We are curious to know if folks are roasting in grams or ounces as well as what measurement is being used to track temperatures.
Most standards in our industry are built around grams and milliliters due to the simplified math in scaling up, finding ratios, calculating weight loss, etc. However I find that many roasters brew using the metric system but roast with pounds.
How do you weigh your green batches and roasted outputs?
How about temperature? Are you roasting in Fahrenheit or Celsius?
My roaster is a Gene Cafe roaster. It has about a half-pound capacity. However, I use 227 grams as my typical size of roast, as it gives more granularity in pre-roast/post-roast weighing on my scale. I like that additional accuracy for measuring moisture loss in greater detail. It is one of the indicators a roast went well (or a repeat roast came out like the first attempt).
I use degrees F for roasting, as it is what I have already recorded in all my roasting logs. It is also the default temperature scale for the roaster as too. I use a thermocouple in the chaff collector to measure exhaust temperature, as well as an optical pyrometer to measure drum temperature. The drum temperature is important on "silent crack beans" for determining the time of first crack, so the development phase is extended long enough to bring the best flavors forward.
Todd,
I also use a Gene Cafe. Because mostly of ignorance, I tend to roast at the highest temp setting and rarely change it during the roast. I'm now learning how important the roast curve is. I wondered how you vary the temperature setting during the roast.
Phil
