bit of an update on my life with the huky due here after roasting with it for a couple of months.
the biggest drawback that i can find is the large batch size. as a result i get to roast much less often as i'd like to. roasting only twice per week makes it a bit hard to remember what changes i had planned to apply to the next roast
it's still a lot of fun to roast with it and i wouldn't want to go back to my hottop but the huky has seen a few updates since i've received it.
i'm still using the perforated drum while most other users that i know of have either chosen a solid drum straight away or changed to the solid drum later.
the three updates that i have done are:
- a 'normal' gas burner instead of the IR stove
- a 72 rpm drum motor over the default 50 rpm motor
- a dimmer on the fan
the 'normal' gas burner has a bit more power and doesn't heat the drum itself as much as the ir burner does (or so i have been told - not sure if it's true).
the faster motor simply improves bean agitation while the dimmer on the fan is needed to stop the 747 style ventilation pulling beans out of the drum while roasting.
strangely, after the first few very successful roasts i started to find a lot of bitterness in my roasts. none of the above upgrades however seemed improve things there as i had sometimes more and sometimes less bitterness in the cup.
i think however that i now understand what i have been doing wrong. i always used to have at least some moderate if not strong ventilation during the drying phase. i tried to stay as close to 5 minutes for reaching 150C BT. at batch sizes of 350g+ that is only possible when the fan is actively pulling quite a bit of heat through the drum/beans. i think however that this has been drying the beans to much to fast. i now have the exhaust pipe closed and the fan off and all of the sudden i have hardly any bitterness in my roasts...
i may try to at least open the exhaust valve again but i will certainly keep the fan off until the beans start to turn yellow from now on.
does anybody have suggestions regarding the drying phase?