What is in a RoastPilot roast profile?

A timed sequence of target-temperature steps — for example start at 450°F, step to 600°F at 168 seconds for the turn, then begin reducing at 492 seconds — plus your estimated first and second crack points.

Can I create a profile from a roast I already did?

Yes. From a saved roast session the dashboard can build a new profile out of that actual roast, carrying across every temperature change you made and your real first crack event, so a roast you liked becomes one you can repeat.

Can I use a roast profile from another machine?

Use its timings, not its temperatures. Profiles from commercial drum roasters are built around very different thermal behaviour, so the shape and phase timings translate to a gas grill but the actual numbers have to be re-derived for your setup.

What is rate of rise and why does it matter?

Rate of rise is how fast bean temperature is climbing — RoastPilot shows it as delta BT over 30 seconds. Keeping it positive and controlled is how you avoid stalling a roast; letting it fall to zero flattens the cup.

RoastPilot Roast Profiles — Build It, Run It, Repeat It

A roast you loved and cannot reproduce is a nice afternoon. A roast you can hit again is a product. Profiles are how RoastPilot gets you from the first to the second.

A profile is a timed program

Not a single number — a sequence of temperature steps on a clock. The profile Scott builds for a 2 lb Rwanda in the full demonstration reads like this:

Start at 450°F — deliberately about 50°F lower than his usual, with a +50°F preheat on top so the grill is ready for the loading drop.
At 168 seconds, step to 600°F — timed for the turn, the moment the bean mass stops falling and starts climbing.
At 492 seconds, begin reducing — roughly halfway between the turn and expected first crack, to stretch the browning phase and then the development after first crack.

The shape comes from established roasting science — his is adapted from an Equilibrium Master Roasters chart — but the temperatures are re-derived for a gas grill, which behaves nothing like the drum machine the original was written for. The timings carry over. The numbers do not.

Running it

Pick the profile, hit preheat, light the grill, load when it is up to temperature. The steps fire on schedule from there.

You are not a passenger, though. Through that roast Scott watches the rate of rise — bean temperature delta over 30 seconds — and eases the target down in 5°F taps to hold it near 4°F per minute, the whole time making sure it never approaches zero. A stalled roast is a flat one, and rate of rise is the number that warns you first.

He marks first crack when he hears it. In that roast it lands at 11:51 and 414°F, and a countdown starts for the remainder.

The part that closes the loop

Here is what makes this more than logging.

When the session is saved, the dashboard offers a button to create a new roast profile from that actual roast. It reads back every temperature change you made across the roast and your real first-crack event — and, if you marked it, second crack — and writes them into a new profile.

So the workflow is: build a reasonable first guess, run it, taste the coffee, and if you like it, promote that exact roast into a repeatable program. The adjustments you made by hand on the day become the profile's own steps. Nothing has to be remembered or reconstructed from notes.

Scott's own discipline in the video is worth copying: he does not promote the roast immediately. He waits to taste it first.

Why this is the whole argument

A $20,000 commercial roaster is not selling you better physics. A perforated drum over a flame is a perforated drum over a flame. What it sells is instrumentation and a record — the ability to say that roast, again, on Thursday.

That is the capability RoastPilot adds to the drum you already own, for $315.

Get the RoastPilot Controller Kit — $315 · How the control loop works →

Watch it done