My usual pre soak is 1min to 1:30min at 2-3 power levels below my highest power.
If I am pushing P9 in the green phase (drying) I soak at p7.
I am always fascinated by the nearly infinite technique variations of coffee roasters.
I suppose to get at my point a bit more clearly, some context would help.
@quartzglen describes a process that makes a lot of sense, yet also feels very counter-intuitive.
SO: At “charge,” I add cold beans (450-600 grams). I reduce my heat to power 1 and, after 15 seconds, reduce drum speed to 3. For approx. 30 seconds, the bean temperature reading drops steadily, as beans “soak-in” the ambient internal drum heat, evening out at approx. 230f between 50-to-60 seconds. At that even-out point, I manually “charge” my roast by turning temp up to 8-9.
This version of a pre-soak makes perfect sense, as once the bean temp approaches the chamber temp, the overall profile isn’t affected by this initial endothermic shock and the resulting momentum chasing later in the roast.
Where this starts to fall apart for me is charging back to P7 after this soak would reduce the inflection point and force a flattened ROR curve (reducing slope). Am I getting this all wrong?
Also, side question: My Bullet R1 V2 has a max power setting of P7, what is all this mention of P8/P9?
Thanks in advance!
There was a topic about this back in 2019 that @quartzglen contributed to… latter part of 2019. In fact I found the link and inserted it below.
I tried to recreate what @quartzglen described in his posts and have followed that profile for a long time. Recently, however, I looked at some of his roasts and saw that what he did in practice was a little different, i.e. he got thru the heat soak (I believe this is similar to what you called pre-soak) faster than he described. At this point I have no desire to start again, but if I had less time invested in what I have I would pursue what @otaibimn has recently shared here- I think that is probably a very good starting point.
Bruce
The thing regarding a soak in a regular roaster is that you trying to move the accumulated heat from the drum to the beans in such a way that that they reach equilibrium in a more balanced manner.
The thing is… the bullet is not like any other roaster. You can pick it up and drop it in the trunk and take it away with you. It doesn’t have the thermal mass to hold loads of accumulated heat.
That is why you have higher preheat values. So for a soak to happen on it and not lose the momentum in a roast you gonna need to provide some form of heat to contain the momentum for the roast.
Tried a couple of P4-P5s as a soak… each time the roast extended to over 14mins. Tried P7 and was keeping in the area of 11mins max on most of my roasts.
This is what happens when you do a regular term soak on the bullet:
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Thank you!
It seemed impossible for this to work as described, and it sounds like that hunch was correct.
I still don’t understand the power settings… I only have P0 - P7. Am I missing something?
What firmware are you on?
596… is that really it… ugh
i have the option to upgrade to beta 605, or downgrade to 591… But the notes suggest 596 should provide “higher” power settings for 120v PCB
You should be able to go to P9
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That’s not right. You should have P0 thru P9. The only time you won’t is if you are set to Preheat. In Preheat the only settings are P0, P1, P3 and P7. And you can’t change any Preheat setting once it starts because f/w manages the whole Preheat process. Before Preheat starts you can set the target temp in fixed intervals of 5C° or 9F°, but once launched, you have no control in Preheat except to stop it.
Once in Roast mode, however, you should be able to either control power with the control panel buttons or using the RT3 s/w buttons (icons) on either side of the power slider (lower left on the Roast page).
If you can’t do that then you need to get in touch with your dealer or contact Support at Aillio and start a trouble ticket so they can walk you thru trouble shooting the issue.
Bruce
Edit- there should be no issue with f/w version related to setting P0 thru P9. I’ve used every released version from Jan 2019 (3xx?) thru 605 without issue setting power.
Charge to turnaround P9 then P7 till 135C and then P8 till drop gives me a good thermal momentum for my 1.05KG batches.