Hottop Roasting Tips

Discussions about roaster hardware and the finer points of their use
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JohnB

Hottop Roasting Tips

Post by JohnB »

Niko wrote:Take the Haimi 10 seconds into a rolling 2nd crack. It comes out looking like a Full City+ (not Vienna), no oily marks or droplets at all. It pulls nice, long drippy shots that go well into the 40+ seconds without blonding.

Edit:
Forgot to mention - I stall the roast after 1st crack completely finishes and then ramp the heat element back up with about 1:45 left on the roasting time. The roast finishes @ around 419F (that varies slightly from ambient room temps).

So how much time overall between 1st C taking off & eject. 3-4 minutes?
Niko wrote:I'd say closer to 5 minutes.
1st C takes about 1.5 - 2 minutes to complete its thing and then once the cracks stop (or really slow down to almost nothing), the smell of the roast changes (at least in my shnozola :lol: ). This is when I cut the heating element OFF and let the roast coast for little over a minute and then crank it up for a slow finish into 2nd C. You'll hit 2nd C at around 1:15 (remaning in the total roast time) and then it'll start rolling into an agressive active 2nd crack with about 30-40 seconds left on the total roasting time. This varies of course depending on your ambient humidity and temps in the area you're working in. Last week I roasted in 57F/65% humidity with those results in the garage.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: 250g's of Yemen Mokha Haimi.
JohnB

Re: Hottop Roasting Tips

Post by JohnB »

With a 250g load how many minutes does it take to get to 300F BT? What are you using for a drop temp? Still going by the HT sensor in the wall when you quote temps or do you have a bt thermocouple installed?
Niko

Re: Hottop Roasting Tips

Post by Niko »

Nope, just using the stock HT thermo built in. I had the iRoar2 rigged with the Fluke but not on this one. It works fine for me and it's consistent enough to get identical roasts back to back. I do manually cool down the HT between roasts with a Vornado fan blasting at full speed, it gets the roaster down to 68F in just a few minutes. The rear filter, chaff tray and top cover is removed for a nice airflow - it really does cool things fast with all this removed and the drum is removed after every Yemen roast since some beans get left behind.
JohnB wrote:With a 250g load how many minutes does it take to get to 300F BT?
I'd say about 6 minutes -I'd have to look at my notes when I get back home and I'll edit this post.
JohnB

Re: Hottop Roasting Tips

Post by JohnB »

I figured it would be up there with a 250g load. I try for a short dry time if I'm going to stretch the roast for espresso. You've got a Variac so you could push the voltage up to 124v or more to speed things up in the drying/ramp up stage. I vac bag & freeze all my greens in 227g portions so thats my max roast size. Typical dry time for brew roasts is 4:30-5:00 minutes, shorter for espresso. I drop anywhere between 325-350F ET which is around 190-205*F on the HT sensor. This gives me a BT changeover between 200*-207+F normally.

I went back & forth between the P & B panels several times but settled on the B full time now. About the only time I use the fan is to remove moisture towards the end of the drying phasing. I prefer to control the temp dialing the voltage up or down with the variac & using the steps on the B panel.
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