Behmor Coffee Roaster. 14oz batch.

Roasting a 14 oz batch of coffee in a Behmor 1600 roaster purchased from Sweet Marias. Fantastic machine, and I get wonderful results every time.

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Howto & Style

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• home
• roaster
• coffee
• sweet
• marias
• behmor
• java
• culinary
• coffegeek

[binkleybloom]

BTW - as your Behmor ages, I found that mine has trouble reaching 2nd crack even with all things behaving as expected (and the chamber being as clean as I can possibly get it). One trick that I've adopted lately though is to start a roast and let it run for two minutes, then restart it again. It'll get you an additional 2 minutes of roast time, and you'll still be able to attain some of the darker roasts.

[metaspherz]

Just got my Behmor yesterday from Sweet Marias. Read the manual. So I decided to watch a few videos to get an idea of how to use it. You pushed a few buttons without explaining their purpose. It would've been helpful to know what kind of beans & why you chose the roast profile & duration. Do you roast blends or just single origins? I've been roasting for 5 months using air poppers, stove top, & Stir Crazy/NuWave oven. Now for some serious semi-pro roasting!

[binkleybloom]

@metaspherz

Definitely SO beans - that's all I roast. I'm not good enough to blend my own, and I like the character of SO roasts.

Be sure to check out the forums at SweetMarias - they have one dedicated to the drum roasters, and a TON of really good info about the Behmor. I was having trouble with mine and there was already really good info on there about how to fix (the upper heating element had gone bad).

[binkleybloom]

@metaspherz

Sounds lovely! I have really grown an affinity to the central american beans lately - they seem to have a lovely balance.

Fortunately for my winter roasting, I have a very understanding wife who loves the roasted coffee, so even though I smoke up the house a bit (with the roaster still under the hood on the stove), she still grins when the beans are done. Sure, the house smells like a coffee roasters, but we see that as a good thing :-)

[metaspherz]

@binkleybloom I've been having good luck roasting 15 oz. of Columbian, Costa Rican and Brazilian (50-30-20%) together to about 15 seconds into 2nd crack. I press 1 lb, P3 and add 2 to 3 minutes before cool down until I hear the 2nd crack. 15 seconds later I push the cool button. The beans are dark and just slightly oily. I've made charcoal only once when I used fewer beans & added more time to P1. Smoky! Pure garbage btw. I bit into a charred bean and it turned into powder between my teeth.

[metaspherz]

@Phewy Mine doesn't smoke all that much but I use it by a window. I roast only hard beans and they have less of a smoke problem unless I go deep into 2nd crack and pull down the door (behmor's door) during cool down. A lot of island grown beans must not get too dark or else they smoke like the dickens even with the window open and a fan is blowing the smoke out. The smoke alarm goes off too.

When Winter gets here I bet even the hard beans will smoke up the kitchen during 2nd crack.

[binkleybloom]

@Phewy

The easiest why to check this is to run it with the door open and the drum / chaff collector out of it. Then take a small mirror (I raided my wife's compact) and look straight up at it when you press the cool button (you don't have to run it long - just enough to heat it up). The elements should really light up during the cooling cycle. If everything there stays dark, then you have a problem with it. I was able to simply pull mine down and re-crimp it (so far so good!).

[Phewy]

@binkleybloom I will have to check that. I am finding it increasingly difficult to get a dark roast and the smoke does billow from the top.

Thanks for the tip!

[binkleybloom]

@Phewy

Hey Phewy - are you getting a good roast level on yours, and where is the smoke coming from? There is a heating element in that square piece at the top of the roaster, and it has a habit of burning out. If that element doesn't heat properly, then the smoke will just BILLOW out of the top of the roaster (and you won't get as dark of a roast).

[Phewy]

really envious of you folks that can roast indoors. My Behmor unit smokes way to much for me to do that, even under the oven range hood with fan on high. Still, I love the Behmor and the results you get with it!