BehmorThing

The best tool for tracking your greens inventory and roasting results with most any coffee roaster.

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 or if it's not a Behmor, it lets you record almost everything about the roast including the temperature profile.

BehmorThing was originally written to help me understand what the heck was going on during a roast and hopefully with the addition of 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 for you 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 Home-Barista,  CoffeeGeek, the Sweet Maria's Forum or via email at:

techsupport at extrasensory dot com

BehmorThing is currently at version 2.0.1.17 (8/31/2010) 

For those of you who use other roasters besides the Behmor, BehmorThing has the ability to hide most of the Behmor specific stuff.

To install or update BehmorThing Version 2 just download and run BehmorInstall.exe from the change log page.

BehmorThing requires Microsoft .NET 2. Not having this will cause BehmorThing to crash on startup; if that happens, follow this link to the Microsoft download page for .NET 2.

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. 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 its version number is the same as the current one. The Change Log will keep you apprised of the changes since the last version. 

A few seconds after BehmorThing starts it does a few things, first it checks for a new version, then if you so desire it checks Sweet Maria's for a list of the most recently added coffees and then shows you a list. If you don't like it, just uncheck I Shop at Sweet Maria's and it will go away. If this list comes up and their is something you want more information on, just go to Help/Sweet Maria's/New Coffee Listings and you will be presented with the same list but with Tom's notes so you can read about them and then choose GoTo and be taken right to that coffee's entry on the SM website. There are also links to Has Bean in the UK.

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 your new default file.

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Adding Coffee.

First you'll need to add some green coffee using the add coffee screen. If you're adding a lot of similar coffees, you may check those seemingly meaningless 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 there so if you're adding a lot of coffee you choose the fields that you'd like to stay filled in 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. The columns in this and most of the other tables can be re-arranged by dragging the column headers around and changed or hidden by right clicking on a column header.

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 easily 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.  After you've roasted a coffee, I'd suggest you start roasts by picking Duplicate Roast from the roast history as then you'll be able to see what happened last roast and either repeat it exactly or make changes based on your notes about what happened last time.

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 Utilities/Preferences page 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 and pre-heat profile selector. You get 3 choices, NO, P1 and P3, those are the only 3 that make sense. For a 2 minute preheat, P1 and P2 are the same as are P3-P5. 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 page if you don't like it. I usually do a 2 minute preheat on P1 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.  Recently Behmor has started recommending a 1 minute P1 roast with the chaff tray and drum installed, then pressing Stop, pulling it all out, loading the drum and then starting the roast. I've always done 2 minutes P1 with the beans in, try both and see what works for you. If you follow the Behmor suggestion, be careful you don't touch anything hot.

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. You can also now copy the contents of your label to the clipboard, either by choosing Edit/Copy to get them all or one at a time by double clicking on Coffee, Roast Date or Roast Level.

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.  Double clicking on that empty box at the left edge of a row will bring up that roast's detail. Double clicking on various other things will filter what you see. For example, double clicking on Bali Organic will filter the list so you only see the Bali Organic roasts. View/Show All will bring all the hidden lines back.

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. BT now allows recording multiple temperatures during a roast. Here you see a roasst with 2 temperatures recorded.

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.

Preferences

You can set some preferences on the Utilities/Preferences page. The current version has more than the 6 pages shown here and contains many new and changed parameters, Most are self explanatory.

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.
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.
My Line Voltage lets you set the voltage you've set your 220-240V roaster to.  The 4 different voltages have 4 different profile times. If you notice any difference between what BT says and what you're roaster says, please let me know.  The settings I have are from myself and others who have punched the buttons lots of times and we may have made small mistakes.
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.
The Cleaning tab lets you set all the cleaning warnings. SuperClean is the cleaning cycle recommended by Behmor you can read about here.
The Costs tab lets you set some rules for for pricing your roasted coffee. There is an additional markup field on each coffee to further help accurately price your coffee. For most of us it's either irrelevant or amusing. If it matters to you and the think I could have done a better job, please feel free to let me know what you think would make it better.

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. 

I personally never use the View both page, it's a historical remnant from a very old version but some users really like it so it remains. If you use it and notice a feature added to the program that was left off these pages, please tell me and I'll fix it right away.

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.

These pictures are slightly out of date and don't show the current temperature logging windows. They look just like the panel at the top right, but are detached from the main window and you may have as many at a time as you want to record temperatures. The limit is 20 or 99, I don't remember which, if you need more ask with a good explanation and I'll

Getting Started with BehmorThing Version 2

After installing BehmorThing you will be looking at some demo data. It's not particularly good, but it will allow you to mess around and play without ruining anything. When you're ready to start entering your own data, choose File/New and create a new database using your name. Then put your name in the box on the main screen and it will go away, lastly go to Utilities/Preferences and click the "Open current file on startup" button at the lower left. From that instant on, Behmor thing will always open your file. Next go through all 6 pages of Preferences and make sure it's the way you want and that everything  has something.  Now add your coffee inventory and then try a roast.

The rest is information that is of interest but needs to be put on the advanced page

BehmorThing will keep track of your coffee inventory. Whenever you save a roast you will be asked if you want to update inventory, if you say yes the inventory will be reduced by the starting weight of the roast.

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.

And BehmorThing keeps track of when you need to do a cleaning cycle, something I need to do at the moment.

To Roast Coffee, select a coffee from your Coffee Inventory and  choose Roast Coffee from the File Menu.

There are 4 Possible states during a roast, they are indicated by the words on the "Start" or "PreHeat" Button which change from "PreHeat" to "Start" to "Cool" to "Done." After pressing "Cool", the clock continues to run and the First and Second Crack buttons are still active. With the Behmor, Second Crack often starts or continues into the cooling cycle and so you may record that time after the cooling cycle has started. Pressing Done stops the clock and offers to save the roast.

* 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 or 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. So if this is checked clicking on Espresso Monkey and then City Plus would limit the display to the two Espresso Monkey roasts that are City Plus. If Filters Add is not checked that same sequence would first show the five Espresso Monkey roasts and then the seven roasts at City Plus.

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.  Middle clicking is a click on the middle button if you have one, the scroll wheel if you have one of those, or if you only have 2 buttons, possibly on both buttons at once. On my Dell laptop I can either click both buttons on the laptop or the scroll wheel on my Bluetooth mouse. Clicking both buttons on the Bluetooth mouse does not work.

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 may 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 finish roasting and choose Save.

Additional Features

The Tables menu allows you to look at and delete unwanted entries in the five list tables. You may not add or edit the table entries, only look and delete. Entries to these tables are automatically added when you enter then in the Coffee and Roast data entry forms.

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 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 the vdb3 file. I'd recommend backing up your vdb3 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.

Renumber Database will renumber the Roast History and Coffee Inventory "No" column starting with 1 and will remove all gaps. It may mess up the next cleaning schedule, it shouldn't but I've not tested it enough so I might have got something wrong. And while you can't see this option in this picture, it's there starting in version 1.2.3.22

Backing Up BehmorThing's Data

Occasionally I will ask that you back up your data before an upgrade and you just might want to know how so you can keep a copy in a safe place.

All of BehmorThing's data is in one file with the extension "vdb3" which is usually located in "Documents/BehmorThing" or in "My Documents/BehmorThing".  The sample file that was installed when you started using it is called Sample.vdb3. If you've made a new file for your data it's probably in that folder with the Sample file. If you can't find it, open BehmorThing, choose File/Open and the resulting dialog box should show you the location of your data. I'd recommend putting a copy on a flash drive of some sort. I'd also recommend using Mozy, an online backup service that will let you back up 2Gb of your data to their servers over the internet for free. I use Mozy and many of my clients use Mozy and it's saved a number of us a number of times. It won't be enough to back up your pictures or music for free, but it should be plenty to backup your important documents and email automatically. If you backup using the link provided, you'll get 2.25Gb instead of 2.0Gb and I'll get another .25Gb also which makes me very happy.

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 it could be made to serve you better.  I started roasting in the early 80's with a yellow popcorn 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: August 31, 2010