A Video Primer on Maintaining your Behmor 1600
A clean BehmorA popular electric drum roaster designed for home use, with variable batch sizes (from 1/4 pound to 1 pound) and a smoke-reduction system. It has been modified and... will give you delicious roasts and will more importantly be a safer machine to roast coffee with. Wiping oils from the surfaces inside the roast chamber is a no-brainer.
Layers of brown, baked oils can inhibit the Behmor’s sensor, dim the light, and make the door window hard to see through. This is a pretty simple task to to do and should be done every couple roasts.
It’s also important to perform a deeper cleaning by opening up the side panel and removing the exhaust cover. If you have owned your Behmor for a while and never done this, you will be surprised by how much dust and chaffChaff is paper-like skin that comes off the coffee in the roasting process. Chaff from roasting is part of the innermost skin (the silverskin) of the coffee fruit... have built up in and around the fans and other mechanisms.
A few squirts of Simple Green, and a little bit of time are all it takes to keep producing delicious (and safe) batches with your Behmor roaster.
Also … remember this: Clean your roaster. Clean your roaster. Clean your roaster. Do your Behmor Roaster Maintenance!
Also see: Need a Visual Guide to Determine Coffee Roast Color?
4 Responses
I have a Behmor 1600 Plus and I accidently sprayed some Simple Green on the quartz heating elements when cleaning the interior. I don’t see how to remove the wire grill to access the quartz elements to wipe them down. I can’t find anything in the manuals to address this. Will the dried simple green residue safely burn off during a roast? Or, should the elements be wiped with a water dampened cleaning cloth? And, if so, how do I remove the wire grill?
Thank you for any advice.
Hey Gary, I usually cover my grill with a cloth when cleaning to prevent from overspray, but sometimes forget myself! Simple Green isn’t a problem for the quartz elements and will dissipate with a dry burn post-cleaning (1/4 setting,). But to answer your question on the wire grill, it’s nearly impossible to remove without damaging the machine, and I would just leave it in place. You can clean the quartz elements with a q-tip through the grill if you really need to, but running the dry burns with regular wipe downs of the inside of your Behmor should do the trick. I’ve noticed some discoloration on mine over time, but have not seen a drop in performance.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
I did my first deep clean for the behmor 2000ab+ following the detailed instructions from Sweet Marias web site. The information provided was very helpful. My roaster looks like new. (and everything works!) https://library.sweetmarias.com/video-cleaning-your-behmor-roaster/
Hey Dave, that’s great to hear! Cleaning that Behmor regularly works wonders for longevity. My 1600 is probably 12 years old, and I know many others out there have owned there’s longer than that.
Keep it clean, and happy roasting!
-Dan