Faster than a speeding Bullet...

... and a lot more fun!

During 2018 I noticed sales info on the Sweet Maria's web site about a relatively new roaster made in Taiwan called the Bullet. It's made by Aillio in Taiwan in small batches to tightly controlled specs. Pricey but it could handle a batch size of 300 g to 1 kg of greens (about 0.7 lbs to about 2.2 lbs). What is unique about these roasters is that the drum is heated inductively (like a residential inductive cook top). That would go a long way to improve response time to desired heat changes. The issue was (is!) that  roasters are scarce as hen's teeth. And at $2,600 they were about the price of a small travel trailer.

Since thermal lag and batch capacity is an issue with the HotTop, and because the inductive heating and thermal capacity of the Bullet would address that, I was interested. When the announcement came at the beginning of 2019 that Sweet Maria's was about to receive a batch of Bullets, I figured there wasn't much chance for me since I hadn't gotten on the notification list. Regardless, in the wee small hours of the appointed day I logged on and managed to score a Bullet. Later I learned that I had gotten a V1.5 which was delivered with the older power board design. The newer design has lower power losses on the board (more power is delivered to the drum), but there was a promise I could upgrade to the newer design later.

At about 15 kg, the Bullet weighs about double the HotTop and looks pretty studly. But the real concern is whether it can deliver roasts that are at least as good as the HotTop with substantially larger batch sizes. The Bullet seems to deliver on that score. Operation is no more complex than the HotTop, even with the somewhat cryptic control panel of the Bullet.

But operation gets easier with the supplied software called RoasTime (what I've come to call RT). Plus there is support from Aillio and other users via the on-line community at Roast.World (what I refer to as R.W).

R.W is essentially a forum with a personal space for storing and tracking bean information and roast data. And a registered user can communicate via posts as one would do on a conventional forum. What is special about this is that, via the supplied software RT, roast data is stored on the Aillio server. And roast data includes error codes generated during a roast. E.g. if power drops out, the logged error will be saved on the server so customer support can help resolve the issue.

On the downside, the Bullet, the software and the web site are all in development. There are errors that will eventually get resolved, but it'ss going to take time. I try not to get too perturbed because the limited staff seems dedicated, but the patience gets tested sometimes.

By way of example, what follows are screen shots of bean data and the chart of a roast I did today (I apologize for the crap images! Mea culpa! I'll try to find a better way). The beans are an Ethiopian variety I bought last year sometime and entered into inventory but hadn't used. Data is in kg so the numbers might look a little weird. I never got around to roasting any and today was the day. I had bought 10 lbs of these Ethiopian Dry Processed Guji Dambi Uddo from Sweet Maria's

Here's what the entry for the Ethiopian DP (dry processed) Guji Dambi Uddo beans I roasted. And below is the screenshot of the roast. These displays are what I see in R.W. As I roast a batch using RoasTime s/w, the completed roast info is updated on the R.W server. E.g. the roast which follows used 550 gm of these Ethiopian beans. I did 4 batches for a total of 2.2 kg (4 * 550 gm = 2,200 gm or 2.2 kg). So my remaining total inventory is 4.54 kg - 2.2 kg = 2.34 kg. Probably most suited to a commercial roaster, but I have a *lot* of beans, so this is helpful to me as well.

Here's one of the 4 roasts I did of these Ethiopian beans:

Frankly I think the chart generated in RT is a little better as it has a little more info like the weight of the roasted beans (I picked 550 gm as there is about 15% weight loss during roasting and 85% of 550 gm yields pretty close to 1 lb of roasted coffee.

The roast profile (the slope of the temperature lines, temperature of the drum when beans were added (charged), when power settings are changed, when first crack and second crack occur, temperature at which the beans are dumped (ejected) from the roaster... all the info necessary to duplicate the roast again.

Yeah, that's way too much info, but... what can I say? I love roasting coffee and this is my way of getting a thought out of my head and into a record of some kind.

And this ought to make some really good coffee!