Coffee Crafters Artisan 6 fluid bed roaster

[Ascholten]

well   1.5 a second sounds nice in theory but I go by watts to be honest and watch the ramp rate 
let's work with a 2 lb batch.   starting up it's going to rise pretty fast, maybe a degree a second or two because the beans are cold.
I tend to miser mine because of the solar thing and seeing 'how low i can go' on power burned and not screw the pooch on the roast.

Ill start 2 lbs at about 3500 watts.  Bring it up to about 225 or when it starts petering off on the rise then bring it up to about 5k.  If your roaster is warm you can probably push that thru to the end on 5k, but some beans or roasting on a cooler day about 325 or so degrees I then push it to about 5800 watts to finish it thru.

Your temperatures,are you looking at the probe in the roast pot or the digital readout on the unit itself?  The unit itself that is the chamber temp NOT the bean temp.  Your numbers make more sense if you are looking at that temp TBH.  I do have to admit though that each machine is a little bit different and maybe yours is just that much off than mine.

Oh and one other thing,  the power dial. the watts,  do yourself a favor and call that a 'suggestion'.   They vary a ton and can be off by a few Kw in some instances.  If you are running 232 volts because you are loaded down it can be pretty low.  If you are pushing 249 volts because you got 10 KW of solar behind you humping the grid, then those numbers can be a bit high.  I won't even get into power factor and all that crap,  the fan motor can throw them off too.

Get one of these cheap watt / power meters off e bay and hook it up if you want to keep an accurate log of power into the beans.

Aaron

[compaddict]

Yeah I wonder if my bean temp probe might be too close to the air stream. I roasted some Sweat Maria's "Monkey Blend" that I had left over from my Espresso days into 2c. I pulled at 480 degrees and it was perfect. My voltage was at 249 during the roast. I was happy when I learned my friend had an Espresso machine. Nice to see the roaster going into 2c!
We were roasting two pounds and he asked how do you know the difference between 1c and 2c. Two seconds later bam! I love this thing!

[compaddict]

Really liking the coffee I am roasting. I have been trying different things with heat and loft. What worked for me today was a heat setting of "7" and about a 5-6" loft to get to 300 degrees at 3:58. Then at 300 degrees lower the loft to 3" to reach 1C at 8:57. Pulled the finished roast at 11:40 and 430 degrees. The coffee is 2.5 pounds of Ethiopia natural Yirgacheffe Beriti Torea Gr.1 (BooBerry)
Very small changes in temp make real big changes in roast times with my machine. At 7.2 power things happened about twenty percent faster. Still was very good coffee.
More later.
Vince

[Ascholten]

Yes, once you hit a threshold on power (heat) a little can go a long way a lot faster.  You can get an idea by your chamber temp .vs. roasting area temp.  The higher the differential, the faster you can potentially raise the bean temp.  I find this generally works best with at least a pound of beans in the roaster.  Fewer and it can get tricky to get enough heat to 'stick' with them to roast them.  Yes the A6 can roast down to 8 oz but it's not very efficient at that level.

Aaron

[Benjamin]

Heh, interesting, I'm on a Behmor now and the Artisan 3E (or its successor) is the machine I will treat myself to for an upgrade once I can figure out how to start reliably selling ~20# of roasted coffee/month......or I get a spanking big bonus from work 

Well...it's the machine I thought I would treat myself to. But they upped the price $1000 with no major design changes. Guess I'll be looking other places for my roaster upgrade (Behmor Jake).

I envy you all who got in before this price jump!

[compaddict]

Well shoot! Might give them a call and se if they will adjust?
Vince

[Benjamin]

Well shoot! Might give them a call and se if they will adjust?
Vince

Yeah, I already got in touch. Ken said it was a "long overdue" price adjustment to reflect the increased costs of building the machine and that it "didn't make sense to be 40%cheaper than their nearest competitor."

If there had been changes to the design, I could have considered, but he tried to sell me on the post-sale service and business advice.

[compaddict]

I see they lowered the price increase 500.00.

[Ascholten]

You might also, it depends on your setup, just get the roaster part and that's it.
I didn't get the chaff collector bean cooler and all that pooftery stuff, I roast outside, I don't need all that crap, just let it blow into the grass.  With that, the machine that was like 4900 or whatever it was, I only paid like 2800 for the one piece instead of all 3 or 4.

Also, did you consider used?  I know several people are selling their 5's and 6's and even some 3's to move up to the bigger units.  He mentioned something to me about a forum or something where people are buy / sell / trading them.  Unless someone dropped it off the back of a truck, I don't see much of anything inside that couldn't be fixed / replaced for more than a few hundred bucks.

Aaron