Green Coffee Buying Club
Coffee Discussion boards => Hardware & Equipment => Topic started by: Mass. Wine Guy on June 30, 2015, 11:03:25 AM
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Today I cleaned the inside chamber of my Behmor. Dried it and then started to run it for a quarter lb cycle. Shut down halfway through and now nothing goes on at all.
Does anyone know a good deal on a used Hottop?
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My guess is the board died. You can get a new one for under $30. Replacement took me an hour but I'm SLOW! ;)
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is there an error code?
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There's no any code. No power. I do have the replacement upgrade board. Maybe I'll try that.
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Give Behmor a call first. They have good customer support and it "might be" something else?
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Mine did the same thing. Behmor sent me a new side printed circuit board. Kind of pain to change because some of the connections are hard to unplug, but not that big of a deal. While you have it opened up, take some canned compressed air and blow everything out. Behmor CS is really helpful.
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They're very helpful. I had trouble a year ago or so and they were great. But
I've had a couple of burnout problems and am weary of facing another. Why does it happen?
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It may have something to do with the roast level that the machine is used for. AFAIK, while the Behmor is capable of very dark roasts like Vienna and French, these are levels that are best avoided. Ask Joe Behm about it.
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Of the home roasters now available, which are well-made and can handle dark roasts well? I'm looking for something that can roast a minimum of half a pound.
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Just pony up and get a roaster from Mill City 1.5 Kilo would solve all your problems for a life time of roasting.
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I'd love to, but $500 or less is my budget.
Is the Gene Cafe good? I've read that the heating elements go bad rather fast.
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HGDB or SCTO may be your best options in that price range. I don't know much about the Gene Cafe.
I'm not familiar with those, but I'll look into them. Thanks
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I'm totally hopeless when it comes to building anything, no matter how "easy" it may be.
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I agree SCTO is the best option, I have a 2 Kilo gas drum roaster for my customers I get the scraps of what is left over, the SCTO is what I use for my personal roasting 90 % of the time, with a little practice you can put out a nice roast. These can be built for around $100 bucks, their are many people on this site that use this type of roasters, Peter is considered the guru in my opinion. Milo turned me on to this system about 4 or 5 years ago and that started my obsession, between family friends and neighbors. Had to up my game and purchased a 2 kilo drum roaster to keep up with over a 100 lbs a month of roasting.
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I'm not a high volume roaster. I do a it a pound or so a week.
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I'm not a high volume roaster. I do a it a pound or so a week.
A heat gun, wok or dog bowl and the temp probe will be perfect for you provided you are well ventilated and willing to put up with the mess. If you like dark roasts without craters, this will be a good setup.
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I'm used to having a real roaster, so I guess I'll fix my Behmor.
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You'll be better off fixing the Behmor, at least from a resale standpoint; if you don't fix it, it's worth little; if you do fix it, you can sell it. If you can fix a Behmor, you have all the skills needed to build an SC/TO.
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Maybe. Let's see if it works after I "fix" it.
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Good luck with your repair job, if you’re not totally comfortable you might think about taking it to a appliance repair shop after the parts come in, they will have the skills to fix it. I know of many folks that love this method of roasting, not my cup of tea. I have modded up many SCTOs for family and friend’s. They never seem to fail, all I do is keep clean, I did have one that the bushings on the fan motor started making noise, had to tear it apart and clean works great. My 5 year old one heating element seems to be acting a little funny, looking to replacing or making one, don’t think parts for these Galloping Gourmet turbo ovens are available.
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If you can fix a Behmor, you have all the skills needed to build an SC/TO.
? It has been a while, but I think I remember something about mating the toaster oven to the Stir Crazy lid, that didn't sound like anything you'd likely encounter replace a board in a Chinese convection oven or whatever the Behmor is.
I concur with the real roaster sentiment, vs. dog bowl - kind of surprised to see the dog bowl thing come up, as my impression was that the heat gun guys have moved on to other things. But if "real" means it's an electric appliance with a circuit board, then ... too bad for you. I gave up on that a long time ago. US house current is not meant for roasting a pound of coffee at a time, and the appliances don't seem to be as robust as they are when made in the millions for popping popcorn etc. (and used as intended.) But if the SC/TO is exceptionally efficient with heat but doesn't run too far over its design temperature, that does sound interesting.
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If you can fix a Behmor, you have all the skills needed to build an SC/TO.
? It has been a while, but I think I remember something about mating the toaster oven to the Stir Crazy lid, that didn't sound like anything you'd likely encounter replace a board in a Chinese convection oven or whatever the Behmor is.
I concur with the real roaster sentiment, vs. dog bowl - kind of surprised to see the dog bowl thing come up, as my impression was that the heat gun guys have moved on to other things. But if "real" means it's an electric appliance with a circuit board, then ... too bad for you. I gave up on that a long time ago. US house current is not meant for roasting a pound of coffee at a time, and the appliances don't seem to be as robust as they are when made in the millions for popping popcorn etc. (and used as intended.) But if the SC/TO is exceptionally efficient with heat but doesn't run too far over its design temperature, that does sound interesting.
It's really nothing more than placing the TO top on the SC bottom. The 'difficulty' comes if/when you decide to disable the SC heating element or put a switch on it, adding a spacer between the top and bottom, and modding the stirring arm. It's a better roaster if you do those three things, but they're not necessarily necessary.
The TO has plenty of power for larger batches, and the limitation is in the SC in that it could use a faster motor for better agitation and heat transfer.
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I only have about $150.00 into my SCTO setup, that's including a 60 rpm motor, a fabricated aluminium drive coupling. for the stir arm's I just stacked two stock arms that came with the stir crazy's Very happy with the results, can do 1 pound easy. Normally I only do 12 or 13 oz at a time for personal consumption. I get nice even roasts with the higher rpms.
I have read on this site and coffee forum site that circuit boards fail allot on the Behmor roasters, I wonder if they have inadequate cooling on the electronics, don't now anything about this roasting system just curious.
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If you can fix a Behmor, you have all the skills needed to build an SC/TO.
But if "real" means it's an electric appliance with a circuit board, then ... too bad for you.
Gee, how do I interpret this prosaic gem? Too bad that I can't a) spend more on a "real" roaster, or b) build my own gas-fired machine? Not all of us have the luxury or skills to do this.
I'm going to open up my roaster, look for loose connections and, if necessary, replace the board. But next time this happens, the Behmor goes.
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US house current can easily roast 1 Lb of coffee at a time if it's applied properly. US house current is also 240 volts, that can roast a few KG at a time in the Artisan. Before you go making general statements, might want to run it through an accuracy filter first.
FWIW a Behmor 'could' easily do a pound but the UL listing qualifications is what I believe are killing it in the way it has to be designed. It has plenty of potential of putting the proper heat into the beans IF it didn't' play the on / off bullshit with the temp once it gets up there. See thats the problem, if you need to control the heat, lower the input but KEEP ADDING it, don't just turn it off, that does not do a good job of it, and can stall a crack a bit IMO. Once beans start cracking they need to keep having heat added to them to push the crack along. Turning off the element and letting the latent heat try to coast them along does no favors really.
I have one that I modded, they are easy to PID, Varying the voltage can be cumbersome but you can add PWM to control the heat input if you need et al. If you really want to get stupid, you can get a little PLC for pretty cheap and custom a profile onto it. Siemens makes a few, you can get old SLC500's pretty cheap now, just to name a few. Ladder Logic is not that hard to master. Add a few K rtd inputs, an Ohmega PID and you are set. if you need just on off get a yokogawa 330M it has 3 or 4 channels on it. If you really want to nerd it out, PLC / VFD / the drum motor and fan motor, they sell fractional HP small motors you can do that with easily. Vary your rotational speed, or your fan speed. I go with fan speed for temp control along with power to elements. Ok Ok this getting far too nerdy for most folks but my point is, even 120 vac can EASILY roast a pound of coffee IF it is used properly.
A standard outlet is 15 A kitchen outlets at times are 20A 15 amps is 1800 watts, lets keep a few for the motors and crap and you can still put 1500 to 1600 watts of heat into your beans. That's an ass ton of heat there.
I am not going to get into details how to 'trick out' a Behmor because I do not want to be held responsible for your mishaps if you are not tech / electric savvy. I don't need you blaming me for burning your house down because you bypassed a safety, or set it up on a different system and did it wrong.
120 VAC is plenty of power for the power savvy.
Oh and I have solar panels too. I have used my inverter to vary the voltage to the unit, as controlled by a PLC via a network link. (its the nerd thing again) OR you could just run the DC up and down and power your elements with straight DC too. On a 120 DC system, you can easily swing it up or down 20 volts to work with. Start low, work your way up, a lot more power in DC than AC... think RMS.
Ill shut up now
Aaron
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Too bad that I can't a) spend more on a "real" roaster, or b) build my own gas-fired machine? Not all of us have the luxury or skills to do this.
No skills required, really. Common propane grill, rotisserie spit, mail order drum, full propane tank, and let's roast. In theory the drum could manage 5 lbs, but 1 is enough for my purposes. Oh yeah, box fan and screen tray for cooling.
I burned through a handful of popcorn poppers, and some Hearthware thing with a fancy glass chamber but fragile electronics. I've read the tedious recital of Alpenröst failures, read about issues with the Hottop involving voltage drops in house current. Aaron is no doubt right that in principle, ordinary house current can build up enough heat to roast large amounts of coffee, but between design issues around how to actually do that and the small production cottage industry electronics, it seems to me that the electric roaster is for someone who really for whatever reason can't swing a gas grill. Weather is one of the obvious reasons, of course, as it's an outdoor thing.
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Or just buy a new Behmor, will adjustable heat function. :)
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I guess I will replace the circuot board and upgrade the control panel. Whenever the roaster craps out next, I'll get something better. Very frustrating.
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I think I'm giving up on home roasting. The Behmor sucks due to its overly delicate wiring. Even the Hottop needs expensive modifications to really do the job well.
If I spend another minute trying to disconnect all the wires from the Behmor circuit board I'm going to drown myself. I think it must be a practical joke: Glue the clips in and tell owners that using a small flathead screwdriver will release them. I am to to the term "handy" what oil is to water. Maybe my electrician can help.
Thanks guys. I have a date with a few bottles of choice alcohol.
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Tell you what you do.
Bring it to your electrician and say, "Here, I need this done if you get this thing working Ill roast you a few pounds of fine coffee" Give him a cup pre made or a small bag of grounds to entice him and it's a done deal :D
Aaron
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Great idea!
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Trust me, I have bribed plenty of people with fresh roast 8)
Heck, if it wasn't for doing that, I have a feeling my postman would have done a drive by and burned my house to the ground a long time ago hehe.
Aaron
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Of course, I'd have to use a popcorn popper to roast anything now.
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Having replaced the circuit board on my Behmor, I can say it's a major PITA. Some connectors were attached so securely I almost broke one or two getting them loose. I don't think a few of them would survive if I have to replace the board again.
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I have out used my Behmor for awhile now, so I've purchased a Huky 500 from Taiwan around April of this year. I stayed with the basic setup and cost me $1600 including shipping. Its the best purchased so far. I can easily roast a pound or a tad more without any problems and it gives me consistent roast that I like, but there can still be improvement made on the roaster. If there is any problem or question, Mr. Li will respond in a day or two, but the wait for the roaster to the U.S. may take about 3 weeks which is a very long wait. Something to think about.
Cheers
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I have nowhere near that amount to spend.
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if you're really done with it, throw it up on craiglist or these forums :)
wiring/electrical work can be frustrating for sure
have you considered a turbo oven/stir crazy combo? you can pick up the parts for cheap at goodwill etc.
edit: nvm it seems to have already been suggested.
here's one for cheap: http://coffeegeek.com/forums/members/buysell/697170 (http://coffeegeek.com/forums/members/buysell/697170)
-i have no affiliation with the seller
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I have use a GeneCafe for several years. Never had a problem with parts. The only problem is finding out how to profile the roast for a given bean. I have used up a full 5 pounds of beans and never got what I thought was a decent cup of coffee. Strangely, I can buy pre-roasted beans at the local grocery store and get excellent coffee some time. I just keep trying because it is a hobby and I invested what I think is a lot of money to get a Gene. I was able to routinely get great coffee from my old IRoasts but they didn't last all that long (about $100 per year of service).
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Of the home roasters now available, which are well-made and can handle dark roasts well? I'm looking for something that can roast a minimum of half a pound.
I think you are actually getting past the segment of roasters you are considering.
The road I see traveled most often is that people move past the Hearthware, fresh roast +8, Behmor et al. and then either go to SC/TO, Modified Poppers, BBQ drum route or just go full bore and get a Huky, Sonofresco, or some other commercial small batch roaster.
Usually its an inevitable journey to get to the commercial roasters, I do see a lot of people hanging on to their sc/to and BBQ drums though.
But I wouldn't do a parallel move such as repairing the Behmor especially paying for the repair a la Alpenroaster, or even a hot top.
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I don't think I followed all of that, particularly the closing sentence, but it would be interesting to get some numbers on who here has been using what. You make it sound like there'd be a lot of commercial batch roasters out there, which is kind of depressing.
I'd make these qualifications: home roaster - no small-time sales, barter, whatever, you're roasting mainly for own consumption; and been using it as main roaster for more than a couple years.
If people are buying commercial roasters to roast a pound a week in the back yard, that seems like a pretty sour commentary on what's available really made for the home roaster - Behmor, Hottop, etc. I believe it, though. I haven't been through them all, just one Hearthware Gourmet, but that was enough to get the idea.
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I don't think I followed all of that, particularly the closing sentence, but it would be interesting to get some numbers on who here has been using what. You make it sound like there'd be a lot of commercial batch roasters out there, which is kind of depressing.
I'd make these qualifications: home roaster - no small-time sales, barter, whatever, you're roasting mainly for own consumption; and been using it as main roaster for more than a couple years.
If people are buying commercial roasters to roast a pound a week in the back yard, that seems like a pretty sour commentary on what's available really made for the home roaster - Behmor, Hottop, etc. I believe it, though. I haven't been through them all, just one Hearthware Gourmet, but that was enough to get the idea.
Well I think I used 2 roads actually in my example. But I think small batch used roasters are better. You can find Sonofrescos's these days for around $800-1000 used. You can make much more than 1lb per week and yes most people make a few friends and usually sell a few lbs here and there once they head down that road. Small batch commercial roasters tend to attract these types of people. not the one lb a week crowd, those max out at the Hottop.
But the other road I mentioned was the BBQ drum, SC/TO, hottop, Modified popper route which seems to pull away from the behmor, gene, hearthware, etc...which are usually used to introduce people into roasting. I feel as if you are at the $400+ level of a hottop you are probably better off investing in a Sonofresco.
But the numbers might surprise you, most of the folks I know from the early days of GCBC and a lot of people I know from Coffeegeek, and even the co-op have all moved on past personal home roasters if they started there. Aside of course from something used as a cupping roaster. Granted some have been more than happy with the BBQ drum route and there is a lot of value to that.
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What's an sc/to again? Easy and cheap to build?
Due to the incredible generosity of another forum member, I now have another used, but in way better condition, Behmor to roast with.
I could never adequately thank them enough.
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But the other road I mentioned was the BBQ drum, SC/TO, hottop, Modified popper route which seems to pull away from the behmor, gene, hearthware, etc...which are usually used to introduce people into roasting. I feel as if you are at the $400+ level of a hottop you are probably better off investing in a Sonofresco.
Hard to get a good split on the categories here. My impression was that earlier, Behmor owners were talking like it would be in the same league with the Hottop. I haven't heard so much about the Gene. It does seem that for various reasons the glow fades on these things, and various frustrations take over.
The BBQ drum probably needs a category of its own. It's in the gas category along with the commercial roasters. Getting away from house current electric power changes the game a lot. I have a "5 pound" drum, never tried to see how much I can actually manage but I'm reasonably confident it could go to 3 lbs. It's also at the bottom of the technology path - I turn by hand, so no electricity needed - and it may be one of the first home roasters along with the popcorn poppers. I remember someone talking about it way back in the alt.coffee days, wonder if he's still doing it.
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What's an sc/to again? Easy and cheap to build?
Due to the incredible generosity of another forum member, I now have another used, but in way better condition, Behmor to roast with.
I could never adequately thank them enough.
Stir Crazy, Turbo oven basically a hack to make a roaster some swear is the best of the home built style roasters (i.e. PID' popper I, Modified popper, Ronco oven conversions) Peter and Buttwhiskers would be great sources of info on these. Although I was an early adopter and in fact had made some significant advances to what is normal these days (chaff removal vents) I did not get the results I wanted from this method. I have been told that the amount of coffee I was roasting in them isn't what is normal now a days. They are relatively cheap and easy to put together.
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Hard to get a good split on the categories here. My impression was that earlier, Behmor owners were talking like it would be in the same league with the Hottop. I haven't heard so much about the Gene. It does seem that for various reasons the glow fades on these things, and various frustrations take over.
The split would be that some are pre-built sold as consumer products and others you have to somewhat create even if you have the recipe.
Yeah I'm not a fan of any of them actually. I think the hottop promises too much and has inherent risks (fires) but is probably the best of that world. The behmor seems to be a glorified ronco rotisserie conversion roaster with some sort of catalytic converter indoor roasting appeal...I have only heard of broken circuit boards and problems with this roaster. Behm makes coffee makers etc now too, which from the people I know that have used them aren't impressed.
At the end of the day these items are investments. You either get your investments worth or you don't.
"Had it with My Behmor" is a theme I am hearing from people who use them.
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The split would be that some are pre-built sold as consumer products and others you have to somewhat create even if you have the recipe.
Which is identical to have electronic roast controls / vs don't have, am I right? I guess these controls - profiles etc. - are pretty important to people who are in the market for a roaster.
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The split would be that some are pre-built sold as consumer products and others you have to somewhat create even if you have the recipe.
Which is identical to have electronic roast controls / vs don't have, am I right? I guess these controls - profiles etc. - are pretty important to people who are in the market for a roaster.
Maybe?, I think the Behmor has some profiles. Know the new fresh roast +8 or whatever they are called now have some electronic controls, the Gene cafe roaster that Chris had there were some electronic profiling. My PID' poopery I has more customizable electronic controls than even my Sonofresco but my sonofresco has presets 1-10 that work fine for me, and now they have a control board you can buy to hook up your laptop and experiment with custom roast profiles.
The manual turn the dials of the old roasters is going away, electronics are becoming unavoidable but some obviously do it better than others.
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It's going to boil down to, How Nerdy do you want to get, or how Hands off do you want to get.
Some people like the push a button and not worry a heck of a lot of it path. Others want to nuke it and play inspector gadget and be intimately involved in every second of the roasting experience. Granted these are the pretty much extreme ends of the coffee roasting spectrum but you get my point.
Some people love to build stuff and make frankenroasters, others are not that inclined or ambitious and just want something someone else did.
The 'marketed' roasters are more towards the plug and play crowd. The SC/TO as an example are for the home tweakers and gadgeteers.
I like my Behmor, I learned how to use it. I have one at work that I tricked out badly, I have one at home that's just 'basic'. I have heard others complaining about them lately, maybe the quality is suffering since they first came out, as is pretty much anything made nowadays as china takes over the QA on everything. Maybe it's just because there Be mor of them out there, (that's for you John :) so since more are out there, there will be more with problems. I don't know to be honest.
In this case nobody can really tell 'you' what 'you' want / need etc. You are going to have to ultimately make that decision based on what you want to do, how much time you have etc etc. How 'involved' do you want to get with the roasting? To put it another way, I don't want to tell you get an ABC roaster they are great, only to have you try it, decide you don't like it, now are mad at me and it's MY fault because I told you to get it.
How old is your 'more, if its under warranty can't you send them in to get fixed or did he stop doing that?
Aaron
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I don't want to tell people "get an ABC roaster" and then have that model turn out to be prone to failure.
We see a lot of exploration here, and stuff that works well enough to deserve some enthusiasm. It would be great if there were some way to keep track of what really holds up to the test of time, though - people don't get tired of it and move on, it doesn't break, it keeps getting used as the main home roasting device.