@spokes67, I’ve noticed you have almost 3,000 roasts. do you have a favorite roast profile you could share? Would love to see how an expert roast goes.
I have given Site Feedback asking for the creation of a recommended profile/roast/recipe section, where people who have created a really good recipe can share it as recommended. At present, as you say, there is no way of knowing if the 3000 roasts are great or rubbish!
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Take a look at @bradm’s roasts. He rates his own roasts (according to his palate/preference of course). He roasts mostly at 325/350g and ~500g. I have leveraged his “GREAT” and “EXCELLENT” profiles at the beginning of my journey with the Bullet. I still look to what he’s doing for inspirations and do my own tweaks. Brad tends to roast around medium/medium dark like I do and we’ve compared notes when we started to try to roast 500g. Have fun with the learning journey 
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Thanks Blacklabs, that’s a great tip. I will be giving a way a lot of coffee from now on… so I can justify roasting more often 
@mark.palmosfv5l Take a look at my last three roasts from this past weekend (numbered 29, 30 and 31 in my RW roast log). You’ll see the variations in the profiles for the exact same bean for these three roasts. I will tell this, the cup result is also different. #29 is more smoky for sure, #30 is less smoky and a bit more roasted nuts, while #31 is more floral with a hit of “sweet” and minimal smokiness. The #27 and #28 I wasn’t nearly as happy with (same Peru beans as #29 to #31). Feel free to use them and tweak them. I’d be curious what results you get
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Thanks Blacklabs, I’m surprised 31 was still with floral notes given how long it took to FC, and that you took it all the way to SC… and 29 and 30 did not get to SC and were more smoky? I may try 31 on some of the half packets I have left over, make a random blend and see how it goes
BTW, if you like decaf, I made a roast yesterday which I think was my best decaf so far. It’s here
Cheers!
Mark.
@mark.palmosfv5l I think on #31 the lower PH might have something to do with it being a bit more floral (at least for this Peru bean) and use of lower P in general. However, with this type of profile I found (with my earlier Peru roasts #27 and #28) is that it can lead to a slight “baked” flavor on the cup finish if I wasn’t careful of when I changed the temp and fan - more delicate profile I must say.
What I just realized with #29 and #30 is I didn’t mark SC. Both of them I also dropped just as SC started, similar to #31.
FWIW, #30 was inspired by @bradm’s Jul. 11, 2021, Mexico CBV 221 26-22-11 EXCELLENT FC+ profile.
Looks like the IBTS drop temperature of #31 was only 215C, compared with 223C for #29 and #30. On my machine SC begins around 223C, so maybe #31 didn’t actually get to SC?
Overlaying #30 with mine, it looks like the preheat BT on #30 was about 10C higher than mine, which might explain why it roasted more quickly.
Looks like the fan quenched #27 and #28 late in the roast, which might also make them flat or baked tasting?
Bottom line is how they taste. Thanks for posting flavor descriptions to go with the curves!
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@bradm what you stated about #27 and #28 could be the issue regarding the higher fan at the end there.
Interesting observation about the temps there. TBH sometimes it is difficult to hear SC so you could be right, but then #31 being the 3rd roast I don’t know if the already hot drum (and warm environmental temps) has anything to do with.
I try with the flavor descriptions…trying train my palate for coffee cupping and not use wine tasting terms (maybe I should…) 
I have to say #29 and #30 makes for a better espresso brew than #31 which was nice for pour over.
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Brad and Blacklabs, I am trying to get to grips with “flick and crash” and how that relates to baking a roast. In Brad’s roast linked here, there is, what seems to my newbie eye, as a “flick and crash” suddenly up and suddenly down before and after FC… or am I mistaken about what that means?
Thanks,
Mark
I’m not able to answer that … I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to that as much to determine if there is a correlation or not. Maybe Bradm might have more insight into that since he roasts a lot more than I have. You can also search on “flick and crash” in these forums to see what other discussions had taken place about that topic.
What I can say based on my recent 5 roasts of the Peru Jaen (now that I went back to look to see if there are pronounced “flick and crash”) is that while #27 and #28 has a slight “baked” flavor, those two profiles didn’t have a pronounced “flick and crash”. #29 and #30 does show a “flick and crash” but I don’t feel there was a “baked” flavor to the cup. That’s just my observations based on my roasts so take it with a pinch of salt
Yeah, well, it seems that as soon as there’s someone making up some truism about roasting, someone else finds it to be not true, or for the opposite to be true even… That’s exciting in one way, but in another, a bit disappointing/sad to think that I may never improve at tasting my coffee and then knowing what I should do to the next roast to improve the taste. I mean, the basics - lighter=more acid fruit/floral VS darker=more choc/toffee etc. but how we finesse the roast to accentuate certain aspects does not seem to be at all scientifically achievable, which makes me I wonder why I have an expensive machine that records a roast progress with several sensors! 
Check out Rao’s “Coffee Roasting Best Practices” for discussions on crash (decreasing RoR right after FC) and flick (increasing RoR after crash). The terms are defined on p.28, along with “hump” referring to the rise in RoR just before FC. So according to CRBP, the sequence of these events in an un-managed roast is hump-crash-flick.
Many of the BT-RoR curves for my roasts show a sharp hump that I’ve been referring to as a spike. Very interestingly, the new IBTS-RoR curve usually does not show that spike. Roast #30 is also an example of this. So lately I’m cautiously ignoring the BT-RoR spike, attributing it to a sensor artifact rather than actual bean temperature behavior, and trusting the IBTS measurement. Have done several such roasts that end up tasting great by my palette (or maybe I just like the flavor of “roasty” coffee?). Anyone else investigate this?
I’m starting to prefer deliberately inducing a flick a couple of minutes after FC for dark roasts. This shortens the time to SC and reduces weight loss compared to a steadily declining RoR. It seems to also reduce excessive bitterness and improve sweetness, which my dark roasts need. The approach is similar to Neil Wilson’s S-curve method. Thanks to @coffee_mook for promoting this.
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It’s why I didn’t want to get my pea brain into a pretzel about what the RoR looks like. I mostly focus on the temp lines when I roast. I guess I’m being contrarian I haven’t read any of Rao’s work. I do use the tryer a bit and trying to develop more of my senses for the roast based on sight, sound and smell.
To me that is what makes this journey exciting. I collect my own data my own way and note what I liked or didn’t and tweak from there. And yes, I use other people’s roasts as a useful starting point or comparison. To take the same bean and do different things to it and get different results is what’s so fascinating to be creating that.
Of course now Bradm just gave me something else to look into with that mention of the S-curve method
I’ve noticed the same thing as bradm on the RoR (BT-RoR vs IBTS-RoR). I suspect that maybe something to do with the curve smooth algorithm are different. And it is also batch sensitive. Smaller size has greater gap between BT-RoR and IBTS-RoR, But again it is the final taste that matters. Once I like the taste and I will try to duplicate the same pattern or the curve. That is when curve plays a big role to my roast.
Hey fellas, thanks for the responses…
Ah, I had thought the flick was that rise just before FC, so that’s hump
I had ordered The Coffee Roaster’s Companion, but just realised the book you are referring to is his other book, “Coffee Roasting: Best Practices”. I’m trying to get the books swopped before I get the wrong one. I’ve got “The Coffee Roaster’s Handbook” but it’s not very deep into the curves etc, a bit general.
I am considering removing the BT ROR from the chart display and using only the IBTS ROR… surely that is more accurate, as it is based on the actual beans, and not affected by the limitations of a metal probe?
Interesting, I’d never heard of that idea. Do you take most roasts to SC?
Yeah, I also like the idea of experimenting, but I would want to be actually learning something about cause and effect, rather than experiment and not be sure of what change caused what result. I suppose that means making small changes to one thing,… otherwise it’s hard to figure out what’s causing a taste difference. I’ve just bought 5kg of a Decaf Ethiopian Sidamo, and am going to try all sorts of things with the same bean, to suss out the differences…
Thanks chaps,
Mark.
Exactly what I’ve been trying to do is keep certain parameters constant and change one or two parameters. I find the YouTube videos by Mill City Roasters to be very helpful. I also picked up Rob Hoos’ book (quick read). Another book that I picked up that I’m trying to finish is this one https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D2ZSZBN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 - I will caveat one thing, because it is translated from Korean to English you do need to get over some of the clunky translation but he has a lot of info all for a price of 2 fancy Starbucks “coffee drink”. My experiments has some method to the madness. I will use one of two PH 401F or 392F and always a D9, F2 and P7 to start. From there I played with whether it’s P6 or P8 after some set time after charge. I haven’t had the time to roast as much in July so I haven’t been progressing with my “experiments” as much. I learn better trying to do my own thing (it’s how I learned to cook in college, follow a recipe and then tweak it (it’s why I can’t bake!)) because in the end it is about whether I liked the result in the cup or not.
I noticed you mentioned decaf a couple times. I have not roasted decaf but I think there is another thread about it where someone said decaf beans “behaves” different because of the processing the beans had to go through to make it a decaf.
Happy roasting!
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