I’ve known about the Bullet for about a year. I first saw chatter about it from a Sweet Maria’s video. So after a while, I’ve decided to make the upgrade. Buying this new V2 iteration is nice because it’s not a new “green” machine.
The decision now is how to get it. Sweet Maria’s has no official ETA. And first come, first served. You can buy directly from Aillio but a little weird with Taiwanese currency.
So, which is the best source? Disclaimer, I live about an hour away from SMs. Thanks!
For me, and I just purchased a V1.5 in March, it would definitely be a Sweet Maria’s choice. They are going to be very accessible and quick about dealing with a defect problem (if you need to swap a unit). In the March order of (130) units that they received, they held back (15) units for customer support.
Getting one from them requires that you be watching their web-page closely around the time the next shipment will arrive. Don’t depend on the “email me when they are in stock” thing because in my case I never got any email notice from them.
But, a couple of days before the Bullets went on-sale, their Bullet web-page shared the exact date and time that the units would go on sale that week. I made sure I was logged-in and ready to add one to my cart the minute the cart status changed to allow me to buy. They sold all (115) units in just 17 minutes, so ya gotta be ready.
I just checked and they are back to an “out of stock” status. These things seem to fly out the moment they come available. There are some advantages to the V2, but that depends on what voltage source you want to use and whether you will typically roast the max capacity. I use 115V and don’t do 1Kg roasts, so if I had the chance to snag a V1.5, I wouldn’t hesitate to grab it.
I believe Jacob said the new board was currently only shipping for the 220v but will come to the 110v as a retrofit. So honestly getting a v1.5 now isn’t a big deal based on Aillio’s history of being able to keep the hardware updated (like IBTS).
I believe SM do pre-announce a couple of days ahead of when they will open sales but you do have to be buy-the-new-iPhone slick on the trigger finger it appears…
Oh heck yeah…a pilgrimage worth taking and congrats on snagging the one they put up for sale. I don’t have any profiles that I’ve shared (yet) because I’m still in the phase of getting used to this roaster. I’m also a person that roasts without paying much attention to the graphs, but I do like that stuff!
I’d advise (as Sweet Marias does) doing (5) 1lb “seasoning” roasts before you start roasting for consumption. Those (5) seasonings are throw-away beans, but time well spent in “getting your feet wet” with the roaster.
No sweat. I’m not going to dump my Gene Cafe right away.
But one thing I thought was that I can download and then use other user’s profiles for roasting beans at least in the early days. It then lets me learn along with the sights and smells.
FYI, I haven’t heard first crack/second crack for 6 years with my Gene Cafe. So I need to get readjusted again.
Check out this thread (here) that has some home-crafted, inexpensive stethoscopes. I’m now hearing every crack of 1st and 2nd the moment it begins and I have hearing loss.
I too was one of the lucky few to snag a Bullet V1.5 from Sweet Maria’s after the March sale.
So far all I’ve done is assemble everything and run 4x 400g seasoning roasts through it. I’d planned to roast some Kenya Othaya Mahiga AA through it tomorrow but I may very well do a few more seasoning roasts since I have the dregs of a 10lb bag of sweeps from Mill City.
I’m not certain that this isn’t specific to my laptop and roaster so as always YMMV:
Use RT 2.2. Using the RT 2.3 beta, I never got the login screen and couldn’t connect to the Bullet at all. With 2.2 I was able to log in and connect to my Bullet for the first ~8 minutes of the roast. At that point RT stopped, I assume, communicating with my Bullet (no matter what I did in the software or manually no changes were reflected in RT) and I ended up with a drum high temp error.
I got beyond that and roasted another seasoning batch, number 4 I believe, and everything appeared to be working properly but from one new user to another I’d strongly recommend staying away from anything beta (I should know this) until you have your feet under you.
The Death Star, my nickname for the Bullet, is an awesome roaster. I can, and did, spend a lot of time watching it adjusting power and fan levels to hit my PH temp of 230C. It’s one of those machines that you can just sense has the ability to do really cool things if you can ever wrap your head around the logic it uses to do what it does.
I suspect the coffee rabbit hole has gotten a whole lot deeper now …
If you really feel you need a roadmap to get started I’d suggest joining the Bullet Facebook group. There is a conversation there that gives a very complete, detailed and useful roadmap that will give you a nice medium roast. I don’t typically use other’s profiles but I wanted to test this one on a 500 gram roast and it turned out quite good. I think the only way to really get to know this roaster, and what it is capable of, is to jump in and get your feet wet.
Sorry I’m bumping this topic up after over a year. Newbie here as I just managed to snag a V2 Bullet with an order to Sweet Maria’s and it should be arriving at the end of this week.
On the seasoning roasts what are people’s experience in terms of batch size 0.5kg or 1 kg? I have throw away beans available that I will use (a whole bunch of beans I completely forgot about for 4+ yrs in the basement in a box behind my wines - I live in the New England so we have basements). How many batches of seasoning roasts is recommended? I plan to use the seasoning roasts to learn the roaster and the RT software. Been roasting on a FreshRoast SR 500 all these years so it’s been by tactile senses (sight, sound and smell), but I took a hands-on workshop back in 2013 on roasting where we roasted on a Probat 12KG and 1 kg roaster so I have a little bit of understanding on roasting profiles but really rusty at this point. Much appreciate indulgences from the experts here (I’m not on FaceBook (on principles I refuse to join)) for sharing their newbie experiences with this beautiful roaster. If anyone has a roadmap I’d appreciate it!
Congratulations on winning the SM lottery! I seasoned mine last spring with several 1# roasts of inexpensive Brazil Cerrado from Happy Mug. Love SM, but Happy Mug is a lot closer/faster to the east coast.
I bought Rao’s Coffee Roasting Best Practices and Hoos’ Modulating the Flavor Profile of Coffee, and would recommend both. They’re aimed at commercial roasters, but there is plenty of information that applies to us. They will give you some guidelines on how to use the temperature information that the bullet provides.
Post some profiles and tasting notes here and I’m sure you’ll get plenty of feedback!
You will still need those sight, sound, smell inputs… nothing really changes.
I started on a fluid bed as well which made the sound part a little challenging; sound is even more challenging on the Bullet thanks to the noise from bean movement in the drum. Some have added a listening device like a stethoscope but I found tipping the little rubber cover on the bean chute lets me hear adequately.
Except for a dozen 350 gm early batches I settled on 550 gm batches (yield is about a pound) after the seasoning roasts but I’ve seen others that use batch sizes up to the 1 kg max capacity. My seasoning roasts were smaller and I think it ended up requiring more roasts to adequately season.
You throw away the seasoning roasts, but don’t waste the opportunity to experiment with power, fan, drum speed and preheat. You need to get a feel for response time (I went over a year without realizing I could directly affect Rate of Rise by changing drum speed).
Give some thought to how you will manage smoke keeping in mind to not make a direct connection to a powered exhaust system without leaving an air gap between an adapter and the duct. Aillio has info about that.
The most important thing is to have fun roasting.
Bruce
ps- no Facebook for me either but I suspect we are the minority.
Edit- search this forum for installations that others have done if you have any special conditions to meet.
For seasoning, I did 5 very dark roasts of 450 grams - 500 grams. I must say, it was pretty exciting. The first I did just using the control panel, then the others using RT. I felt like my 6th roast, the first I drank, was very tasty. I’ve never roasted that dark since, but glad I have the experience.
@bradm - appreciate the recommendation on Rao’s book. I saw he had two out on Amazon and was going to head here to see if anyone had thoughts on them. Thanks for the tip on Happy Mug, never heard of them, but then I never was looking since I have been sourcing from SM for years. I have some “dead” beans I’ll be using to season…beans I forgot I had
@bab - your comment about affecting the RoR by controlling drum and fan speeds, along with temp is what I’m trying to figure out. I should pick up the Rao and Hoos books I guess . I have figured out the smoke mitigation (I posted to another topic on this with questions and got good answers) - will be roasting right under my stove’s range hood that vents out like I do now with the FR. When you were using the 350g batches for seasoning how many roasts did you end up having to do to season the drum?
@wngsprd - when you were doing the seasoning roasts were you doing them back to back? I’m just trying to figure out what my strategy will be and how much time to set aside to do the seasoning roasts.
I think I did 4 seasoning roasts (I deleted the roast files but wish I hadn’t!). It wasn’t enough and it was a few batches more before I was happy. Of course that could have just been operator error but I liked to blame it on seasoning!
Thanks. I might try your approach of smaller 350-400g x6 or 7 batches (depends on how much of the “dead” beans I have) so I can also learn the controls and nuances of the Bullet. How did you managed to tell you’ve adequately seasoned the drum?
. I have figured out the smoke mitigation (I posted to another topic on this with questions and got good answers) - will be roasting right under my stove’s range hood that vents out like I do now with the FR. When you were using the 350g batches for seasoning how many roasts did you end up having to do to season the drum?