If you feel that BehmorThing has enhanced your life enough you feel like enhancing mine, click here!
Or ask Sweet Marias to send me a few pounds of your favorite coffee next time you order.

Look at other peoples data Some of BehmorThing's users have been kind enough to let you look at their data, this links to a page where you can download their files.

BehmorThing is not perfect as I'm not perfect. If it doesn't work for you, tell me, as if you don't, I can't fix your problem.  In the very  first version all it did was display the profiles and move the cursor along the graph. Everything else was added on and so some things might work different than expected. I apologize for that! This is a basic overview of the program, there will be an additional advanced page that covers more when I get to it or you can just look at all the menu options and see what there is. There are right click menus in a number of places that do useful things and even the occasional use of Center Click on column headers to customize columns. Center click can be a center mouse button, clicking the wheel, or sometimes clicking the right and left mouse buttons at the same time.

Ira

The Opening Screen.

The opening screen is essentially blank, not very exciting, but the menus hold the promise of more to come Occasionally BehmorThing will alert you to the fact there is an updated version by putting a message in the title bar right after "Ira" which will probably be your name on your copy of BT. Whenever BehmorThing starts and can see the internet, it will check to see if it's version number is the same as the current one. The Change Log will keep you apprised of the changes since the last version. 

When you first install BehmorThing you'll be looking at sample data, when you want to start with your data, just choose File/New and make a file for you, then go to Utilities/Preferences and click on the Open current file on startup button and that will be you new default file.

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Adding Coffee.

First you'll need to add coffee using the add coffee screen. If you're adding a lot of similar coffees, you may check those seemingly nonsensical green shadowed checkboxes and when you finish entering one coffee and start on the next, the data by the checked boxes will be preserved for the next coffee.

Here you put in all the information about your coffee hoard. BehmorThing will help you keep track of your green coffee inventory. You may also put in the times and profiles you prefer when roasting this coffee and BehmorThing will automatically fill in the roasting information when you start a new roast. The extra check boxes are these so if you're adding a lot of coffee you can have the fields that you choose remain when you save this coffee and start adding another. If they bother you, just choose View/Hide Checkboxes and they'll go away.  Make sure to look at all the menu choices on every screen you visit so you have an idea of everything you can do.

The Coffee Inventory

When you're done adding all your coffee you can view the inventory and even find out what it's worth.

Export Coffee

And on the off chance you want to look at your coffee inventory in some other program you can choose File/Export and export your coffee inventory to a file easily understood by Excel and many other software programs. By default it will use My Documents/BehmorThing/export.txt but clicking the button with 3 dots will let you call it anything and put it anywhere you want.

Roasting Coffee

Now you'll probably want to roast some coffee. To start with open the coffee inventory, choose a coffee and then choose File/Roast Coffee or just press Ctrl+R.

Now you'll see the Roast Coffee page. This consists of the section at the top that duplicates the functions of a Behmor front panel, a page to input all of the roast information and a page that shows the heat profile of the Behmor with your chosen selections. Much of the information will be filled in automatically as the roast progresses.

If you don't own a Behmor and check "Hide Behmor Features" on the preferences all of the Behmor specific stuff will be hidden and BehmorThing will allow you to track time, temperature and crack timings.

You might notice the PreHeat button. That's a feature I added so I can log the time I preheat the Behmor before starting the actual Roast timing. You may disable this feature on the preferences menu if you don't like it. I usually do a 2 minute preheat on P! then press stop and input my actual choices. It makes sure I never run out of time and can't finish a roast. Most likely not approved by Behmor, but it seems to help me get better results.  Your mileage may vary.

The Roast Graph tab displays the Behmor heating profile for the roast parameters you've selected. This should help you to better understand how the Behmor works and make choices that improve the quality of your roasts.

Here you can see the features for tracking roast temperature. Inc is how much the buttons adjust when you click the big arrow to log the indicated temperature. You may adjust the Inc and Next Mark settings at any time during a roast. The big blue down arrow indicates that the Next Mark will be reduced by the Inc amount when it's clicked. If you click on Log Up the blue down arrow will change to a red up arrow and the Next mark will be increased by the Inc amount when the arrow is clicked. Each time you click the big arrow the time and indicated temperature will be logged. You can see the red temperature line on the following image. You'll also see the First and Second Crack buttons which allow you to log the beginning and end of both cracks. As soon as you click the crack buttons, they will change from Crack Start to Crack End.

If you've entered notes into the notes field in the coffee inventory, they will appear in a third tab and if you've copied a roast the notes from that roast may appear in a fourth tab if you choose that option in the preferences.

Printing Labels

Now that you've roasted and saved the roast, you can make a custom label for it. You may use the menu shown here to select and de-select the fields on the label. You can  drag the fields around by left clicking and dragging and you may change the font for any field by right clicking on it. You may also toggle between viewing field names and field contents by checking or un-checking View/View Data. When you've got the label design of your dreams you may choose File/Print to print it and File/Save to save the design for next time.

Copying a Previous Roast

After you've roasted some coffees you can use the View/View Roasts to look at all the previous roasts for the coffee you want to roast and then you can select one of them and choose File/Duplicate Roast. This should give you a better chance of duplicating your best roast of this coffee.

Roast History

You can also view the complete roast history and go directly to viewing the details of any roast or the coffee it used. Notice that BehmorThing keeps track of when you cleaned your Behmor and reminds you every 5th roast so you don't have to keep track. Clicking on any of the column headers changes the sort order, a second click on the same column header inverts the order. Center clicking on a column header allows you to customize the column attributes or hide the column. If your mouse does not have a center button or a wheel that clicks, you can try pressing the Left and Right buttons at the same time, that works on my laptop.

Roast Details

The details of the completed roasts can be viewed on the roast results page which will have between two and four tabs. It always has the Detail and Graph pages, if there are notes associated with the coffee there will be a Coffee Notes tab and if you were logging temperature during the roast there will be a Temperature Graph page. Clicking on the cupping cup picture will bring up a cupping sheet if you cup your roasts and want to keep track of those results.

You can choose the Graph page to see a visual representation of how the roast progressed and where the cracks occurred and if there are coffee notes you can choose that page.

If you keep track of temperature during the roast that line will appear along with temperature grid lines and degree labels. That information will also appear on the Temperature graph page where you can use the cursor to examine the graph and see the temperature and time at any point in the roast.

Tables

As you add Coffees and Roasts you will need to enter the values you use for Coffeemakers, Regions, Roast Levels, Roasters and Vendors. Those entries may be viewed using the Tables menu. There is no way to edit the tables, but if there are entries you don't want any more, you may delete them here.

Preferences

You can set some preferences on the Utilities/Preferences page.

Deduct Coffee From Inventory controls whether Deduct Coffee From Inventory is checked when you save a Roast.
Use Roast Results in Expert Mode causes Roast results to always come up in Expert Mode.
Remember Window Setting causes Window setting to be remembered when they are closed. Un-checking this after you've opened and closed all the windows exactly the way you want, preserves those settings.
Reset P1 A on weight change makes the software imitate how the Behmor works when you change the weight.
I like Tabs will cause a tab line to appear so you can more easily switch between windows
Hide Behmor Features hides the Behmor specific stuff to make the program more friendly for people using other roasters.
I think Metric will change all the units to metric
Enable Pre-heat Timing enables the preheat feature built into BehmorThing
Preheat warning seconds is the point in the preheat time where the screen starts flashing to warn that it's time to switch modes
Open current file() on startup sets the current file to be the one BehmorThing always opens when started, if BehmorThing doesn't open the file you want when you first open the program, choose File/Open to open the file you want and then come here and click this button.
The Temperature section lets you define the parameters for the temperature logging feature on the Roast Coffee page.
    Increment degrees is the default start value for the same field on the Roast Coffee Page
    Increment Adjustment is increment value for the increment adjuster on the roast coffee page
Note font size allows you to make the notes easier to read
The Cleaning Cycle Settings let you set the cleaning interval  to whatever you wish and disable it if it's unneeded for your roaster.
Money Symbol lets you choose something other than a dollar sign.
The Notes selector lets you choose how Duplicate Roast deals with transferring the prior roasts notes to the new roast.
Graph Colors allow you to set the colors on the graphs to your favorites so you don't have to put up with my lack of color sense!
Font lets you change to color of the font on the graph.
If there are some lines you don't want to see, just make them the same color as the Graph background.

View Both

You can also do all of that from the View Both page which puts your Coffee Inventory and Roast History on one page.

Logging Temperature

If you so desire and have a suitable thermometer you may log the temperature progress of your roasts. The Giant logging button will not appear until you press Start. There are 2 number boxes near the Log button. Increment sets the automatic adjustment of the next temperature to be logged. Next Mark is the temperature that will be logged when you next press the giant log button. You may log up to 150 points which means for your average 20 minute roast and cool down you can log about every 8 seconds or about every 4 degrees. If you should find that inadequate, a message to me will likely solve your problem. Someday there will be a USB piece that will automatically log up to 2 (is that enough for you?) locations in your roaster.