BW is not impressed with the Behmor.
Honestly, this is the first negative I've read (that I can remember) about this roaster
There are some prior negative reviews (not many) but they flew into the face of what was a massive early adopter lovefest like none other. I did a negative review and a well known guy on HB had an ongoing thread but the times were strange man....CG had something like 7 out of 10 posts in the roasting forum about loving the Behmor. Very unpopular position not to dig it and plus you were dissing the #1 roaster that is sweeping the roasting world. I also know of one magic tongue super taster guy that set out to review it and mysteriously never came back with anything...
With that I know everybody loves this thing and I do not think a few people not liking it matters to them or their roasting so....
Here are my initial thoughts about it from another forum in Jan.
Most people that have them seem to be very happy with these roasters.
I had a chance to test drive one for a few roasts and it's not for me in the current configuration.
If they do a few things to it it might be pretty interesting.
1) Digital temp probe/display.
2) True ability to profile a roast for time & temp.
3) Ability to cool much faster at conclusion of roast cycle.
4) I think (gut feeling) moving the drum away from the elements some and adding more potential would help with several things.
5) Ability to roast all sizes of beans...this one might have been corrected already.
6) Air flow control.
Ha! things that are good for any roaster. Grin The issue I have with this one is that work arounds are harder/impossible to pull off.
Example, a roast has not made it to second crack yet and you want to go 4 snaps it. Time is running out so you add 30 seconds. As you look inside the chamber you notice the element turn off right then. ? after 30 seconds you decide to add more time but the machine says "No" and goes into auto cooling instead.
The work around we used was to use the highest heat profile with the max weight setting and longest roast time. Then we underdosed the drum and used the door open/close to try and control the temp and profile. That seemed to work pretty good but presented 2 issues.
1) The elements seem to do there own thing. I'm not sure if it's temp related either and might be totally a timer issue so sometimes they are going out when you would rather have them come on.
2) After the testing session I learned that opening the door is a fire hazard for flying chaff. Ooops.
A final issue is cooling. Post roast we flung open the door and blew a fan in there to conclude the roast and cool asap. Many people report good results just waiting the x min. for the drum to cool on it's own or waiting 2 min. before opening the door but eh... I'd rather cool "now". The idea of cooling the chamber that quickly has not been directly answered yet as to the thermal stress caused to the elements and possibly the electronics so it may be cool and it might crack a quartz after 100 roasts. Undecided
So with hordes of early adopters loving these little roasters I think I'm one of only 4-5 people I've seen so far that isn't as ecstatic about it just yet. People do seem to love em' up. I don't own one and they do so take that for what it's worth.
John F
Ok, so I've started to shift my focus a little more on technical roast correctness lately. In scouring lots of HB posts (particularly the Ken Fox ones) and other random stuff, I
think I've identified the essential intermediate level [espresso] roast guidelines (for lack of a better term) and I wanted to run them past you guys for validation/correction:
1. C1 should be hit in 10-12 minutes - longer than this and you're in bake territory
2. the period between C1 and C2 should be 3.5-4 minutes in duration - shorter than this and flavor development suffers
3. beans should be cooled to room temp in 2-4 minutes - cooling more quickly than 90 seconds results in accelerated staling
Assuming these guidelines are sound, I believe each can be achieved on the Behmor provided you don't mind foregoing the profile features and using an entirely manual process. Yes, yes, I know. This totally defeats the "fire and forget" aspect of the Behmor but are the profiles really all that useful anyway? It seems temp-based profiles (or, even better, manual heat control) would be MUCH more useful than kludgy time percentage-based profiles, but that's just my unqualified opinion.
With a manual process, #1 is achieved by using max power, setting the initial time to a period longer than will be required for the total roast (I use 20:00 for log simplicity/consistency) and varying the load size such that it hits C1 in 10-12 minutes (this estimation does require some experience with the behmor and the bean but I find that 300g is a good starting point when unsure, ymmv).
#2 is achieved by opening the door and releasing heat during C1. When to open the door and for how long is open for discussion but obviously you don't want to stall C1. And again, experience with the behmor and the bean comes into play when deciding but, generally speaking, opening the door at the peak of C1 for about 10-15 seconds seems to do the trick. Fire hazard? Perhaps but I've never had one and I roast in the garage with a shopvac nearby so chaffe is a non-issue. Again, ymmv, open the door at your own risk, may void your warranty, offer not valid in Nevada, yada yada yada. #2 would obviously be a lot easier/more deterministic with temp display and heat control and I'd love to see someone do a mod for this (if I don't get to it first).
#3 can be achieved in different ways but my technique is: open the door when the cooling cycle begins, immediately remove the chaffe tray, blow air into the roast chamber with the shop vac for about a minute, then hit stop, remove the drum, and then hit the cool button again so the behmor can complete it's cooling cycle while simultaneously blowing air through the drum, further cooling the beans and blowing the remaining chaffe out. Whew. I've been reconsidering the specifics of this particular step lately but this is the cooldown I've used for a few months now. I'm no longer convinced that blowing air into the chamber actually accomplishes much, other than vacating chaffe from the chamber.
Regardless, I don't think there's anything about the behmor's design that precludes you from achieving a 2-4 minute cooldown if you don't mind "ymmv, open the door at your own risk, may void your warranty, offer not valid in Nevada, yada yada yada".
I'm very eager to hear the thoughts of people who have lots more roasting experience/knowledge than I have regarding these 'guidelines'/steps.