# To P2 or not to P2?



## vagabond (May 23, 2011)

That is the question...

Hello everybody

I posted on here a while ago (back in May) looking for advice on home roasting and of course got excellent replies. Anyway family holiday, broken car and the determination to have as many bbq's as possible no matter the weather meant I didn't get my behmor until mid August.

Just completed my fourth roast, went big and roasted a pound of Nicaraguan SHG. From reading other forums I decided to give P2 a go with a 1:30 preheat but was concerned that if the drop in heat on the profile at around 2/3rds of the time into the roast happened before 1C it wouldn't give me the best result. Of course the drop in power happened before 1C! 1C started around the time the heat increased again toward 100% and I found 1C seemed laboured and slow. I haven't tried the coffee yet but will report on the outcome.

So Steve from HB reckons P2 is a mistake and Joe from Behmor will change it in future models. I can understand his reasoning that dropping the temp during a roast is not good and possibly never done by the pros. But there are plenty of home roasters that use P2 and they like the results.

What's your experience?

Also, while I'm here, anybody know if you increase time during the roast does it stretch the end of the profile or the current time in the profile? For example: I'm roasting on P2, I'm coming close to the time when the profile temp will fall but haven't hit 1C yet so I increase the roast time by say one minute. Does that keep the power at 100% for an extra minute before resuming the profile or does the power decrease as normal and I get an extra minute at 100% at the end of the roast?

Ta and happy roasting


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## vintagecigarman (Aug 10, 2009)

Sorry, can't help with what extending time does in P2 - I've tried it a few times but been so disappointed with the results that I no longer use it. I've never been able to understand the logic behind that profile.

I use P1 most of the time, but have also had good results with 4 - particularly with Hasbean pre-blended espresso.

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## vagabond (May 23, 2011)

A quick update on my recent P2 roast. Tried it about 36 hours after roast and I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out. Really nice and rounded, decent acidity but quite thin. I then went to Rome for a week, returned, ground, pressed and yughhh! No body and bitter - so binned it. Will keep away from P2 in the future


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## DavidBondy (Aug 17, 2010)

I've never found P2 works for me! I use s 2 minute P4 preheat and then roast (never more than 400g of beans but normally 375g) on P4 to get me a nice, dark and smoky roast.

I used to blend my own version of Steve's Blake blend but I've just bought some green blended beans from Carolyn at Another Coffee. This is an experiment purely for economic reasons. Another coffee charge £17.50 for 2Kg of any of their green beans and if you order more than £50 then it is post free so buying 6Kg from them saved me almost a tenner over HasBean.

Watch this space for reports ...

DB


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## vintagecigarman (Aug 10, 2009)

David, can you tell me how you do your pre-heat please.?

I do mine with the roaster running empty, with the beans in the drum ready to go as soon as the pre-heat finishes. But I've heard some mention of heating with the beans in situ.

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## vagabond (May 23, 2011)

Once I tried to pre heat before adding beans but my big hands meant I fumbled the drum so I'm sure that a lot of heat escaped. Since then I have preheated 1:45 with the beans already in place and never had to worry about running out of roast time. Not sure if this is the right thing, may be worth a new thread.


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