Frequently Asked Questions

The First Crack web platform is free. Analytics dashboards, bean inventory management, cupping workflow, recipe management, community sharing, roast comparison, Guided Roast (browser-based live logging), and Artisan import are all included at no cost. No subscription, no credit card required. Bridge, the desktop app that connects your roaster hardware, is currently in private beta and free for approved testers; pricing after beta has not been announced.

No. The First Crack web app includes Guided Roast, a live logging mode that lets you drive a timer, tap event buttons (CHARGE, first crack, drop), and type in your probe readings as the roast happens. The result is a full roast profile with phase analysis, rate of rise, and DTR: the same analytics Bridge-captured roasts get. You can also log a roast by hand after the fact from notes you took on paper, import existing profiles from Artisan (.alog files) or JSON, and access bean inventory, cupping, recipes, and community features without any hardware.

Guided Roast is First Crack's web-based live roast logger. Start it from the Add Roast menu on your dashboard or roasts list; you'll pick a bean, enter your green weight, and tap Start. When the bean drops into your drum you tap CHARGE, and from there the timer runs while you tap turning point, dry end, first crack, drop, and optional markers as they happen — entering your probe reading for each. It's designed for roasters on manual drum roasters or sample roasters who want the full analytics stack without a hardware-integrated setup.

Guided Roast runs entirely in your browser: you type probe readings and tap event buttons as the roast progresses. Live Roast pairs Bridge (the desktop app) with a supported roaster (Kaleido M-series, Croaster, TC4, Phidget) and streams the real sensor readings, heater / fan / drum state, and event markers into the same web UI at one-second resolution. Same chart, same analytics, same recipes. The difference is whether the temperatures arrive over a serial cable or get typed in by hand. Most operators start in Guided Roast and upgrade to Live Roast once they have hardware approved.

Yes. From the Add Roast menu, choose Log Roast and open the Roast Data section, then key in the milestones you tracked on paper: charge temp, turning point, dry end, first crack, and drop, each with a time and temperature. First Crack derives the phases, development time ratio, and a curve from those points, the same analysis a synced roast gets. You can also leave the roast data blank and just record bean consumption, weights, and notes. No hardware and no live session required. It's the path for manual drum roasters, sample roasters, or anyone reconstructing a roast from a clipboard.

Create a free account at firstcrack.app. Once signed in, add your beans to inventory, then start roasting with Guided Roast directly in the browser — no hardware required. You can also import existing profiles from Artisan on day one. To add Live Roast (real-time sensor readings from supported roasters), request Bridge beta access at firstcrack.app/beta — we approve by hand, so expect a short queue.

Upload a single roast and First Crack hands back an instant per-roast defect read: it spots a crash or a bake, locates it right on the curve, and tells you the fix. Roast more of the same bean and it adds consistency analysis on top, measuring the spread in your charge temp, first-crack timing, and drop temp across like roasts, so you can see how repeatable you actually are. Overlay up to four roasts to compare them side by side. No hardware required: it works on imported Artisan logs, so you can get the full read without a Bridge-connected roaster.

No. It's not a model guessing at your coffee. It's assessment on the known, tried-and-true axes roasters already trust: RoR crash and stall after first crack, and the spread in charge temp, first-crack timing, and drop temp across like roasts. We surface what's most meaningful and let you examine the axes yourself. Deterministic and explainable — every read traces back to a number you can see on the curve.

Baking is when your rate of rise flatlines near zero through the development phase. The bean is sitting at temperature without the energy flux to finish developing, and the cup comes out flat and papery, missing sweetness and brightness. You don't have to eyeball it: First Crack flags a stalled development automatically on imported roasts, locating where the RoR went flat right on the curve. Drop in an Artisan log and the read comes back in seconds, no hardware required.

An RoR crash after first crack is usually too much heat carried into the development phase: the exothermic energy from first crack compounds an already-fast trajectory, then the rate dives. First Crack flags an RoR crash after first crack automatically, locates it on the curve, and tells you the fix (typically easing the heat or opening airflow in the 30–60 seconds before anticipated first crack). It works on imported roasts, so you can diagnose a crash without a hardware-connected roaster.

Roast the same bean repeatedly with the same profile, then measure how tightly your repeats land instead of guessing. First Crack scores your consistency across the known axes (charge temp, first-crack timing, drop temp, and development time ratio) and flags the roast that broke pattern and the axis it broke on. Overlay up to four roasts to see the spread at a glance. It works on imported Artisan logs, so you can build a consistency baseline from your existing history with no hardware required.

First Crack is a natural next step for roasters who have outgrown Artisan's workflow. Artisan is an excellent free roast logger with broad hardware support, but it has no cloud sync, no bean inventory management, no analytics dashboards, no cupping workflow, no comparison sharing, and no community features. First Crack covers all of those — and the platform is free. It imports Artisan .alog files directly, so your existing profile library migrates on day one.

Yes. First Crack imports Artisan .alog files and JSON roast format directly. Your full profile library — years of roast history including curves, temperatures, and event markers — transfers on import. Import runs in the web app, so no download is needed to bring your history over.

Cropster is a commercial platform built for production roasteries, a volume-priced subscription that scales into the hundreds per month. First Crack is built for independent roasters (home, hobby, and small-batch) who want a capable personal platform with analytics, inventory, cupping, community, and sharing, without fleet-management complexity or an enterprise subscription. The First Crack web platform is free; Bridge (live roasting) is in private beta and its pricing has not been announced.

Bridge ships natively for both macOS and Windows. macOS requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later. Windows requires Windows 10 build 19041 (the May 2020 update) or Windows 11. Both builds are signed and notarized. The web app — Guided Roast, analytics, inventory, cupping, community — runs in any modern browser on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Not yet. Bridge ships for macOS and Windows today; Linux is on the roadmap but doesn't have a public timeline. The First Crack web app, including Guided Roast, works on Linux via any modern browser, so you can run the full analytics stack on Linux as long as you're comfortable typing probe readings instead of streaming them from hardware.

There is no dedicated iOS or Android app. The First Crack web platform is mobile-responsive and works in Safari and Chrome on iPhone and Android — including Guided Roast. Bridge requires a desktop OS (macOS or Windows) because it talks to roaster hardware over USB, Bluetooth, or local-network WiFi.

Yes. Real-time sync between Bridge and the web app. While you're roasting, frames stream from Bridge into the live chart at one-second resolution. After the roast, the full profile syncs to the cloud and appears in the web app, analytics, and on any other device you're signed in on. Edits to names, notes, ratings, and bean links from the web flow back the other direction — Bridge picks them up on its next sync pass.

Bridge supports the Kaleido M-series (both the M1 and M10 are confirmed working over USB-serial or Bluetooth), plus Phidget thermocouple boards over USB, Croaster over WiFi, and TC4 (Arduino / aArtisan) over USB-serial. The last three are monitor-only: Bridge reads the curve but doesn't drive the controls. Phidget is confirmed on real hardware; Croaster and TC4 support is new and still looking for its first real-hardware validators, so if you own one, your beta request gets priority review and direct support from us. More roasters land as the voting roadmap on the beta signup page fills out. If your roaster isn't on the list yet, request access and tell us what you roast on, and your vote shapes the order we tackle them in.

Both run the same recipe. In Auto, Bridge fires each step at its trigger: when bean temp crosses 300°F, the heat moves to 60% on its own, and you can cancel any step you don't want. In Guided, every step becomes a cue at its trigger and nothing happens until you tap Set now, so you stay on the dials with the recipe as a co-pilot. You can switch modes mid-roast. Auto requires a roaster Bridge can command (Kaleido today); Guided works everywhere.

Yes. On a monitor-only rig (Croaster, TC4, Phidget), recipe steps still cue you at their triggers: the cue says what to set, you make the move on the machine, and one tap logs it into the roast record. The control strip's heat, fan, and drum steppers do the same for manual moves and are marked Monitor · logs only. Nothing is ever transmitted to the roaster; everything you state is recorded, so even an uncontrollable rig ends up with a full control history alongside its curve.

Yes. Marking an event by hand shows an Undo toast for a few seconds; one tap reverts it. Auto-detected events (charge, turning point, and the dry-end fallback) don't offer undo because the app would immediately re-detect them from the curve.

Your choice, per account. Bridge reports whatever the hardware sends and the platform normalizes to a single canonical scale, so curves from a °C roaster and a °F roaster compare cleanly. The display unit is a setting; flipping it converts everything, including imported Artisan history.

Yes, while in private beta. Approved testers get Bridge at no cost. Long-term pricing has not been decided — when we land on it, current beta testers will get a heads-up first.

Bridge is in private beta. Request access at firstcrack.app/beta — we read every signup and approve by hand. Small numbers, high care. Supported-roaster requests get a magic-link invite and Bridge download. Unsupported-roaster requests are logged as a roadmap vote that shapes which models we add next.

First Crack analytics include rate of rise (RoR) curves, drop temperature, development time ratio (DTR), drying/Maillard/development phase durations, weight loss percentage, and roast-to-roast trend comparisons. Dashboards show your roast history, bean performance, cupping scores over time, and inventory levels. All analytics are visible in the web app without hardware.

Agtron is a standardized scale for measuring roast color. First Crack includes an Agtron scoring tool that lets you record a numeric color value for each roast. Roast color correlates with flavor profile and roast level — darker roasts have lower Agtron numbers. This feature is available in the web app for any roast, with or without hardware.

Yes. First Crack includes bean inventory management with freshness tracking, cost analytics, yield tracking per roast, low-stock alerts, and weight loss tracking. You can monitor stock levels by origin and lot, and see how each bean performs across multiple roasts.

First Crack includes a full SCA-style cupping workflow. You can run a cupping session on any roast profile — scoring fragrance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, and overall impression — and store the results. Cupping scores appear alongside roast analytics and in trend dashboards over time.

In addition to the per-roast cupping workflow, First Crack lets you record an SCA quality score (0–100) directly on each bean in your inventory. This score represents the green coffee quality — typically assigned by the supplier or assessed from a sample cupping. An SCA score of 80 or above indicates specialty-grade coffee. This is separate from per-roast cupping session scores.

First Crack recipes let you define a set of target values (charge temp, drop temp, target ratios) and triggered actions during a Live Roast — for example, hitting a heater or fan setpoint at a target temperature or elapsed time. Recipes can be attached to roast profiles and synced across devices. The web app lets you browse, edit, and manage your recipe library; during a Live Roast, Bridge fires the actions automatically.

Yes. Any roast profile can be shared with a public link or published to the First Crack community page. Public profiles include the full roast curve, phase markers, and analytics. You can control whether your name and notes are included in the share.

First Crack lets you generate a shareable link that shows two roast curves side by side. A comparison link displays both temperature trajectories, rate of rise curves, phase durations, and key metrics in a single view — useful for showing how this batch compares to last week's roast, or for sharing a technique with the community.

Yes. When creating a share link in First Crack, you can choose whether to show your name and profile, your notes, and your tags. You can also make a roast publicly listed on the community page or keep the link private — accessible only via the direct URL.

Yes. All roast data in First Crack is yours. You can export your full library as JSON from the Settings page at any time. First Crack does not sell or share your personal data with third parties.

First Crack supports JSON export of your full roast library, including all profile data, curves, and metadata. Export is available from the Settings page.

Email contact@firstcrack.app for any questions, issues, or feedback. Email goes directly to the team — there is no ticket queue.