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Coffeehound needs some advice on a new roaster with higher capacity than poppers. Post away to help out.

What load are you wanting to be able to do?

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I recently looked at various "upgrades" from my little air popper...

First I looked at making an "uber-popper" (good info available on this site).

But, I am also tinkering with a bread machine / heat gun as well. Plenty of good info on this site about this approach as well.

I think the bread machine is better than the popper, for several reasons-- much bigger payload per roast, and also bread machines are cheap, and built like tanks.

Good poppers, like the original Poppery and Pumpers, are somewhat rare, and often costly, and sometimes damaged. And then they still require some significant modifications to upgrade them.

My only concern is the heat gun -- I will try to shield mine, like Stu does, from the heat of roasting. Otherwise, it may self-destruct. I got mine for $10 at Harbor Freight. I will try to pick up another one for a spare.


Bill

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In order of least to most expensive:

Frying Pan
Kitchen Oven
Heatgun & Stainless Steel Bowl & Wooden Spoon
Heatgun & Breadmaker
Tubo Oven
-----here's where home-made modified roasters enter, see THIS THREAD----
RK Drum (outdoor)
Behmor (indoor)

CHAD

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Hey, thanks for the topic! What a great group.

Reasonably, I'd like 1/2 pound, give or take. If I roasted more I'd have too much and it would either be thrown out or go stale in the freezer. Smoke isn't a problem. Neither is cost.

But I don't want to build something. Assemble is OK, but not build from scratch.

Frank

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I would go the RK route then. You'll spend $300 to $500 depending on what equipment you already have. Some assembly required, but no building from scratch.

Neal

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If you went the Heat Gun/Dog Bowl route you wouldn't have to assemble anything. Just buy the heat gun, the dog bowl, and use a wooden spoon. Plus it would easily roast your stated half pound preference. You might want to figure a method for checking temps but there is plenty about that on this board.


The RK drums are nice, but they are really geared for roasting at least a pound. I have a very hard time getting a good roast with anything less than one pound. Half pound roasts progress very quickly and are always somewhat out of control.

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If money weren't an issue ---> buy the Behmor <---. If I didn't want to cough up the money, I'd buy one!

CHAD

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I wonder if doing such a small batch in the RK would be difficult? Anyone have difficulty controlling the heat for just 1/2 pound?

The heat gun / dog bowl is more work than I want to do. I'd rather have a motorized stirring mechanism.

How many people here have the Behnore? I'm curious about it.

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You could use a heat gun/ bread machine. No assembly required, the bread machine provides the motorized stirring mechanism, and you can do 1/2 to 1lb batch sizes.

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I don't have an RK drum, mine was actually designed by me (with some wise advice) and welded by a local shop. However it works the same way as the RK. Some of the difficulty I have with half pound loads is that the beans take in heat much faster and often go directly from first crack into second without any warning. Part of this might be due to the high powered grill I use though. If you are willing to work with it you could easily set it up.

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One can absolutely profile a half pound batch in an RK Drum; I have done so. I have one customer that orders a half pound of Liquid Amber periodically and I roast that half pound without difficulty. One has extensive profile control with the RK Drum.

I also have a Behmor, and if you want to plug something in, roast some coffee, unplug it and put it away, then the Behmor may very well be for you, especially at its price point. You will give up a bit of control and have to learn how to work with the built-in profiles, but if you have been roasting for a while, you may master it rather quickly. I nailed the second roast I did in the Behmor. The Behmor is a very good half-pound roaster that can roast up to a pound.

I hope this is helpful ...

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Wow Eddie! You are going to have to give me some tips on the half pound roasts then! I dread the days when I have no choice but to do half pounders!

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http://www.homero...ead_id=863

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OK, so 'dreading' doing roasts isn't my cup of tea (no pun intended) so the RK is out. I'll see if I can find some Behmor reviews. Thanks, everyone!

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Sorry coffeehound. I wasn't completely trying to disuade you from the RK or even scare you.

Your usage might be very different than mine. I do most of my roasting for sale, so I have rather higher stakes than most homeroasters. Some of my dread comes from the 50,000 BTU monster grill I use. It isn't the easiest to control just by setting the fuel flow. If you were to get a less powerful grill (say 28,000-35,000 BTU range) the half pound loads could be very workable.

As far as the Behmor goes, there are tons of threads about it going on at the Coffeegeek homeroasting forum.