My new roaster arrived, and it seems the left heater is much hotter than the right. (Left burns bright orange and the right only dark red). At first I thought the left heater had a problem, but Mr. Yen says this is as designed (to provide more heat on the bean side).
My machine has a new rating of 1050W on the side (versus 900W on the old). It also seems the old value of 7.5A no longer applies. I need closer to 9A. At 7.5A my roast stalls at 175C BT, even after 20 minutes.
Anybody have experience with this new (I suppose) design change? I suppose it was done to provide more even roasting? Is this the case?
I did my first successful roast today on the new Quest.
As was explained to me by Molly, you need to go to 8.75A with 150g to get enough heat with the new asymmetric heater design. This will give a nice light roast in about 15 minutes if you have 120V (this provides a power of the max rated 1050W as stamped on the side plate). At 1050W, the left heater glows bright orange, and the left heater is red.
Molly says she hasn't got around to changing the user manual yet to reflect this amp change.
I still don't know what brought on this change to asymmetric heating, but I trust Mr.Yen is doing it for good reason.
After a 15 minute warm-up to 200C, I got to 1C at around 11.5 minutes and dumped at 15 minutes. All at 8.75A (1050W) and the fan set to 4 (min).
I thought this might be a bit slow? I'm concerned when I go to 250g I will need use around 10A (1200W) and this might damage the hotter heater on the left side. I'll see what Mr.Yen has to say about suggest amps for larger batches with these new heaters.
I suppose I could always purchase the old heaters for $20 if this doesn't work out...unless there is some other internal changes I'm not aware of.
Comment - Are you sure you were above 1KW? I don't have a Quest, but I did use a 150g roaster for a couple of years and it would complete a full-city roast in 12 minutes with a heat input of: 1) Drying = 365w 2) Ramp to F.C. = 550w 3) Finish = 480W
I watched my kill-a-watt closely and I was definitely running at 1050W (VA) the whole time. My voltage was at 120V and my amps were at 8.75A (checked on both the Quest gauge and the kill-a-watt readout).
The high watts confused me as well at first, but looking at the heater color, it seems they are running correctly. The left is bright orange like stove element set to high, the right element is red, like a stove element set to medium heat. This is what the designer intended to give the bean mass side more heat.
It seems to work fine for 150g batches, but I'm still confused about what to do for the larger 250g batches I wish to try next. I figure I will need to go to roughly 10A (or 1200W, which is well above the 1050W max rating) if I want to have any chance of completing the roast in under 20 minutes. I got no answer back from Mr.Yen on this subject.
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