Behmor Home Roaster
I've done my homework on trying to find Home roasters. I know none are perfect, but this is the best for the price. I'm hoping that this could help me learn more about REAL roasting. The only problem is there are 5 very well programed profiles, made by professionals. So, I don't like that there is very little art. This is like putting pizza in the microwave oven. But, I believe it would be good to learn which beans need certain profiles, not to mention that you can alter them by adding or subtracting time.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think a good deal of learning can be done by this machine?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by farmroast on
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The Quest M3 is the best and most like a commercial drum roaster. A manual HotTop being a second choice. With the presets, lack of bean or environmental temps. and in-roaster cooling the Behmor is better for just producing home-roasted coffee.
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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on
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The Behmor pre-set programs are almost worthless if you're thinking it's a set and forget affair. Problem is they are strictly timed base with ZERO monitoring of ANY temp, a guessing game. The "profiles" were created based on discussions with professional roasters true, but not implemented how any serious roaster would use them. You can get deceit guessing at how to use the pre-set profiles through trial and error. But, IMO the Behmor (stock) doesn't actually do that good a roast because of poor convection regardless of how used. (mainly because of very slow 6rpm drum). I modified mine for full manual heater control by-passing profiles and couldn't get roasts near as good as with my split wired dual variable voltage controlled Caffe' Rosto. Would have put in a faster drum motor but got a computer controlled modified HotTop and quit playing around with the Behmor. And yes I have a Behmor still sitting in the gargage over three years later along with half a dozen other home roasters along with USRC commercial drum roaster at my Roastery.
The HotTop-B is far superior, and the Qwest M3 The Best home roaster on the market bar none.
That said to learn the bean, the roast process, I highly suggest a full manual approach like dogbowl/heatgun or wok and wooden spoons (with a gas stove). If going with any roasting "appliance" whether popcorn popper or off the shelf "home roaster" IF you don't have control of the roast process, i.e. variable at your control applied heat and air flow with at the minimum bean mass temperature monitoring and ideally evironment temp too, you'll be very limited in what you can really learn.
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Permalink Reply by John Gibbons on
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Thanks for the help!
Questions:
1)How much is the Quest M3
2)Do you have any home roaster you are willing to get rid of for a fair price?
Mike McGinness said:The Behmor pre-set programs are almost worthless if you're thinking it's a set and forget affair. Problem is they are strictly timed base with ZERO monitoring of ANY temp, a guessing game. The "profiles" were created based on discussions with professional roasters true, but not implemented how any serious roaster would use them. You can get deceit guessing at how to use the pre-set profiles through trial and error. But, IMO the Behmor (stock) doesn't actually do that good a roast because of poor convection regardless of how used. (mainly because of very slow 6rpm drum). I modified mine for full manual heater control by-passing profiles and couldn't get roasts near as good as with my split wired dual variable voltage controlled Caffe' Rosto. Would have put in a faster drum motor but got a computer controlled modified HotTop and quit playing around with the Behmor. And yes I have a Behmor still sitting in the gargage over three years later along with half a dozen other home roasters along with USRC commercial drum roaster at my Roastery.
The HotTop-B is far superior, and the Qwest M3 The Best home roaster on the market bar none.
That said to learn the bean, the roast process, I highly suggest a full manual approach like dogbowl/heatgun or wok and wooden spoons (with a gas stove). If going with any roasting "appliance" whether popcorn popper or off the shelf "home roaster" IF you don't have control of the roast process, i.e. variable at your control applied heat and air flow with at the minimum bean mass temperature monitoring and ideally evironment temp too, you'll be very limited in what you can really learn.
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One more question:
I see that the hottop is about 790$ whereas the quest m3 is 1200. The question; is the quest m3 a better roaster for the money?
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The Quest is a solid drum and very heavy built. It will last and hold it's value. It has the pure manual control and functions to really learn drum roasting. The HotTop is very good with a perforated drum, a bit more circuitry and homeowner safety features that make it a bit less straight forward. The Quest is from a very small co./limited production and has only been on the market for about a year and a half so it's unlikely you'll find a used one.
If your serious about learning how to roast I'd highly recommend the Quest. Even if you lose interest you should be able to recover most of your money. If you continue roasting it will be an acceptable sample and even profile roaster for your future.
As MiKe mentions, there are also simple manual approaches such as a heat gun and dog bowl that will also allow you to control while tuning your senses to the process of roasting.
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I've decided I'm getting this...at the expense of my drum kit, and guitar...I never thought I'd see the day. But I'll get another guitar! This will be so much fun.
As far as consistency, i've read that this may take a lot of getting familiar with to be able to create solid profiles, but I think this will be dope.
I'd appreciate any information I can get. I found a very nice roasting guide on the has bean site. It's not very specific, but it sort of clarifies what we're aiming for.
What do you guys feel helps or is different about the quest?
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Congratulations John, the Quest is a fine instrument too! Here are a couple detailed threads that should help you get some background on roasting with it.
Ed
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Thank you! That's very helpful. I saw this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxhbQmuO8yI
Does anybody know what software he's using, and how to do this!? I think this would be sweet to set up. Not at all necessary, but still fun to mess with.
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I don't recognize that software. Artisan would be a very good one that was put together by Homeroasters, many using a Quest. It has areas to rate your roast and comments, etc.
I use TC4 Arduino which requires some electronics hardware building. It's just great monitoring and graphing hardware and software.
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