# Home roasting - Where I'm starting.



## caffeinegeek (Aug 29, 2018)

I've realised that unless you buy beans direct from a roaster, you can't guarantee their freshness and their freshness deteriates very quickly. For home use I want little and often which makes mail order buying expensive and wasteful on white van deliveries. Now I'm moving to home roasting to roast a rolling 2 weeks supply and always have fresh beans.

Here's what I'm trying out at the moment:

1. 1200W popcorn popper, fan motor driven separately and heater PID controlled. - First tests look good for 80gm loads, tedious for 500gm. Interesting wind vortexing on these machines.

2. I have 2 stainless peanut roasting baskets that will fit my gas barbecue rotisserie. Precision temperature control could be challenging or impossible to achieve?

3. I have a 2000W temperature controlled heat gun with lcd temperature readout to play with when I can find a 'pot' giving the right floating air vortex with a chimney (any ideas?).

I now appreciate roasting fire hazards, not necessarily from the roaster machine but the beans - chaff that gets lit and flies around! If the gas barbecue is successful that ticks the boxes for safety with larger roast loads. Next up could be a modded tumble dryer!

Popcorn poppers seem 'popular' and get a lot of discussion here. But has anybody done anything yet with gas barbecues? If all you need is a rotisserie, peanut basket and digital thermometer, that could be simple and cheap to set up?


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## Batian (Oct 23, 2017)

A challenging prospect.

My view would be, great start with the popcorn maker to see if you 'have the bug', but after that it may be better and cheaper to develop you skills and passion with a purpose built roaster like the Gene.

Never mind the fire risk that you discuss, I can smell an awful lot of very expensive beans ending up on the compost heap when you realise..."urghhhh not quite what I am used to"!


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## ajohn (Sep 23, 2017)

You may be able to do something with a gas barbeque if you can fit precise temperature control. In the end I bought a used Gene but may at some point make something myself. I'd base it around images of a gas probably sample roaster I came across. The gas heated a rather large thick metal plate. Personally I wouldn't use gas though but the idea seems sound - something electrically heated that has a largish thermal mass.








Several things might go on top of that so I'd start simple and work up. There was an ebay seller that sold larger rotisserie baskets from china but they may have disappeared. If used that might need enclosing, air circulation might be needed etc etc.

I did start modifying a popcorn roaster. SCR regulator and air temperature sensor and ability to run fan with the heating off. Then thought what on earth am I doing. Bean circulation is hit and miss and the quantity way too low. Further mods could copy the method certain small roasters use to circulate the beans but is it worth it? I'd say no.

It might be possible to come up with something like a Gene with a hot air gun but if you look at one you will see that the heat is contained via a glass tube so it probably isn't as simple as just blowing air into a rotating mesh basket.

John

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## caffeinegeek (Aug 29, 2018)

Thanks, I'm adding another option to the project. The stainless peanut roasting baskets for BBQs are being sold on Fleabay, I have a couple coming to try out. I've also discovered IKEA's stainless cutlery storage container. They come in 2 sizes and 2 of the smaller ones code 300.118.32 can be joined together to make a 11.5 dia X 26 roasting drum (£2 ea). Sadly their 8mm holes are too large and I will try them out as 'formers' with a wrap around stainless mesh.

I already have a cheapo toaster over which I modded with PID for reflow soldering and I can get 2 of the IKEA drums inside running off a 5V Chinese spit roast motor. For reflow I needed a faster controlled cool down than the internal recirc. fan would give, so I fitted a gas boiler flue fan on the back. It pushes a lot of air through and should work well to give rapid cooling of the roasting drum. Run in short bursts it will also pull out smoke. I added an extra 800W of IR quartz heating tubes and it has plenty of heat wampum. When I've finished it should look something like the Behmor 1600 costing less than £40. Smoke and chaff are things to look forward to and work around, but I'm hoping they will be manageable for 1/2 kg or less max bean load.

Behmor use an open type basket drum similar to the BBQ peanut roasters, but I'm not sure yet if a drum with more density like the IKEA would be more stable holding heat, even with pid controlling the air flow temperature.


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## Topshot (Oct 10, 2018)

Why not build a Corretto roaster, there is plenty of information on the web for instructions to build one.

You basically need a disused bread maker (should be able to pick one up for a couple of quid) and a heat gun, (temperature probes etc can come later).

Depending on the size of the bread maker, you should be able to roast up to 800gm or so.

Just another option for you!


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## caffeinegeek (Aug 29, 2018)

Thanks, another one for the ideas mix! Wifey wants to chuck it out as it gets less use now. Ours is a single pot and paddle size. I think I'd like the paddle larger and turning slowly, but these things might be trickable. In some of the vids the paddle is throwing beans all over the place. My breadmakers are both fan assisted and at first look it seems to me you need to drill a load of 5mm holes in the container. I'll put a temp probe in mine and see what temperatures its reaching. I guess the acrylic cover will limit max temp but then popcorn poppers use a similar material. Of course the ultimate would be a breadmaker already designed with a coffee roasting option on the menu!

There are heat guns around now with digital control of air temperature and air speed adjustment. I'm interested in seeing whether they can produce much of a hot air vortex like the poppers, although I suspect their small fans won't be good enough.





 In that vid. you can see just how much smoke is produced from the larger bean loads. Definitely not for the kitchen and shows how smoke extraction (and a fire extinguisher) is v.important


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## Carman (Feb 26, 2019)

I'm interested to here if you do the gas barbecue with rotisserie!


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