We placed an order for the Aillio Bullet R2pro last month and are eagerly
awaiting its arrival. Meanwhile we’ve been thinking about everything we do now and how we are going to translate it to the Aillio. For context we are a micro roaster, we’ve roasted hundreds of batches 200g at a time on a hand roaster. We use The Hive Roaster with a temperature probe. We’ve roasted all sorts of different coffee and have experimented with charge temperatures, finish temperatures, roasting times and roast curves.
It’s hard enough trying to shake the hive around in a consistent way, so it’s virtually impossible to control the speed at which the beans are moving ( drum speed) and there is no fan to increase or decrease airflow. What we’re interested in learning about and experimenting with is how these variables affect the end result of the roast. So far our most successful roasts have been at end temperatures of 420°F, between 9-10 minute roasts, with charging temperatures of 250°F
Our goal when roasting is to reach FC with lots of power, we usually start tapering off the heat after 350°F but it depends on how fast the temperature is climbing. Once we reach our FC it usually takes between 1 - 1:30min to finish the roast.
What variables seem to affect the final product the most?
What Flavors do you consider desireable?
What roast times have yielded the best flavors?
Has anyone here roasted with a hand roaster?
Is there is anything else we could share about our experience hand roasting?
Best Regards
i enjoy stovetop roasting. get really great results. it’s just a lot more labor intensive during the roast. but it gives really claasic profiles and a lot of control. downsides would only be batch roasting all day or pin sharp accuracy batch to batch would be a major challenge.
just going off flavor, stovetop is as good as anything, if not better than most. it just isn’t quite a professionally viable option, and demands more from the senses (unless you decide to rig up probes and chart graphs etc)
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Tell me about it, we’ve just recieved the Aillio in the mail and are working on getting everything set up for it and that’s all I can think about, stove top is very slow and labour intensive. We got the Aillio pro and unless they’re not accurate with the roasting capacity, we’ll be roasting 5 times as much coffee at a time than we are able to now. I’ve roasted 5 pounds in the last week, I have plenty more to roast this weekend and each batch I roast I am looking more and more lovingly at the Aillio in the box haha.
I can’t wait to start roasting on the Aillio and I hope I can get some good results with it.
What has your experience been going from stovetop to the Aillio?
I started my coffee roasting journey using an instrumented Hive a year or so and learned a tremendous amount from the experience. It certainly required all of my senses (and a strong arm). I received my R2 Pro late last year and have close to 100 roasts so far. Much like the Hive seemed happy with around 150g loads, I am seeing much more consistent results at higher loads, having started with 1 pound and now standardizing on 800g. I have also been using Chat GPT successfully by feeding specific content including roast snapshots immediately after a roast including weight loss to fine tune the next batch. I would imagine you have yours up and running by now and would be interested in how your liking it. Best of luck and have fun!
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I’ve roasted close to 5 pounds on the Aillio so far and I’ve experienced the whole spectrum of emotions. Right before finishing getting everything ready for the Aillio, my temperature probe on the hive decided to stop working. It was not so perfect, perfect timing because even though I got incredibly frustrated ( it’s the second probe that has given up on us ), it proved to be an opportunity to remember and depend on other factors/senses other than time and probe temp. I focused more on color, first crack and weight lost after roasting. Less than ideal but the last couple of pounds I roasted on the hive turned out very well.
I had some trouble the first time turning the Aillio on because the controll panel wasn’t making a good connection, but once I removed and reinstalled it everything worked perfectly to my relief.
I am still fine tuning my roasts but as far as ease, there is no comparison. I find myself laughing at the thought of trying to cool down coffee outside with a metal strainer, or shaking the hive over the stove for hours when we had a lot of friends ask for coffee at the same time.
The Pro cooling tray is amazingly fast and the roaster is ready to roast again before the coffee is done cooling, it makes me smile just thinking about it. It takes me about a minute to cool the coffee down to room temp ( 500g of coffee roughly 70 room temp)
I find myself focusing more on ROR rather than bean temp. Also,I feel it’s important to pay atention to the First crack, where as before I was focused on the temperature goals according to 30 second intervals. 2 min into the roast I expected a certain temperature 2:30 another and so forth. Now I try to control the ROR and get a FIrst Crack between a certain time.
In short I thoroughly enjoy roasting on the Aillio and can’t wait to acrew as much experience as you!
What insights have you picked up from talking to chatgpt, and how has your roasting changed ( if at all) since you’ve started roasting on the Aillio and using AI?
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