum speed) in real time as the roast progresses. But it is simply a time-based playback of control settings. I'm pretty sure the software cannot be programmed to make decisions on changes based on other parametric data like ROR or even temperature - it's only time-based.
@@luigicollins3954 one of these days we will roast together Lou. Life has been crazy for me lately but we will connect. I would love to see you roast some coffee on the bullet.
I have an SR800 with a Razzo mod chaff collector. I started with the OEM Extension and have since purchased a Razzo v5 roasting chamber. I've been roasting using Artisan for some time now. I have the Phidget 1101_1 4X with BT & ET k-probes. There's a few quick things we can change to help your roasts with Artisan, & there's a few settings you'll need to change. I'd be very happy to help.
Scott, could you share them here for others to read? Or, if you want to email, you can go to my youtube homepage and click on the "About" tab/link and then scroll down to the "email me" button/form. Thanks for watching and sharing!
Your post @scottOlsonoulson caused me to anticipate further replies in this thread as you seem to grasp how to roast good coffee with the spoken components. I just started working with Artisan and Phidgets and am open to ideas. I hope you read this and are able to enlighten the community.
Hi Mike, another great video, very interesting, l liked the idea of the probes for artisan, keep trying, you'll get it right ☕☕👍
Thanks for the encouragement Shane. It is a very different roaster compared to the drum roaster. But like you said, keep trying!
Old school SR500 roaster here purely going by look, sound and smell. Just learning about Artisan, extension tubes and the changes in SR540/800. I was thinking the same thing as you said it, does all this extra complexity REALLY help roast better coffee? More granularity and data for sure but unless doing this at scale does it really help or even matter? I may grab a Razzo tube but not sure I need Artisan or an updated SR model. Analog low/med/high heat + rotary fan control works great! What am I missing?
Thanks for watching @PiquedFlow . I think your spot on. I've roasted some great coffee on the FreshRoast without data hookup. Data is helpful in context with what you are seeing, smelling and hearing. It is almost impossible to get a nice ROR throughout the roast. At times it is almost distracting. See my more recent FreshRoast video where I use artisan to help me roast a PNG coffee.
Interesting video. I was thinking an SR540 or 800 looks like more fun than my Link - there needs to be some fun in roasting and the Link is not it. Anyway, it appeared in this video you were trying to draw a graph using the controls on the roaster verse roasting the coffee, which may be why you said Artisan may be more of a distraction and I can see that. I don’t quite understand why the probe you labeled as the bean temp was not actually in contract with the beans, but was more of an environmental temp. Were you just using the ET as a proxy for BT? I don’t quite understand. Another excellent video. I like how you narrate over the actual roast and explain what you are doing.
Thanks for your comment Edward. This was my experience when I first began to use Artisan with the Fresh Roast. Since then, I have had more experiences using the two together and while it can be a distraction, I do find it helpful to monitor the roast progression. I think the temperatures I am seeing in Artisan are more helpful than the standard "fresh roast display temps".
Now the probe placement. Both the LINK and IKAWA have a bean probe that is not down in the bean mass. On the IKAWA the bean probe is at the top of the roasting chamber while the LINK is close to the top of the bean mass. I don't want direct hot air influencing my probe in the fresh roast. Testing different positions, i realized the closer I put the probe near the beans, the the more the BT temperature looked like the ET temperature in Artisan. I landed on the position I am currently using because it seems to perform similar to my drum roaster. I was getting the hot air temp which would give me a great visual of my "power", while the BT line I get correlates well with the actual bean temps I am used to working with in my drum roaster.
It might not be the right way, but I am happy with how it displays. I have had others question me about this and I completely understand why it might raise an eyebrow.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab I thought it was pretty ingenious of you to place a probe right at exhaust outlet at the bottom. In the Link with 100 g batches the temperature probe sits in around the bean mass from what I can tell once the beans get a little lighter.
@@LivingTheLifeRetired I think you are right about the probe on the link.
Oh my, where do I begin?
I use a SR800 with the Razzo extension tube ,,I’ve been getting pretty consistency ROR on my graphs, of course they do change with different kinds of coffees,,,I’ve probably roasted 10- 15 different kinds since I got the machine over a year ago…I’ve zeroed into the following roast parameters.
I read my bean temp with the thermocouple placed in the Razzo hole,which is in the first quarter height of the tube, putting it right in the middle of the bean mass.
I start by preheating the chamber to 345f,,my settings are at fan 7, heat 8.
Once I reach the charge temp , I remove the chaff collector and add my charge(215g)
At 4 min I’m just past the yellow stage and temp is around 360 F.
At 5:30 min I change my settings to 6-8,,,dropping my fan, as beans are really jumping around ,
At 7 min,,,I’m at 407F and close to first crack,
At 8 min I drop my fan to 6 again to slow bean movement , dropping heat to 7 ,bean temp is now at 418F,,,I try to slow down the heat now.
I now go another min or min and one half to 9:30 min total time. At 6 fan 7 heat
423 f drop temp,,9 to 9.30 min total
This was a Oaxaca Mexico Cepco coffee bean
16% loss
I think the SR800 had some improvements on its heat processor and controls over the earlier models
Hope this helps…
I’ve never tried such a low heat setting as 1 or two,,,I’m afraid it would take ten min or more to reach yellow stage ,,,and my machine is pretty powerful,,,have to be careful with the fan speed or the beans would jump up into the chaff collector..
Thanks your your videos,,,we all learn from them
Ken
Hi Ken. Yours and my profiles are really similar except for a couple of things. I too roast around 215g/batch to end up with around 180 g (3) 60 g doses. Times and temps seem pretty similar, except I've never preheated the chamber before adding the beans. Instructions and other videos never mention doing this, though I do know other types of roasters always include this. This might be why your drop temp is around 25-35° lower than mine. Can you give me some insight on your experience roasting this way, maybe how you came up on this and the differences you see using a pre-heat vs not preheating. Thanks.
@@jlantz3691How and where are you measuring your temp? I saw a video that said it was good to do a preheat,,,I really haven’t done any without the preheat,,but will try one next time,,,I didn’t think it really does much as it heats up so fast anyway ,Are you using a Razzo extension tube also? I do rotate the chamber slowly during the first 4 minutes
Happy Roasting
@@kensafranek2306 I'm just using the readout on the unit for my temps. I figure if I'm using the same baseline, I can make changes and be pretty clear on how those changes are affecting the roast process. I do have an ext tube (not Razzo), and have the Razzo chaff collector mod. I think what you said about the chamber heating up quickly is why the 800 instructions and vids I've seen don't include preheating the chamber. I typically roast 217 g of green beans to get 180 g of finished product at 15-16% shrinkage. This gives me (3) 60-gram doses. I start out at 9/1 fan/heat, and go from there. One 'rule of thumb' I've found is that 1 unit of fan is equal to 2 units of heat, as far as temp readings go. My "average" temps (per minute) for a roast are: 290° (1minute in), 315, 340, 360, 380, 400, 420, 440, 460 on a 9:30 roast. Dry phase ends around 4:15 (45% of 9:30), Browning phase (35%) ends (at FC) around 7:35. FC is usually around 430°. Development (20%) ends at 9:30 (460 +/-). This delivers a City+ roast level. Obviously this isn't exact for all roasts, but it's surprisingly close. Peaberry beans kind of throw a wrench into it, and I pretty much only use 'Washed' process beans. I favor Central and S. American origins, with an Indonesian thrown in once in a while. Truly have been getting good, consistent roasts with this set-up for > 4 months. I've been roasting for 1 1/2 years.
@@jlantz3691 Sounds like you have things under control
My units temp consistently runs higher than the bean temp due to where the internal sensor is located within the base
@@kensafranek2306 I see. Again, as long as you are using the same source, temps are relative and any any adjustments you make will be reflected in that temperature reading. While temps at the bean mass may be ideal, I would assume that those temps would be relative to the temp readings elsewhere, all else being equal.
Dry helpful. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching.
If I kept my fan speed at nine, lots of beans would fly up to and get trapped in the chaff catcher.
Hi Ken, Yea, I've heard that. I think my electrical current is a little lower. That might make the difference. I was roasting 170 grams on this video. Further into the roast as the coffee dried the beans were jumping up pretty close. Another factor is I have not modified my chaff collector like many have with the extension tube. Do you think having more restriction of air at the chaff collector like I do might reduce the amount of bean movement?
When I start on f9 my beans barely move also that’s why you really can not compare settings and should just try to compare by using descriptive terms. I have 2 st540s and the fan and power do not respond the same on the same circuit at the same time and the temperature readouts are not the same so trying to compare settings is not the way to communicate.
Also, I did measure the bean temp vs the chaff chamber air exiting temperatures. After first minute, these numbers track in parallel on the roast curve with the chaff temp being about 30 F lower than the bean temperature. It seems there is some loss of heat or my probe in the bean pile is reading too high (maybe cuz it is closer to the hottest air that enters near the bottom of the tube?). Bottomline, my bean temps make sense based on common experiences in other roasting vessels so I opted to go with the direct bean temp measurement.
Thanks for sharing your temperature experiences with the fresh roast John. Yes, I think you are right. The probe low in the bean mass seems to be skewed because the hot air from the inlet is affecting the probe readings. I’m thinking the very top of the bean mass might be more accurate. Regardless, they are just reference points. Sight, smell and sound are primary tools with the fresh roast.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab thanks for the reply! Basically, I agree Artisan can be distracting but it has some advantages when roasting decaf (which is mostly what I do). Many decafs are already dark when you start so you cannot rely on color at all to judge where the roast is. But smell still works and temperature of the beans. That is why I opted to place the probe into the bean mass. I use the probes with thin fiberglass sheathing and just drape them over the edge of the glass. I tape them on a SS tube so that the weight keeps the probe from bouncing around. I do put the probe high in the bean mass. I get proper temperatures for dry end (320 F) and first crack (390-410 F). Also, I did get very smoothly declining ROR after I figured out that I need to not touch the fan and heat settings upon approaching first crack. The fan setting change will cause a huge roller coaster in particular. I use ET probe like yours (again, draped over edge but threaded down below the air feed plate) and get my ET to the right spot about 30 seconds before FC and it is smoothly declining therafter. Your video on using environmental temperature info to control the roast is spot on and is the way to get a smoother ROR for the Fresh Roast near the end of the run in my opinion. Thanks for the videos - I have learned a ton very quickly from your channel and a few others (shout to Dave at the Captain's Coffee in particular).
Great information John. Can you send me a pic of what the probe please. If you go to my youtube channel homepage, look for the "ABOUT" button alongside the other menu items like videos, live, playlinst, community, etc.. and email it to me? That would be great. I get the decaf color issue.
I'm glad my exhaust temp video was helpful. How are you managing your heat and fan from charge till first crack and what is your total roast time?
I will send you some photos. I start at Fan 9 and Heat 1 and assess bean mixing and quickly adjust fan speed down. Went down to 7 almost immediately, then to 6 at 1:30 and then 5 at 1:45. I hit dry end of 314 at 2:50. Heat went from 1 to 2 at 2:30, then 4 at 3:30. From 3.5 minutes onward I did not touch anything. ET stablized at 460 F in about 30 seconds after that last heat adjustment and with only a small wiggle in ROR due to that heat change. First crack (FC) was at 6 minutes and 400 F. ROR was 14 F/min at FC and was down to 1 F/min at drop (7:48). This run could be improved ... I need to heat the beans up quicker and build more momentum ... there seem to be a little flick right at the end of the run. I think getting ET to 480 F earlier and then lowering heat right before FC one setting would have avoided the flick. Taste was very bright and enjoyable in the cup, even with the small flick. I will send the Artisan roast curve to you as well. I can send all the bad ones too ... where I struggled much more so than you did ... but I will not waste your time. In the end, my conclusion is that I was just touching the Fan and Heat knobs too often and going up and down. I now try to move in one direction at a time ... hotter and hotter until right before first crack when I now will start dropping the heat a tad ... I am still perfecting that timing and ramp down in the heat button. I stay away from adusting the fan at the end since it causes a larger change to the ROR.
Outstanding John. Got your email with photos. I meant to ask how much Colombian coffee you are roasting per batch in the Fresh Roast?
Looking at the profile you sent, you accomplished what I was trying to do. Great job. I would experiment with the height of your bean probe but honestly, it doesn't matter at this point. I would be interested to see your result with the increased power you were talking about earlier in the roast. In your email, you sent me the same profile twice (duplicate). You could also experiment with the timing of the middle phase. Maybe that increase in the power like you are thinking will shorten that phase just a little. I wonder ifmight notice a change in the cup doint that.
The Behmor hack is interesting. How did you drill that hole? Got a machine shop in the garage? hehe.
Thank you very much for sharing. I will give this a try and see if I can replicate the declining ROR.
What are the chances, a year later, that you can either share your Artisan config file for Fresh Roast/Phidget or make a video for Artisan setup?
*2 years later
Hi Jake. Thanks for watching and for your comment. I'll be glad to share my artisan .aset file. I have supplied the links to the hardware you will need and in my video I do share where you select your device you are using. In the video you can see how my wiring is attached to the phidget.
When you download the .aset file, place it wherever you want to keep it. I chose to place it where all of my .alog files are saved. Once you turn on artisan, go to help/load settings and select the .aset file. You may need or want to make some tweeks to some of the settings.
I'll try and upload that to my "extras" page on my buymeacoffee.com/VirtualCoffeeLab/extras website. I won't be able to provide artisan support. Their website has the documentation you need to make adjustments.
oh, you will likely need the Phidget driver installed if you haven't done that yet. I was trying to double check the file i was about to upload and I can't do it on my computer at work because it doesn't have the phidget driver. I'll have to double check the file tonight and try to get it uploaded.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab Thank you! I admit this is mostly to see how your curves are set up, as your chart looks nice while it's recording.
The ROR curve is the measure of slope (derivative) of the temperature curve. It picks up on variations of temperature. The temperature graph is trending fairly well if you were to fit a curve through the data-points. Is roasting quality really that sensitive to tiny shifts in temperature? If not, I think ROR curve isn't very useful. A smooth ROR really suggests an expensive roaster, with a sophisticated feedback system. Slight variations in the roast quality in home roasting is expected. It is like driving on a asphalt road with tiny bumps.
I am going to follow up on my message with some physics:
The relationship between heat (q) stored within a _uniform_ volume (here the coffee beans) and temperature (dT) as follows:
q = m C dT
q: the amount heat stored in the beans (proportional to increase in the heat released by the source)
m: mass of the beans
C: beans specific heat capacity(how much heat they can store)
dT: is the change in temperature
for SR800 we have
q = m1 C dT_1
for a commercial large capacity unit we have (assuming equal amount of heat)
q = m2 C dT_2
where m2 >> m1
given equal amount of heat released by the sources we have the following
m1 dT_1 = m2 dT_2
considering that m2 is much larger than m1, dT_2 is lot a less sensitive to the noise and incremental changes in the amount of heat generate from the source as compared to dT_1. This translates into a much higher sensitivity of the SR800 temperature to changes in the generated heat when compared to the a commercial large volume roaster. As such the ROR curve will be all over the place for SR800.
Thanks for your comment Martin. Agreed. The small roasting environment, small bean mass, and the incremental heat source all add to a descending ROR that will not look pretty. And you are right, most home roasters do expect this.
Ok Mike, me again :). I thought long on this and ended up purchasing an SR800 with an extension tube with the thought of integrating Artisan. I’ve watched another video on this but I like your dual setup… but one thing you said puzzled me. I’m only at 4:39 of the video so perhaps the answer comes later but… The long temp going all the way down is your exhaust? I’m confused… if I understand it correctly, that’s the air that will be going into the beans and in theory won’t it be cooler as it leaves the chamber? Ie. Wouldn’t you raise the longer one up a bit to get true bean temp and then use the shorter one at the top to get true exhaust temp?
Hmm, I just finished the video… maybe that’s not a good thing to try and implement? I’ll have to go through the comments and see what others are saying.
Read question. Air roasters are different than drum roasters. They generate and blow out hot air at the very base of the beam mass. This is the hottest point and is called the inlet temperature. When I roast using my drum, my hottest temperature is my exhaust temperature. The exhaust temperature is almost always higher than the beam temperature. This is one reason why I have my exhaust temperature probe all the way down poking into the inlet where the hottest point is.
The beam probe is the shorter probe on my roaster, set up for the freshroast. It probably could be a little longer so that it was touching the beans when the beans are moving around. Probably halfway down the tube. Realistically, hot air is blowing through the beans and reading an accurate bean mass. That’s the nature of hot air roasting. IKAWA placed their bean probe above the bean mass. Watch the IKAWA videos and you will see what I mean.
I realize that many freshroast people are doing it differently. You should experiment and decide what works best for you. You’ll notice that in many of my roasting videos with the drum. I’m talking about exhaust temperature because it helps me understand what’s going on in my roasting environment Temperature wise. To me, that inlet temperature for the freshroast is a real eye-opener. When I make temperature changes on the dial, I am mediately see the response on that red line and that is all due to the probe being placed just inside the little holes at the bottom of the roaster where the heat is coming out.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab ah, I’m following you now. That’s interesting, I would have thought that exhaust temp was lower due to absorption by the bean mass. A lot of good info in the comments, I’ll have to play around with it and find a good group to join.
For those diy'ers you can get artisan for about $25. That's assuming you already have a raspberry pi. All you need is a generic thermocouple ($10) and an adafruit max31855 ($15). Hook those up to the rpi and run artisan directly on the rpi. You just need to write a little python script to pull in the data. I don't use any smoothing so my curve is noisy as hell, but it doesn't bother me.
Nick are you using the "control" button on artisan with your raspberry pi and max31885? Your and engineer right?
@@VirtualCoffeeLab hey I'm not sure what the control button is. But I'm just using the prog feature in the device assignment settings to call a python script that's written to the rpi storage. I'm definitely not an engineer. I found some threads on people doing this exact thing. That got me 80% there. But I did have to write my own python script. It took a couple days to figure it out. It was my first time writing any code. I'm happy to share it with anyone interested.
Nick, I am definitely interested in trying this. I'm kind of slammed but maybe this winter we can connect. My son is a programmer so it shouldn't be too difficult. I know he has a raspberry pi. The standard artisan download comes with a feature, when checked, allows capable roasters to connect with artisan and control temp and fan to the buttons in artisan. So, if you change the fan from a 6 to an 8, artisan controls the roaster. The "control" button appears in the upper right corner of artisan when this feature is turned on. I have not used it but people with roasters like the hottop do ...... i think. I would love to see a pic of your artisan profile using the rasberry pi.
ROR? Artisan looks pretty complicated to use. Does it require you to physically modify the roaster? I’m not very handy. And does it work on iOS? If not, it’s off the list.
No IOS,,,,but there is a similar app called Roastmaster that works great ,,I use my IPAD
Nope. No IOS Ken. Sorry about that.
Hello, I'm new to roasting and would like to track my heater temp but not use it as my Exhaust Temp? I read somewhere that the phidget uses the 0 connectors for BT and 1 connector for exhaust, I could not see how they are connected and would the exhaust temp normally be lower then the BT? Not sure if you have to make changes in Artisan to compensate? I'm probably missing something.
Hello Harry. If we are talking drum roasting, traditionally the exhaust temp is higher. On an air roaster you can go either way. I think it doesn’t matter which one is connected to the 0 or the one because artisan allows you to switch them within the settings. I would recommend you connect a probe to the 0 and then turn on artisan and see which temp is registering. Then the rest is up to you.
Back to the air roasting settings, some news, the inlet temperature, as they’re bean temperature, and then place another probe higher in the bean mass for the exhaust. A real bean temperature isn’t possible, because the hot air is blowing through the bean mass. And I like what Ikawa did, and that is using the inlet temperature as the exhaust and then placing another probe above the bean mass and using that as the B in temperature. Check out my Ikawa videos and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
The exhaust temperature is normally higher than the bean temperature in the drum roasting world. The red line represents the exhaust temperature and normally runs along the top of the graph.
Let me know if you have other questions about this. Thanks for watching!
@@VirtualCoffeeLab I seen the swap option so easy switch, I did connect one to "0" and it showed as BT (Might be as simple as 1 probe = BT), I could move it to 2 or 3 to see what it does as a test. What I was thinking was the probe in the air without the bean mass around it has to be faster swings and higher peaks? I need to get my exhaust done and start using Artisan, can't wait to stop manually charting my roast data.
I explain my reasoning to use the longer probe that is at the bottom for my exhaust temp. Start watching at the 2:03 mark and you can decide if you want to go that route or another way.
Do you use your drum roaster anymore?
Every week Steve. I’m doing at least 5 roasts
Per week on the drum roaster. I plan on showing more drum roasting videos (if that is what you meant) but needed to see my promise to my series on roasting temps.
I’ve got a big roasting job coming up. Remember the non profit that asked my son and I to roast bags of coffee they were giving to donors last fall? Same group asked us to do it again and it will be twice the volume. We’re planning on buying a large 60kg bag!
Thanks for your comment Steve. Any particular topic you are interested in?
Maybe someone else has already asked this in the comments, but why don't you do the opposite? (attached the probes, but don't look at the screen, do your thing that you get a good result with and later have a look at the graph to see "what you did basically" ?
Thanks for your message. I have roasted with probes in and not paying attention to artisan. The result is large changes to the ROR because of the large steps each fan or heat setting. Ideally, the FreshRoast needs half steps (smaller changes when going from one number to the next.
As far as taste goes, I’ve roasted some very good coffee with these swings. I think that is what you are getting at.
If only the FreshRoast could handle 1lb at a time
agreed!
In general, I think your fan speed was too high, and your power too low. I would start with power at 7 or 8 and drop the fan speed when I want the temp to rise. Use the fan to control heat in general.
Hi Scott, thanks for watching and your comments. Your suggestion is another method of heat management when using an air roaster.
When you use this method, what is the roast level you are aiming for. Are you referencing the FR temperature? Are you using Artisan? Also, I'm curious what your event times look like using the power level of 7 or 8 from the beginning of the roast.
I will try this on my unit. Are you using a 540 or an 800. What about an extension tube? Last, what is your batch size.
Thanks again for sharing. Your responses will help me when I try your method. Thanks.
@@VirtualCoffeeLab SR800 no extension tube. Using artisan. One thermocouple down right into the beans, but not near the heat of the base. I'm currently roasting 6 oz of an Ethiopian natural, so I'm dropping at the end of first crack to bring out the source flavors. Fan high at start to prevent scorching fan=9 power=8. At 1-2min, Fan 8 power 7. Pretty steep temp rise at first and into Millard at fan=7 power=7, but at 4 min I'm at fan=6 power=7 to prevent stalling as I head into first crack. After first crack around 5-6 min I level it off fan 7 power 7 until end of first crack at 7min and into cooling.
@@swbusby thanks for sharing that Scott.
Why can't green coffee bean producers or retailers provide 1st, 2nd crack temps and detailed roasting notes.
I don't think it would cost them much.
Someone who does that will sell more beans than who doesn't.
At this moment roasting coffee is more of an art than science. Unpredictable and subjective.
They aren't able to determine that. There are several variables including the type of roasting equipment, the profile (how much heat is being applied to the bean), moisture loss the bean goes through because of age, and other reasons why first crack can happen at different times with the same coffee bean.
Coffee is somewhat of an art because we can "craft" the coffee to taste differently based on how we roast it :-)
Once again I will opinionate before gaining any experience, but bear with me please. I've done just a half dozen sensory roasts with my new 540, and letting your earlier videos be my guide I have gotten what seem to be great results, just twisting the knob at about the times that you have and just making small adjustments to try to get your phase times.
With your level of skill, you don't NEED Artisan, and I see where it is (or was) at least mostly a distraction.
What it certainly does, though, is give you a record of the numbers that arose as you roasted, but perhaps NOTHING more. As Artisan cannot control the 540, it can't manage anything, and in fact you remain responsible. The 540 Artisan should give you some (perhaps for YOUR purposes useless) information about the roast, and give you one more (perhaps useless) understanding, besides color, scent, sound etc. It seems like being able to do that granular analysis of a roast (and ability to compare one roast to another) might make ME better sooner, and I have the hardware in the mail to give it a try.
Seems though that letting the graphs as they generate be the boss is a bit cart before horse, so I'm guessing I'll use Artisan as more of a post event debrief tool, at least initially.
Thanks for all you've done to demystify the roasting process, you have saved me from wandering the wilderness to having a fair sense of direction!
I'm glad my videos have helped and you have experienced great results. One thing Artisan can do is display your ROR as a number. Try to ignore the graph and reference the ROR number every 30 seconds to give you an idea of the pace of your roast. When roasting without Artisan, we would use color change, smell, and the pace of first crack to determine our roast momentum. Too fast and we get fireworks at first crack. Too slow and we end up crashing just after first crack begins and our crack session goes silent.
I'm thankful my videos make sense and have pointed you in the right direction!