Hi Shane,

I love my RK drum - I think I've probably roasted 100 pounds in it by
now.  As bad weather begins to creep into Northern Indiana I have a
little more time on my hands and I realized I neglected to let you know
that a friend of mine wrote an article about my roasting. If you go to
www.thebeacher.com - go to past issues for 2011, select October 6  and
you'll get a pdf version of The Beacher. If you scroll down to page 36
you'll find Charley's article.  The RK drum gets honorable mentions
there.  I hope you enjoy it.

Dick Coffee

Just finished roasting a 9 lb batch of Nicaragua Dipilto... It was flawless!!!! Thx again!!!
Only 31 pounds to go;)
The roast is perfectly even throughout the entire batch... Fabulous!
My first 5lb roast was all over the place, but I leveled the drum (not the BBQ), and it came out perfect

Justin Collins

It's been a week since I received and put together my new 6Lb DIY combo and in short, I'm thrilled!  I had a few small challenges with the installation but engineering the solutions was part of the fun.
With this 10 year old Weber grill, the square tubes were about 3/4 inch too low for the base plate-motor mount combo at the highest position so I cut a pair of 1x2 shims to sit between the base plate and the tubes and got some 3-inch bolts for the muffler clamps--just right!  The rotisserie cutouts in this grill were tiny and wanting to avoid using the Charbroil mounting brackets, I used my Dremel to cut those slots in the grill deep enough to accomodate some extra bearing-bushings that I bought at a grill parts supplier.  Now the rotisserie spit is strongly supported on each side of the grill and I think it makes the motor's job easier since the spit and drum aren't hanging on the coupler.  By the way, the motor , motor mount and baseplate is very well made and I especially appreciate the holes being pre-threaded for the electrical boxes.  I chose to mount an unswitched duplex outlet on the back position to give me a place to conveniently plug in a fan to blow on the motor when I start doing big long roast sessions.  To make the grill more efficient on gas, I blocked off about 70% of the rear vent with a piece of carpet threshold that fit perfectly and already had a slight bend which makes it press against the grill base nicely when the hood is closed.

Enough tech-stuff--forgive me, I'm an engineer--the drum is a work of art and the motor and mounts are terrific and the whole kit is well thought-out and it makes GREAT COFFEE!  I've done several roasts using your
suggested profile for 1lb batches and I'm getting the hang of it!  I will graduate to larger batches when I decide what kind of beans I want to order in quantity.  The only bad thing about this setup is that I want to roast all the time and you need lots of beans in your inventory to have all that fun!  The picture attached is Guatemala--Villa Herminia at a very even roast...delicious.

Thanks for your great products, and even more for your superb customer service!  Keep up the good work!

I owe you a big thankyou for your advice Shane! That drum is really starting to work for me. Some time in the future I will have to send you a documented time and temperature profile on what is working for me with that srum. One of the bigger hurdles is the barbeque. It doesn't regulate it's heat very well but I have put a bank of 4 thermometers on the front of my barbeque that I use to moniter the heat. This helps me keep an even roast along the full length of that long drum. Your suggestion of preheating the barbeque to 600 has really helped, I also am preheating the drum a little. What really has helped is the times that you projected for me. When I followed those times I started learning when the second crack was happening. this has made the difference. -Jason

The coffee roasting is going good and really I've been selling quite a bit. A little tribute to how good a job that roaster can do is that when I had a friend from Ethiopia taste my Ethiopian coffee {he owns about a half acre of Mich Harrar in Ethiopia and currently runs an African cafe here in London, Ontario, were he roasts   a variety of East African coffee every morning with an electric TOPER to serve fresh to  customers} he told me that my coffee was done perfect. He asked me what type of a roaster I was using and when I told him about my drum setup he became pretty excited about the concept. -Jason