I am new to Aillio roasting, but enjoying my R2 Pro very much so far. One thing I can’t figure out is the necessity of a “warm-up” roast. On other roaster, one would have to temperature surf to a higher charge temp before dropping in the beans, but the videos I’ve watched on the Bullet indicate that when the machine is ready to roast and you get the message to charge, it is thermally stable.
Well, OK, but if it’s thermally stable, why do I need a “warm-up” roast?
Do you all do such a roast? And if so, is it from your “good” beans or do you have some low quality greens for this purpose? And how much is the batch of a warm-up roast?
I think that most people on the forum are not doing “warmup” roast.
When you start your first roast by recipe or by manually, you normally start with a preheat cycle.
If I specify a 500F preheat cycle, the Bullet will heat up to 500F at power P7 or P9. Once it reaches the preheat temperature that you have set, the power will go into a “hold that temperature” mode and give just enough power to hold the PH temperature. The Preheat usually lasts about 10 minutes. The the Bullet will prompt you to “Charge”. At this time you can load your beans. Some people believe that the pre heat time is not long enough for the bullet to fully soak up enough heat and they have noticed that there second roast takes a little less time than the first roast did.
If you want consistency for your roasts, you want the times for the same beans and conditions to be the same.
So they might roast a lesser quality bean for their first roast.
What I have seen some people do is to wait for another 5 minutes after getting the the Charge prompt before adding beans. That extra 5 minutes allows the heat to soak into the bullet more.
Okay, so if you are roasting in a garage in a cold climate, you will have inconsistent results and you should probably warm up your Bullet longer.
The beans should not be cold. (they should always be the same temperature every time you roast)
Basically we are talking about the elimination of variables.
I live in a warm climate. I store my beans in grainpro bags in tubs in the same room as my Bullet to maintain their moisture level.
I start my Recipe and when the Bullet prompts me to charge, I generally do it within a few minutes. (the bullet will remain in the preheat mode for up to an hour, I think)
I am not as fussy as some of the other roasters on this forum.
When I have a special bean that I really want to control I will take extra steps to make sure that the results are optimal and it usually won’t be the first bean roasted.
So, my advice is to try to maintain the same roasting conditions for each roast. Really get to know the Bullet. On Roast World, you can analyze multiple roasts with the same bean. if you do that, you should see that the roast profiles are close to identical.
In the colder months, I preheat my machine for about an hour in total following Scott Rao’s method:
Preheat the machine 30celsius above the intended charge temp (ex. 240 C). Takes about 20min. Then, Idle for 20min.
Lower it to intended charge temp (ex.210 C). Takes about 3 min.
Let it idle for 10 min and charge.
Considering that I roast mostly 200g batches with my R1V2, it’s probably an overkill but since I haven’t noticed significant changes and roasts are consistent, I follow this protocol every time. I will probably have to adjust it during the hotter months.
I have noticed as well that second batch of a session roasts a bit faster than the first one and the graph tends to be a bit more volatile depending on the bean. I roast mostly washed 85+ beans.
Thank you kindly to both of you for the excellent advice. My experience has been the same when it comes to consistency between the first and subsequent roasts. I am now wondering whether it will be a good idea to use a lower power setting for preheating to let the heat bake in to the machine better. The R2 Pro can go up to P14, I believe, but I usually preheat at P9. Maybe P7 and a longer warmup time will give the machine better thermal stability for the first roast.
I also like the comment about the Scott Rao method and warming things up for 30 minutes. My machine is in the garage here in California, but it’s been quite cold as of late (16° C).
I consider my first batch of the day my ‘warmup’ if you will. What that means for me is that I pre-heat longer at the desired PH temp and roast as I normally would with beans that is still “good enough to drink” but usually my less expensive beans (e.g. a $6/lb bean as opposed to $9/lb bean). This is a not throw away batch.
If I am roasting batches that require different PH temp, I always start with the batches that requires the highest PH first.
Personally I only have so much time available for roasting day to do all the batches I need to do so I don’t have the time to do an elaborate “warmup” process. My process doesn’t change whether it is dead middle of winter here in the N.E. US or summer.