BehmorThing

BehmorThing

The Best tool for tracking your roasting results with your Behmor 1600

BehmorThing is designed to let you easily see the roast profile you're about to use, to save the settings for future review and to add comments after the roast to describe your results.

BehmorThing was written to help me understand what the heck was going on during a roast and hopefully with the history, learn and become better at creating exceptional roasts. If you think that there's something I can do to improve its ability to do that or if you find that something doesn't work the way you think it should or the way I say it does, please let me know in the coffee roasting sections of www.Home-Barista.com or www.CoffeeGeek.com or via email at:

TechSupport at Extrasensory dot com

BehmorThing is currently at version 1.2.3.15 (11/29/2008)

Starting around version 1.2.3.10 or so when new version is uploaded and you're connected to the internet, BehmorThing will advise you that a new version is available. Mostly now new versions fix bugs or add useful but possibly insignificant new features. The lack of new features has mostly to do with the program being long past what I thought was necessary and a complete and utter lack of suggestions from the user base, so if you want new features, tell me what you think might be useful and if you find a bug please tell me. I just found one that I fixed in .3.15 that I find it hard to believe no one found, but I guess that just means it's got features that no one uses.

Also, for those of you who use other roasters besides the Behmor, I'd be most interested in how I might change this to make it useful for roasting with other roasters.

To install BehmorThing just download and run BehmorSetup.msi.

To update to the most current version, just download the file BehmorThing.exe, and put it in "C:\Program Files\BehmorThing".

BehmorThing Profile Graphs

BehmorThing correctly* shows the heating profile for every possible selection of weight, roast profile and time changes both pre and post roast start.

If you set BehmorThing and your Behmor the same, press Start on both at the same time and add or subtract the indicated "Added" time, BehmorThing will correctly indicate the roast progress.

The First and Second crack buttons are active during the roast timing and pressing them during a roast saves those times so you don't have to think about it.

The thin, red vertical line indicates the time when you press "Start". The distance between the end of the black line and the vertical red line indicates the time added after the roast was started.

The vertical white line indicates the current point in the roast.

The little + and - buttons that appear when the roast is running allow you to sync the timer on your Behmor and the timer on BehmorThing.

* I say correctly because everything I've read and been told indicates it's correct. If you believe otherwise, please let me know and I'll fix it.

Roast info Page.

The Roast Info page contains all the information about the current roast. Many of the fields are filled automatically when you press the buttons at the top, the rest you may fill in with your information.

Every fifth roast a red button will appear reminding you to clean your Behmor. Clicking it will make it go away for another 5 roasts. The button will likely be out of sync until the first time you click it while doing a cleaning cycle. If you do a cleaning cycle while the button is not visible, you may also mark a Cleaning Cycle as done by choosing Cleaning Cycle Performed on the Utilities Menu.

Roast History

The Roast History displays a list of all your saved roasts.

The list may be sorted by clicking on a header: No, Date, Coffee, RoastLevel, ...

The list may be filtered by double clicking on a Coffee, Roast Level, Profile, Roaster and Coffeemaker. i.e., double clicking on Espresso Monkey Blend would limit the display to only roasts made with Espresso Monkey Blend.

Checking Filters Add on the View menu will cause the double click filters to add together.

Clicking on Show All on the View menu will return the list back to showing everything.

Right Clicking on the grid will display a useful menu.

Roasts may be Duplicated, Edited or Deleted by using the selections on the File menu

Middle Clicking on a Table header title in the Coffee Inventory or Roast History tables will allow you to customize the header titles.

Coffee Inventory

Enables you to easily keep track of your Green Coffee Stash.

Clicking on a header sorts by that column. Headers my be resized and dragged around and your changes will be remembered between sessions.

The list may be filtered by double clicking on a Coffeemaker, Vendor, Arrival Date, Target Roast or Profile. i.e., double clicking on Sweet Marias would limit the display to only coffees purchased from Sweet Marias.

Checking Filters Add on the View menu will cause the double click filters to add together.

Clicking on Show All on the View menu will return the list back to showing everything.

Middle Clicking on a Table header title in the Coffee Inventory or Roast History tables will allow you to customize the header titles.

Coffee my be Added, Edited, Deleted or Roasted using the choices on the File menu.

BehmorThing will optionally reduce your stash by the roast amount when you choose Roast Coffee.

Additional Features

The Tables menu allows you to look at and delete unwanted entries in the five list tables.

The utilities menu contains some useful items to help keep BehmorThing operating the way it should and looking the way you want.

Cleaning Cycle Performed marks a Cleaning Cycle as done now and offers to place a marker in the Roast History.

Forget Data Base erases the location of the current database from the registry. If you do this, the next time you run BehmorThing it will ask you to find it's database. Maybe useful if you want to look at someone else's data.

Forget all Window Locations erases BehmorThing's memory of the size and location of all of its Windows. If a window gets lost or things get messed up you might want to use this.

Forget all table settings forgets the width and location of all of the columns in the Roast History and Coffee Inventory. In case the tables get really messed up, this will return them to their default state.

Un-checking Remember Window Settings will cause BehmorThing to stop remembering the window and table settings when you exit BehmorThing. If you set up everything exactly the way you want it and then un-check this, everything will stay exactly the way it is even if you forget and move things around.

Shrink Database will remove all of the empty space caused by doing a lot of editing of the notes. There should be no harm in this and it can significantly decrease the size of BehmorThing.vdb. I'd recommend backing up BehmorThing.vdb before doing this as if something's going to go wrong and ruin your data, this would be the most likely thing to do it. Not that it's likely, just that I'd rather you were safe than sorry.

Checking Always Open Roast Coffee makes BehmorThing always start with the roast coffee window open. If you don't care about Coffee and you just want to use BehmorThing to help set up your roasts, this will make it easier. Also for those who miss the old simple version, just open the Roast coffee window, maximize it and check Remember Window Settings and Always Open Roast Coffee and it's close to the original really simple version, like this:

Acknowledgements

While it might seem like this is my product and it's true I'm the only one touching the code, without the encouragement of the users and the occasional few pounds of coffee or dollars that shows up it might die. I especially appreciate the feedback about how you use it and how I could be made to serve you better. I started roasting in the early 80's with a yellow poporn popper which I modified so I could easily control the heater. I stopped for a number of years and started again only recently. It's a different world now, back then I got greens from the Coffee Emporium in Marina Del Rey, a small coffee bar with a roaster in the front window. Today I have a Behmor and get my greens from Sweet Marias and I'm learning all over again. Many of you have been roasting for years and have a much better idea of what is needed in a program like this than I do, Special thanks to Michael K. who has tirelessly tested this thing, helped me understand how to make it better and inspired me to constantly improve BehmorThing.

Ira

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Last modified: November 29, 2008